Tobacco Companies and All Their Glory

In the next 24 hours approximately three thousand Americans under the age of eighteen will become regular smokers. In that same 24 hours approximately one thousand Americans over the age of 76 will reduce their smoking habits. Tobacco Companies are some of the wealthiest businesses in the world. Tobacco is as valued as ones home and to some it even comes before. Since the early 1600’s tobacco has been used and its uses have continued to grow. How did tobacco become so well known? It started when Columbus sailed the ocean blue and ended with a little catchy advertisement. Advertisements come in all shapes and sizes selling off the most outrageous products to the flashiest products. They also sell the most dangerous products. From commercials on the radio to commercials on the TV or pictures in a magazine to a billboard over Manhattan, a product is being sold. Tobacco Companies put out their advertisements because it is a way for them to get rich without really doing any work. Laws against advertising were put into effect in the late 1900’s. However, with rules set tobacco companies just found other ways to get their products across. In a television scandal in 1986 the Camel and Kool Company, R.J. Reynolds, paid off ABC thousands of dollars just to have their product on any of their produced shows. Although the company was aught, there are still to this day deals just like that. Advertisements are some of the most popular way of getting a point across. At http://www.rjrt.come/home.asp ads are seen for anyone to view; including schools. One ad in particular has three teens smoking with a message that reads: “Share a great idea with some friends.” Its ads like that which kids see and feel pressure into doing. A recent study by doctor Alexander Kimble showed that children often do as they see. They’re curiosity builds up and triggers parts of the brain that take action to the body. He stated that it was similar to the game of Monkey See, Monkey Do. Tobacco and Nicotine: Drug Dangers states that tobacco companies often place their ads where they know children will be. Ex tobacco worker, Amy Pierce says that they do this in order to collect a younger audience because their older smokers are realizing their health risks and quitting or dying off. Statistics at health.net show that on average tobacco companies spend hundred of thousands of dollars on advertisements to promote the product.

The truth about advertisements is hard to tell from the way that they present them. Sure people know now that tobacco and nicotine cause major illnesses like cancer and premature birth, but what they don’t tell you is far more shocking. “Smoking is a handicap,” said Joan MacDonald, author of the book Tobacco and Nicotine: Drug Dangers. In the book he talks about how smoking is expensive and it interrupts ones work life. Advertisements also leave out the fact that the nicotine in the tobacco has the exact same side effect on your body as heroine or cocaine when just stopped. There are multiple facts left out by the ads that are seen from day to day. Cartoons and other characters are created by major companies in order to interest and appeal to young people. They make them believe that tobacco is innocent and fun. Studies show that ad campaigns, not the media, tend to tell girls that using tobacco will help them lose weight and be pretty. They tell boys that the more tobacco they use the manlier they can get and girls will be attracted to them. This study show that it is clearly the pressure of tobacco companies and is just a higher and more expensive form of “peer” pressure.

In the book Smoking 101 the www.cdc.gov was quoted and a survey on the smoking rates for young teens. The results showed that 4,400 teens between the ages of twelve and seventeen in the United States alone start smoking everyday and over half of them become daily smokers. They showed that 83% of the beginning young smokers were pressured into smoking. As of December, 2003, 24.9% of high school students and 10.17% of middle school students in the United States were current cigarette smokers. Numbers are only this high because of the great amount of peer pressure that goes on in schools. School is all about testing people and things; with the advertisements going on its hard not to give in. With all the pressure floating around nobody takes the time to state the truth or any kind of facts. For example, in Joan Vos MacDonalds’s book Tobacco and Nicotine: Drug Dangers page fifteen states that smoking is a handicap. On the website www.acsh.org they tell people who visit the site that the lungs of a person who smoke a pack or more of cigarettes a day is exposed to a total of one and one-half pounds of gooey black tar a year. Once this tar starts to take its toll on the body it sticks to the lungs causing many problems; such as breathing.

Between the years of 1980 and 2000 the number of cases against tobacco companies, in charges of liability suits, have gone down slightly due to some rules of warning on tobacco products. However, in Doctor Carol C. Nadelson’s book Smoke Screen: Psychological Disorders Related to Nicotine Use she states on page forty that tobacco products are among some of the most heavily advertised in the United States and also that billions of dollars were spent on these advertisements. “In the 1990’s, … more than 90% of six-year-olds knew the name “Joe Camel” and knew that he was all about smoking.”

“Tobacco company salespeople advise store owners that the best place to put cigarette vending machines is at children’s eye level and next to merchandise children can legally purchase” (MacDonald 36). William McCay’s book The Truth About Smoking, edited by three college professors with PH.D.s states that tobacco companies target a younger audience because they need to “recruit” younger people because their older users are getting sick or dying off. Candy cigarettes, beef jerky in a tobacco like form, and hookahs are widely used by teens and young adults. Pressure builds up because everyone is doing it and people say that they are the greatest feeling. Well, doctors say that over two- hundred thousand people who are regular smokers or tobacco users started with candy or the other stuff that kids pressure each other into doing. Movies are the best and seem to be most effective way to get the “using tobacco and drugs is cool” message. For example, the movie Mean Girls shows that schools are divided into the cool people and the geeks and losers. Part of the cool section includes kids that they call “burnouts”. These are the kids who use things like tobacco to make them seem cool.

“The diseases caused by tobacco use kill more Americans each year than alcohol, cocaine, crack, heroine, homicide, suicide, fires, car accidents, and AIDS combined” (MacDonald 10). The United States government banned highly addictive drugs that affect mood, concentration, and or behavior. Studies showed that the effect of nicotine has the exact same f not similar effects as cocaine and heroine. There are many conspiracies as to why tobacco isn’t illegal. One is that it is because tobacco is taxed while another states that it is because the tobacco industry has a small amount of government persuasion. Between January 1, 2001 and December 31, 2002 the tobacco industry provided over nine million dollars to political parties.

Doctors and researchers show that tobacco use is the first step toward the use of illegal drugs. They also say that tobacco leads to depression, heavy drinking, and violence. They say that the cause of this is not only the nicotine in the tobacco, but the added 600 ingredients that are added into it. Reports have shown that tobacco companies have farms outside the United States and grow illegal crops. In 1997, the associated press found some of these illegal crops in Brazil. The crops they found were referred to as fuomo loco, meaning crazy tobacco. These crazy tobacco plants contained a high amount of nicotine in them. The amount was about 12.8% more that the tobacco produced here in the United States. They said that it was about 7.08% over the legal amount.

Over the years since tobacco was introduced the industries that produce and sell this product have all schemed there way through life just to live in high dollar. They make money to live a fabulous life off the deaths and illnesses of others whom their product comes in any contact with. Tobacco companies should take responsibility for the pain and suffering that they caused. If that is such a crime than the product should just be illegal all together.