BP10.1

SMOKESIGNALS

The Tobacco Control Media Handbook

ByAdvocacy InstituteWashington, DC

CONTENTS

Introduction……………………………………………………………………………..3

How to Use Smoke Signals……………………………………………………………..6

Part I: Gaining Media Attention…………………………….…………………………7

Strategy No.1: Opportunism…………………………….……………………. 7

Strategy No. 2: Health News……………………….…………………………12

Strategy No. 3: Shaming the Industry’s Allies………………………………..14

Strategy No. 4: Getting Bonus Audiences with Public Service Announcements and Counter Commercials………….

………………………..16

Part II: Capturing the Symbols of Debate…………………………………………….18

Symbol No. 1: Not Proven.…………...………………………………………20

Symbol No. 2: Everything Causes Cancer……………………………………22

Symbol No. 3: Freedom of Speech……………………………………………23

Symbol No. 4: Freedom of Choice…………………………………………....25

Symbol No. 5: Smokers’ Rights………………………………………………26

Symbol No. 6: Public Civility…….…………………………………………..27

Symbol No. 7: Maturity, Sophistication, Liberation………………………….28

Symbol No. 8: Liberation……………………………………………………..29

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Symbol No. 9: Everybody Knows……………………………………………30

Symbol No. 10: Economic Benefits…………………………………………..31

Symbol No. 11: Regulations Don’t Work…………………………………….32

INTRODUCTIONWhy a tobacco control handbook devoted to media strategies?

The public media, by design or not, play a critical role in influencing both the smoking behavior of individuals and the actions of government policymakers.

In most countries, most people are at least vaguely aware that smoking carries some risk. But that vague awareness is barely a first step. There remain a series of critical educational and motivational tasks that the media must perform, among them.

to educate the public about the severity of the risks of smoking, the susceptibility of every smoker and the health benefits of quitting;

to educate the public about the health risks of involuntary (or “passive”) smoking;

to alert citizens and policy makers to the injurious public policies that promote smoking, including unrestricted advertising and promotion of cigarettes and unrestrained smoking in public areas and the workplace;

to respond to and counteract the propaganda and disinformation campaigns of the tobacco industry;

to counter the economic and political influence of the tobacco industry, which thwarts the adoption of remedial policies; and

to reinforce evolving social nonsmoking norms.

Of course, the media don’t necessarily view any much less all of these tasks as their responsibilities. And those media that are dependent on tobacco companies for advertising revenues are under great pressure to resist even minimal coverage of smoking and disease. This is particularly true of media targeted to women and minorities, which are increasingly bloated with cigarette ads.

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This dependence is exacerbated by the news media’s low threshold of boredom with any subject, and energetic, creative competition by the advocates of other causes, events, and issues (such as AIDS) for limited time and space.

As a result, there continues to be (1) inadequate communication of the health risks of smoking to individuals, (2) inadequate news coverage of public policy issues relating to smoking, and (3) dominance of media by cigarette advertising imagery and propaganda that perpetuates smoking norms and reinforces the legitimacy of the cigarette marketing enterprise.

But newspapers, magazines, and radio and TV stations are not without traditions of public responsibility and courage. In much of the media you will find journalists and editors indifferent to the ire of the cigarette advertisers—especially for a good story!

Hence the need - and the rewards - for uncommon wit and resourcefulness by public health advocates. The examples in this book give testimony that such wit and resourcefulness thrive throughout the world and, coupled with the terrible truth about the hazards of smoking, can breach even the most skeptical media.

This book is designed as a tool for spirited and resourceful public health advocates. It contains guidance, but it’s not a technical manual, for the strategic approach to media requires more art than technique, though both are necessary. The goal of this handbook is to stimulate and challenge the creativity and imagination of the advocate, not to prescribe rigid formulas.

Much of this book was drawn from an extraordinary workshop, sponsored by the American Cancer Society and held in Washington, D.C., in September 1985 for international tobacco control leaders. They came from Canada and Hong Kong; from Australia and Argentina; from the Sudan, and China, Singapore, Austria—from every country in which citizens have taken up the battle against the propagation and promotion of smoking. From that group, and others, came lessons and illustrations harvested from decades of campaigning to bring home to citizens and policy makers the risks of smoking, the environmental influences that sustain smoking, and individual and community remedies for the smoking epidemic.

Truly the heart of the book is a broad sampling of tested strategies and tactics for gaining access to the media with compelling, targeted messages. These strategies have been selected and displayed to stimulate the creativity of tobacco control advocates. Adapting some of these will require at least modest financial resources. But even the lone individual or small group of citizen “spark plugs” with only the resources of time, a typewriter, a telephone, and an entrepreneurial spirit will find many of these models well within reach.

