I'm starting to get very annoyed by this whole thetruth.com ad campaign and the other facets of the settlement against the tobacco companies. In the infinite wisdom of the government, the tobacco companies have been forced to pay into a fund that markets an anti-tobacco campaign towards teens and pre-teens. In my opinion, the tobacco companies are getting the shaft.
First of all, I continually see advertisements from and for thetruth.com, a website and advertising campaign set up out of this trust fund. The campaign is the "Rip-it-out" campaign that encourages their target audience, teens, to rip out cigarette ads from magazines. Albeit not a particularly radical act, the campaign portrays the magazine advertisements as a subversive medium which must be avoided, hence the need to rip them out and dispose of them. (incidentally, magazine advertisements are one of the only refuges where tobacco companies can advertise, the others like billboards and t-shrits were taken away in the settlement, and television advertisements were taken away a long time ago). This attitude is one that teens do not posess minds of their own and that viewing of advertisements will inevitably cause them to take up smoking.
The portion of the advertising campaign that I find especially disturbing is that teens can turn in ripped out advertisements for prizes at thetruth.com events. In my opinion, this taints the whole program, much as if Carrie Nation had received a cash prize for each barrel she destroyed on her crusade for prohibition. Instead of a moral crusade, which is what thetruth.com wants you to believe they're on, this is cheapened into a ploy to get teens to mindlessly do what the media tells them to do... which is what the campaign was against in the first place.
What infuriates me the most is the use of the term "Big Tobacco" whenever the advertisements refer to tobacco companies. This juxtaposition of the Orwellian "Big Brother" is supposed to make the corporations sound like evil entities, but instead comes across as pesudo-hip and is designed to take the natural rebellion of youth and make it appear that they are actually fighting something, ignoring the fact that smoking is a voluntary activity.
Although I realize that thetruth.com was set up with money set aside for the very purpose of creating an ad campaign like this one, the least they could do is present facts or present a viable argument instead of resorting to non-arguments. One of their more often repeated taglines is "Rip out the next cigarette ad you see, because tobacco killed about 430,000 people last year and papercuts didn't kill anybody". This is one of the most asinine things I have ever heard. Everyone dies, it's a all a matter of when you go.
One interesting factiod that most people don't know about is that the tobacco and alcohol companies are some of the greatest contributors to the Partnership for a Drug-Free America. Since they've got the market cornered on some of the legal drugs, they try to keep some of the other ones from entering their turf and possibly hindering their profits (with the exception to the rumor that I've heard that Marlboro already has a patent for Marlboro Greens, a cannabis product that they could crank out should it become legal). I guess some of this marketing they paid for with the Partnership has come back to bite them in the butt, since some of the same silly arguments and advertisements are now being used against them.
For the curious, I am a smoker. I smoke Drum of Samson, two fine Dutch rolling tobaccos. My choice to smoke was not influenced by "Big Tobacco", I began smoking because I enjoy it. Much like I enjoy coffee and beer. I do none of these things with any kind of regularity, so I don't believe I could say that I'm addicted. Should I get up tomorrow and find I can't get any beer or have a smoke or a cup of coffee, my day will probably go on just the same (although I may be a bit groggy at first without coffee). I will die someday, and some of these things might contribute to my demise, but I realize that all of these activites are my choice. Should I feel addicted to one or more of them, I realize that there are more than enough groups that will help me eliminate them from my life, but that's still my choice to make.