2008 Woodie Awards
Editor's Column: Smokers need a taste of reality, not tax breaks and new packaging
Issue date: 2/21/07 Section: Opinion
- Page 1 of 1
Costly to both our health and purses, in the long term and the short term, smoking is one of the top rated "bad habits" in America. "Truth," the campaign against "Big Tobacco," has sent a series of print ads, radio announcements, and television commercials into the media circuit prompting smokers and non-smokers alike to ponder the serious risks associated with the behavior. Yet the executives at tobacco corporations such as R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company (Camel Cigarettes) seem to find no problem with introducing new marketing strategies to pull in new clientele.
Reynolds is simply following suit to many big tobacco corporations, which pour countless millions into advertising campaigns that target new, and younger audiences. With feminized packaging, the once rugged Camel brand is reaching out to women, who comprise a powerful market, which the New York Times points out, is also the prime market for rising rates of lung cancer in the U.S. Have we cheapened our ethical standards so much that it is now okay for us to ignore moral principles in order to turn a profit and keep a customer base alive, or even recruit a new one?
It seems as Reynolds is an especially ruthless contender in the big tobacco business, having launched a smoker's rights website under the first Amendment of the constitution, while most other corporations are trying to hide behind a façade of social responsibility. The site, mysmokersrights.rjrt.com, rallies angered smokers to fight against the taxation laws on tobacco, and other "injustices" against smokers. This site boasts statistics totaling the amount of tax dollars smokers pay by state. What the site does not include is the fact that this tax money is used to fund government health care programs that help cut the costs of treatment to those who are terminally affected by long-term tobacco use, or children that have been overexposed to second hand smoke. The reason for taxing smokers is because they are more of a healthcare liability than non-smokers. According to the American Heart Association, smoking cases one-third of all cancer cases in the U.S. and over 85 percent of lung cancer cases. Just as we are required to pay insurance in order to drive a motor vehicle, smokers must pay taxes as a form of insurance for their future as a result of their dangerous behavior. If they really don't want to pay the taxes, they should quit rather than whine about having to pay for the painful future their bad habits will lead them to. Do they really expect non-smoker taxpayers to pay for their bad decisions?
Perhaps, if big tobacco is going to use freedom of speech as their argument in order to market smoking and pro smokers rights sites, anti-smoking campaigns should use the same argument to better expose the truths of what smoking does to finances, people, and smoking. Following Australia's more extreme example, perhaps we should post pictures of oral cancer victims on the boxes of cigarettes themselves. While the Truth campaign that is taking the media by storm seems to be heading in this direction, I applaud their efforts and am hoping to see them take further steps into showing the general public the extreme suffering that smoking causes both smokers themselves and their family members.
Reynolds is simply following suit to many big tobacco corporations, which pour countless millions into advertising campaigns that target new, and younger audiences. With feminized packaging, the once rugged Camel brand is reaching out to women, who comprise a powerful market, which the New York Times points out, is also the prime market for rising rates of lung cancer in the U.S. Have we cheapened our ethical standards so much that it is now okay for us to ignore moral principles in order to turn a profit and keep a customer base alive, or even recruit a new one?
It seems as Reynolds is an especially ruthless contender in the big tobacco business, having launched a smoker's rights website under the first Amendment of the constitution, while most other corporations are trying to hide behind a façade of social responsibility. The site, mysmokersrights.rjrt.com, rallies angered smokers to fight against the taxation laws on tobacco, and other "injustices" against smokers. This site boasts statistics totaling the amount of tax dollars smokers pay by state. What the site does not include is the fact that this tax money is used to fund government health care programs that help cut the costs of treatment to those who are terminally affected by long-term tobacco use, or children that have been overexposed to second hand smoke. The reason for taxing smokers is because they are more of a healthcare liability than non-smokers. According to the American Heart Association, smoking cases one-third of all cancer cases in the U.S. and over 85 percent of lung cancer cases. Just as we are required to pay insurance in order to drive a motor vehicle, smokers must pay taxes as a form of insurance for their future as a result of their dangerous behavior. If they really don't want to pay the taxes, they should quit rather than whine about having to pay for the painful future their bad habits will lead them to. Do they really expect non-smoker taxpayers to pay for their bad decisions?
Perhaps, if big tobacco is going to use freedom of speech as their argument in order to market smoking and pro smokers rights sites, anti-smoking campaigns should use the same argument to better expose the truths of what smoking does to finances, people, and smoking. Following Australia's more extreme example, perhaps we should post pictures of oral cancer victims on the boxes of cigarettes themselves. While the Truth campaign that is taking the media by storm seems to be heading in this direction, I applaud their efforts and am hoping to see them take further steps into showing the general public the extreme suffering that smoking causes both smokers themselves and their family members.
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