Cultures, economies, political systems and media access opportunities vary widely from community to community and country to country. The

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flamboyant civil disobedience by courageous physicians that serves splendidly to shame those who allow themselves to be exploited by tobacco promotions in one country may offend the social mores—and be counterproductive—in other countries. But, far more often, the international workshop participants agreed that the responses of the media—and of citizens and governments—throughout the world have much in common, and that successful strategies employed on one battlefield are adaptable to most others.

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How to Use Smoke Signals

This guide is divided into two parts.

Part 1 offers guidance in gaining media “access” or “coverage.” It describes compelling strategies and tactics for capturing media attention. Some of the tactics, such as print and broadcast spot “counter-commercials,” require financial resources. But most of the examples are models for gaining free media coverage.

This Part is meant for browsing. Many of the examples will not be feasible or appropriate for you. But the odds are good that several insights and examples will arrest your attention. “Aha!” you may exclaim to yourself. “We can do that - or something very much like that.”

Part II addresses symbolic, or thematic, strategies for framing the issues in the media. The tobacco industry tries to seize the media initiative with evocative symbols like “smokers’ rights” and “freedom of choice.” Part II highlights counter symbols tobacco control advocates can invoke to capture the symbolic high ground in the media—and short “media bites” or one-liners designed to seize back the good symbols.

Part II has several uses. Anyone who expects to confront a tobacco spokesperson would do well to study it carefully. You will find some “media bites” or one-liners more persuasive than others—or you may prefer your own variations. But, properly used, it can arm you with a quiver of ready, sharp arrows. You might want to carry a tabbed and marked copy to any media appearance. Some groups have also found it useful as a handy reference for those who routinely handle press inquiries.

If there is only one central lesson to be taken away from this handbook, it is this:

Don’t let journalists or tobacco spokespersons characterize you as a (“fanatical,” “arrogant,” “abusive,” hysterical”) tormentor of smokers. Smokers are the victims of the tobacco industry, not the anti-smoker. Most important, you speak for the public health of smokers and nonsmokers alike. This sense of empathy, rather than vindictiveness, toward smokers can be conveyed by your tone, demeanor, reasonableness, and especially, humor.

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Part I: Gaining Media Attention

The story of smoking and disease has enjoyed a longer run in the public media than any other healthy policy issue. So it is hardly surprising that the threshold question a journalist asks (and the first question that he or she is asked by an editor or producer) is: “What’s new?” and the second is: “So what?”

No matter how important the message of smoking risks, tobacco industry perfidy, or government timidity, few will see it or hear it unless the media gatekeepers are persuaded that the message or its packaging is newsworthy—and exciting. It is unrealistic to expect journalists to share your enthusiasm for the cause you plead, but it is not unrealistic to expect a fair hearing. Remember: the journalist has other stories to write. It is up to you to demonstrate that yours is the best.

The following pages develop four broad strategies that have been used successfully by health activists to seize the attention of the media.

Strategy No. 1: Opportunism

A. Riding the Crest of the Fast-Breaking Story

Opportunism is usually regarded as a less-than-respectable behavior. Not so, however, when dealing with news media “gatekeepers.” They welcome timely ideas and fresh ways of presenting information.

By opportunism, we mean being attentive to the current news environment and ready to spring forward with a comment or event that builds on a story already prominent in the news. Here are four examples of health activists operating effectively in the media simply by tying smoking issues to news headlines.

Example: American public health advertising specialist Tony Schwartz, who has made many of the American Cancer Society’s pioneering anti-smoking “counter-commercials,” has quickly responded to such frontpage events as a tragic Japan Airlines crash, the campaign to remove poisoned analgesics from supermarket shelves and the AIDS-inspired closing of gay bath houses, as “new pegs” for radio counter-commercials sometimes airing within 24 hours of the initial story, comparing these notorious events with the far greater hazards of smoking. These inexpensive radio messages themselves became the subject of massive news coverage.

Example: When New Zealand’s television service proudly announced a forthcoming Humphrey Bogart film series, New Zealand ASH (Action on Smoking and Health) requested that appropriate announcements acknowledge

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that Bogart’s smoking habit, portrayed in the films, eventually led to his death from lung cancer. The request itself stimulated widespread press discussion, heightening public awareness of the relationship between smoking and disease.

