by Josef A

Created on: May 17, 2009

Whether you smoke or not is a very personal decision and there is hardly anybody who can claim not to know the harmful effects of smoking. Smoking as such remains legal, although the locations where to wallow your vice have been limited. Authorities have long ago started to realize that smoking is not only destroying people's health, but also putting huge costs on society. The burden comes in forms of decreased labor productivity and more importantly, the costs for treating smoke related diseases such as lung cancer, heart attacks, vascular stenosis and many more are significant. This is all well known. Consequently, the state takes measures to decrease tobacco consumption by taxing it heavily and launching campaigns to enlighten the population about the lethal effects of smoking. At the same time the big tobacco companies are allowed to influence people by their advertisements and convey a positive picture of smoking.

If the accusations are true that some of the tobacco ads are specifically addressing the young generation, as it is well known that they are more likely to become long-term addicts the earlier they start, might not be easy to answer. Regardless of that, it just does not make sense to allow advertisements that promote smoking of any kind. On the one hand, the government admits the detrimental consequences of smoking and even takes action to prevent people from smoking. On the other hand, it is legal to undermine those efforts by postulating the total opposite. It is not difficult to understand the dynamics that create such a situation. Tobacco conglomerates are powerful and influential actors in the political playing field. Therefore, they provide a significant amount of campaign contributions and politicians, always aiming for re-election, walk on dangerous grounds if they ignore their concerns completely. As a result, politicians rather put some money down for smoke prevention campaigns in order to satisfy the wishes of the critical public and not to anger the tobacco lobby. It is an ever looming problem of a democratic system that it creates such irrational patterns.

To put it lightly, it is counter-productive to allow tobacco advertising and try to prevent smoking at the same time. It is a waste of taxpayer money. In the long run, tobacco advertisement cannot be permitted. I am convinced that the tobacco companies will have to swallow this bitter pill sooner or later as they had to live with restrictions and tax hikes on their business before. The tobacco industry has to accept that their business harms people and they will not be able to expand their operations as freely as other ventures.

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