Big Tobacco vs. Anti-Smoking Campaigns: Oh How the Tables Have Turned

Ian McNeice
Public Com
Professor Zimdars
16 October 2015

Big Tobacco vs. Anti-Smoking Campaigns: Oh How the Tables Have Turned

Not many of us can remember this, due to the fact that most of us were not even born yet to begin with, but there were times when smoking cigarettes was the coolest thing since sliced bread. Magazines, newspapers, and billboards were plastered with the Marlboro Man, Camels, or Cools, claiming that cigarettes make a good time great and a great time perfect. Hollywood’s biggest celebrities throughout the 1900s such as Bob Dylan, Meryl Streep, Cary Grant, Betty Davis, and so many others were chimneys on the silver screen. Big Tobacco was raking in millions and funneling it right back into the mass media and starting the vicious cycle over and over again. However, following the 1950s, Big Tobacco ran into some rather steep problems. Cigarettes became a risk for physical health rather than a key to success and social acceptance. After the 1964 decision by Surgeon General Luther Terry that cigarettes ultimately caused illness and death, Big Tobacco stopped their presses, turned off their cameras, and opened their wallets. Today, we are bombarded with ads, signs, and commercials that are against smoking cigarettes and promote public health. However, as benign as these motives may be, Anti-Smoking campaigns are just as sinister in their strategies, if not more so than Big Tobacco, because in the end, money makes the world go around. These points are truly hammered home in the 2005 satirical drama, Thank You for Smoking as well as the anti-smoking ads of today’s television.
Thank You for Smoking follows the life and moral struggle of Big Tobacco lobbyist, Nick Naylor as he defends the reputation and livelihood of cigarettes while, at the same time, trying to demonstrate to his son why he does what he does. To get to the point, Nick does what every American tries to do: pay the mortgage. It is unfair that people like Nick are nationally despised for doing their job just because of what they represent. Throughout the film, Nick is constantly interrogated by reporters and talk show hosts about the dangers of smoking, how cigarettes will kill you, and how they are corrupting American society. His response is nothing short of an epitomization of the American way of life. If someone wants to bloat up to a 600 pound balloon and die of cardiac arrest, then so be it. If someone would like to smoke a pack of cigarettes a day and ultimately die of lung cancer, then that’s okay because we live in America, where you should be provided with the knowledge of what could happen as well as the choice of whether or not to do it. Nick truly drives this point home at the end of the film, when talking with a Vermont Senator who is strongly against smoking. The Senator is advocating a skull and cross bones on all cigarette packs, to which Nick replies with the fact that cholesterol kills more people than cigarettes, so why not have a skull and cross bones on Vermont Cheese? Flustered, the Senator asks him what he will do when his son turns 18 and asks for a cigarette. After a long pause, Nick simply replies, “If he really wants a cigarette, I’ll buy him his first pack.” Nick says this because he knows that his son is well-informed and will make the right decision for his own overall health and even if he doesn’t, he is at least making his own choice. Overall, the film takes a strong focus on liberty in America and how corporations, no matter what their endgame is, will do whatever it takes to have the general population, as well as the wallets, on their side.
This still rings true today as we are hit with Anti-Smoking ads. Most commercials that are being run by the Anti-Smoking organization called Truth absolutely sicken me as a former cigarette smoker. These ads, demonize tobacco as well as the people who smoke them and sell them, which  is wrongful and unfair. To be clear, I agree that these organizations should be informing the public of the dangers of tobacco as well as displaying tobacco as the addictive, lethal substance it truly is. However, when these organizations describe smokers as unattractive and uncool, that is when I see them as being just as evil as the tobacco companies themselves. It makes smokers feel inferior in society and that will only cause them to want more tobacco. In the end, we should be educating our children, not persuading them. As young Americans it is their right to choose whether or not they light up. However, if we educate them, they will be more inclined to make the right decision and put down the pack.