Example: No threat to health should ever be taken lightly. Nevertheless it is often appropriate to compare the death toll from smoking, the largest preventable form of death, with the toll from other widely feared, often avoidable, hazards. While lecturing in Australia, Dr. Stanton Glantz, President of Californians for Nonsmoker’s Rights responded to a skeptical question about the significance of the involuntary smoking risk by noting that passive smoking was killing more people in Australia than AIDS. That comparison gave headline prominence to his warnings.

Example: Through the efforts of the American Lung Association, Mrs. Barney Clark, the widow of the first artificial heart transplant patient, appeared as a surprise witness at an otherwise routine Congressional hearing on cigarette warning legislation, shortly after national news carried the dramatic story of her husband’s struggle for survival. Her words led every national news report.

B. Timing for Maximum Impact

Often it is possible to get the attention of media gatekeepers by timing the release of health information so that it adds an important new dimension to an event already in the spotlight. Here the secret rests in staying alert to upcoming opportunities, and being ready to move when the time is right.

Example: The Center for Study of Smoking Policy and Behavior at Harvard University prepared a technical report providing strong theoretical support for cigarette excise tax increases. By timing its release to coincide with Congressional debate and votes on excise taxes, the Center assured that its report received maximum media exposure.

Example: New Zealand ASH responded to government warnings of a cancer causing substance in pine needles with a critique noting (with appropriate asperity) that the risks of smoking dwarfed any potential pine needle hazard.

Example: The U.S. Coalition on Smoking OR Health organized a newsworthy reception on the eve of Congressional hearings to consider new labeling legislation, featuring prominent sports and entertainment celebrities concerned about smoking. Later the Coalition organized a media campaign to coincide with the effective date of the new warnings labels.

C. Turning the Tables on the Tobacco Industry

The tobacco industry’s overblown public relations, advertising and lobbying extravaganzas provide excellent targets for counterattacks. The tobacco industry spends the money, but the health activist who seizes such opportunities carries the day in the media.

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Example: When the R.J. Reynolds tobacco company bought advertising space to present a distorted view of the evidence on smoking and heart disease, the U.S. Coalition on Smoking or Health successfully petitioned the Federal Trade Commission to prosecute Reynolds for deceptive advertising. The petition, and each subsequent stage of the FTC proceedings, brought critical media attention of Reynolds’ distortions.

Example: Philip Morris was able to persuade British courts to ban a documentary, Death in the West that exposed the health miseries of real smoking cowboys. Californians for Nonsmokers’ Rights obtained a copy of the film, and skillfully exploited its new value in the U.S. The documentary was powerful enough in its own right, but Philip Morris’ strenuous efforts to suppress the documentary enhanced its news value.

Example: Alan Blum, founder of DOC (Doctors Ought to Care), monitors efforts by tobacco companies to infiltrate women’s and minority groups. His research has led to a series of exposes and columns in U.S. newspapers, followed by commentary and testimony by Blum himself

Example: Epidemiologist Virginia Ernster of the University of California School of Medicine has attracted wide media attention with a dramatic slide show illustrating and unmasking five decades of cigarette advertising designed to make smoking a symbol of women’s progress and freedom.

Example: Alert health activists make news by exposing tobacco company behavior that violates the industry’s advertising code. Anti-smoking activist Simon Chapman effectively publicized Salem’s sponsorship of Malaysian Break Dance contest featuring what appeared to be 9 to 14 years-olds. The Canadian Non-smokers’ Right Association exposed cigarette billboards close to schools—in direct violation of the industry’s minimal code of self-regulation. In the U.S., the press obtained a “leaked” Federal Trade Commission report disclosing internal tobacco company documents suggesting a deliberate strategy of attracting teenagers and “downplaying” the risks of smoking. The television program “20/20” featured tobacco companies distributing free samples to children.

Example: Time and again, the citizen lobby, Common Cause, gains media attention simply by publicizing the latest tabulations of tobacco industry contributions and generous honoraria to members of Congress.

Example: When Hong Kong was considering restrictions on cigarette advertising, the industry imported “expert witnesses” from all corners of the world to prove that cigarette advertising had no impact on consumption. But the Hong Kong news media alerted by Dr. Judith Mackay and an informal international brigade of health activists, exposed distortions and misrepresentations by the industry’s witnesses.

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D. Using Wit to Turn the Tables

If your timely response to a newsworthy controversy also has wit and style, so much the better. It can give journalists a lively “lead” for their stories.

Example: Former U.S. Health Secretary Joseph Califano, reviewing new data showing lung cancer overtaking breast cancer as the leading cause of cancer death among women, summarized the conclusion with a headline grabbing line, “Women who smoke like men, die like men.”

