If Tobacco is a Product Which Can be Sold Legally Then Why Can it not be Advertised?

I believe that tobacco advertisement should be legalized given the fact that first it is not illegal to manufacture tobacco. Second, it is not illegal to sell or distribute tobacco and third it is also not illegal to consume it so why should it be illegal to advertise it? after all it is not as if those who used to advertise tobacco were promoting the sell of heroin or other illegal substances. 

Most countries have laws that band tobacco advertising of all kinds; not only from television but all other sources that include magazines, billboards, etc. however what is the reason for such laws? The answer most governments give is that tobacco is hazardous to one’s health not only to those who consume it but those who are around the consumer as they will inhale what is known as “second hand smoke” which some claim is even more harmful then the one the smoker is inhaling. I however ask if this is the case then why only ban tobacco from being advertised? Why not ban it all together?

Of course there are those that will say that tobacco should not be made illegal because it does not kill or at least not as quickly as do the above mentioned narcotics and it is with intent of having people smoke less that advertising should be banned. This sounds logical; at least in theory but as is often the case what works on paper does not always work in practice as many years ago the government of Norway banned all kinds of tobacco advertisement only to discover that neither the amount of people smoking nor the amount of cigarettes being consumed decreased. It was in shook contrast that the opposite occurred as consumption of tobacco tripled rather then decreased.

One of the observations I however have made about advertisement based on what I have seen is that it does not determine weather or not people consume a certain product by this I mean that those who are willing to smoke cigarettes will do so like those who are willing to drink alcohol and it is not the advertisement that leads them to do so but other factors such as society and its customs. I in a perhaps odd example believe that if the act of suicide were to be advertised the number of people committing it or attempting to do so would not increase. Poland for instance had an episode not long ago where its government banned all forms of advertisement connected to alcohol to find out like the Norwegian government did with tobacco that the number of people drinking did not decrease and neither did the amount of alcohol being consumed.

With regards to advertisement I once wondered why was it that some companies like Coca-Cola advertise spending millions of dollars a year in doing so in the form of not only television commercials, billboards and even sponsoring sporting events like the World Cup which must cost them a huge deal of money? If one thinks about it what could be the reason Coca-cola who no offense to anybody who is religious is about as well known a name as is the name of Jesus Christ, to continue to advertise?

So it is not to gain fame that companies like Coca-Cola advertise nor is it to keep it as those who are very young are not even in need of commercials to become aware of the existence of this company as they merely need to leave their homes and look about them in stores or their friends’ homes which are more then likely to have this product. Coca-Cola unlike other companies with huge names such as Ford, Sony, or IBM does not introduce new products on the market as their product has remained unchanged for the last 100 years or so. It was with this in mind that I asked a friend of mine who worked in advertisement why if there name was one that was so famous as to be on the same level with God’s did they need to advertise? It was my question that was met with a simple answer that if companies like Coca-Cola or Pepsi did not advertise they would have to pay more in the way of taxes being that they can deduct their cost of advertising from their taxes and given that paying more taxes gives these companies nothing in return they opt to advertise.

It was this logic that put in my mind the notion that reached the conclusion that this perhaps is the real reason tobacco companies are not allowed to advertise and again the health issue is a smoke screen. If tobacco companies are not allowed to advertise that means they can not deduct the cost of advertising from their taxes and therefore would have to pay more of them. This in my opinion is the real reason why governments have banned tobacco advertisement and not the so called “health issue” because if that were the real cause then they would have made tobacco illegal as they have done with cocaine and other narcotics.

As for adverting, it in and of itself does not determine weather or not people consume certain products such as alcohol or cigarettes or chocolate for that matter but it does help determine what brand people choose. For instance those who smoke will do so regardless of advertisement or lack of which as the case in Norway and other countries have shown but what advertising can sway is what brand they will smoke or what brand of Cola they will drink. If Cola-Cola and Pepsi have huge names in the carbonated soft drink industry well the name Marlboro is just as big in the tobacco industry and just as Coca-Cola does not need to be advertised as just about everybody consumes this product neither does Marlboro. Naturally there are those who do not consume either Coca-Cola or Marlboro but those who do not refrain not form lack of knowledge of the brand but because their tastes lean in another direction which not even advertising can change. This being the case as who does not know Marlboro as it even turns out that all people need see are the colors “red and white” and their imagination will automatically associate them to the Marlboro brand as is the example given by Formula One cars.

Lack of being able to advertise for Marlboro also does not present a problem in another form and that is that when they can not advertise neither can other tobacco companies. This meaning that none of them will be allowed to challenge the Marlboro name or even grow to represent serious competition to it which has already been established through the years in the mind of the consumer. This compiled with two more factors should guarantee Marlboro its place as the top selling brand worldwide for a long time to come. One of them being that marketing studies have shown that the average consumer will tend to buy products he or she is already familiar with which in the case of most smokers is Marlboro. The second one being the also accepted reality that cigarette smokers are the most loyal consumers of all.