It may appear that all the legislation and billion dollar settlements have crippled Big Tobacco’s effort to hook a new generation of customers on their products. While the freeways are no longer lined with Marlboro billboards and tobacco companies can no longer market to children, Big Tobacco has other weapons in its arsenal.
Billions of dollars in annual revenue are at stake and Big Tobacco isn’t going to simply roll over and play dead. Sure, the evidence that smoking is hazardous to your health is overwhelming. And there’s no shortage of education available on the subject. Children from kindergarten on up are taught about the dangers. While the number of children smoking is lower than it ever has been, one wonders why it’s not near zero, given the simple truth: tobacco products cause cancer.
To battle the truth, Big Tobacco is armed with a wealth of deceptive marketing tactics. They create false scientific studies that refute widely accepted facts. They sponsor grass roots organizations that tout the potential economic loss to communities. They fight legislation in the courts. When really pressed, they even stoop to outright fraud.
Here's one case. In 2007, Big Tobacco spent $6.6 million in Oregon to defeat a measure that would have increased the state cigarette tax to help fund child health care in the state. They knew that the 84.5 cents per pack tax would reduce cigarette sales, especially among children.
Here’s just a few of the tactics they used in their attempt to defeat the initiative.
- RJ Reynolds wrote and distributed a mass-mailed letter that appeared to have been written by a first grade teacher. In fact, it was authored by a Reynolds lobbyist.
- RJ Reynolds created a front group – Oregonians Against the Blank Check – to oppose the initiative. The organization’s efforts, including television commercials, was funded entirely by the tobacco company.
- The advertisements opposing the initiative (again, funded by RJ Reynolds) claimed that the money would not be used for children’s health care, which was simply not true.
This is just a single example. In 2006, Big Tobacco spent $80 million to oppose state initiatives.
This included efforts to defeat smoke-free ballot measures by sponsoring measures with similar names. In Ohio, tobacco interests created a “Smoke Less Ohio” campaign that was put up against the “Smoke Free Ohio” initiative. The similar initiative names were not by accident. Big Tobacco wanted the public to be confused over what they were actually voting for. While the “Smoke Free” initiative would have banned smoking in all public places in the state, the tobacco-sponsored “Smoke Less” measure would have allowed smoking nearly everywhere in the state.
Unfortunately, these are just a few of the tactics they use. From new products, such as flavored tobacco and smokeless tobacco to paying producers millions of dollars to place products, logos and merchandise in blockbuster movies, Big Tobacco is at the leading edge of dubious but highly effective marketing schemes and tactics.
While the tactics change constantly, the goal remains the same: maintain market share, keep revenues high and defeat the efforts of legislators, scientists and parents so a new generation of customers – your children – will become addicted to their product.