Example: International tobacco control activist David Simpson gained headlines and the lead in the evening news with his inspired comment that the British government’s award to the Rothman Tobacco Company for excellence in export promotion was “…like awarding the Croft’s prize (famous national dog show) to a dog with rabies.”

Example: When the British cigarette brand, John Player, sought to enhance its image of elegance by sponsoring a find art contest, British ASH arranged to enter into the contest a grim—but powerful—portrait of an emaciated lung cancer victim. Having unhinged the contest managers, who provoked media attention by barring the portrait, British ASH got additional attention by awarding the portrait its own “John Slayer” award.

(See, also, many of the suggested media “bites” in Part II.)

E. Exploiting the Empathy Factor

Tobacco companies pay large fees to exploit real or synthetic smoking celebrities, confident the public will identify with them. Health advocates have an important advantage: they don’t have to pay anyone, or create artificial heroes and heroines.

Real life testimonials to the devastating consequences of smoking are readily available - free from celebrities and ordinary people alike. Their tragic stories gain empathy and credibility money can’t buy.

Example: In an American Cancer Society public service announcement released posthumously, Yul Brynner speaks of his impending death from cancer. “Whatever you do,” he says quietly, “don’t smoke.” The story of the announcement was featured prominently on all the television networks.

Example: Public figures who were conspicuous smokers become conspicuous symbols of the hazards of smoking. Edward R. Murrow, for example, was invariably photographed with a cigarette dangling from his lips. Reviews of his biography invariably cited both his inveterate smoking and his death from lung cancer.

Example: Media expert Tony Schwartz gained widespread attention in the New York City media with a series of anti-smoking ads dramatizing the death from smoking of an ordinary citizen, capturing in the victim’s voice and

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words, his pain and anger, and his concern about the impact of the imminent death of his family.

F. Making News with Legal and Legislative Initiatives

When someone does something unexpected or challenging, the media pay attention. Legal and legislative challenges to the tobacco industry appeal to the media’s appetite for a controversy.

The initiation of lawsuits to force action by government agencies are good candidates for media attention. So are court hearings, and the judicial decisions that follow.

Similarly, there is high visibility for the smoking control cause in legislative initiatives if they are supported by respected authorities and broad citizens coalitions. Hearings, debates and votes all represent opportunities for media exposure.

Example: The U.S. Coalition on Smoking OR Health’s petition to the Federal Trade Commission, challenging R.J. Reynolds’ claims on smoking and heart disease (mentioned earlier) made news at each stage of the process, dramatizing the solid scientific evidence of smoking-caused heart disease.

Example: Lawsuits were filed by Argentine public health advocates led by Dr. Carlos Alvarez Herrera to compel the government to take action under existing laws to restrict cigarette advertising. The novelty of this legal assault enhanced its coverage by Argentine media.

Example: In Canada, a widely publicized complaint was filed by the Canadian Non-smokers’ Rights Association against the Rothman Tobacco Company under the Business Practices Act, calling the government to require warnings of smoking’s addictive danger.

Example: The American Medical Association’s endorsement of legislation to ban cigarette advertising became a major news story.

Example: The UICC (International Union Against Cancer) sponsored widely publicized conferences to organize national efforts to combat smoking in each country of Latin America. Each conference culminated in a well-publicized news conference that projected a sense of national purpose by announcing the formation of a national committee and a comprehensive program, including proposed legislation.

Strategy No. 2: Health NewsSenior news executives know that health news is of growing, lively reader and

viewer interest. That’s why newspapers and magazines increasingly publish special health sections and television schedules carry more and more health specials.

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This is a consoling reality to keep in mind, and it works for the smoking control activists, even where media are unduly sensitive to the interests of tobacco advertisers and their allies. The bottom line for media—and for advertisers—is readership and viewers. No editor wants to miss out on news the public will read and watch.

A. Getting Maximum “Mileage” from Scientific Breakthroughs

New research breakthroughs are sure winners with the media “gatekeepers,” often rating Page One. But “breakthroughs” are few and far between. Fortunately their life span as news can be extended—if smoking control advocates use ingenuity.

The hunger for health stories is so strong that even familiar health information can often be recycled. After all, in today’s crowded news media, interest span is short and memory is pitifully brief. Yesterday’s news, properly repackaged, can get a second life in a new setting.

Example: Northern Ireland’s ASH calculated and published “Smoking Disease and Death in Northern Ireland,” detailing for the first time localized mortality and morbidity costs to the community. It was news in Northern Ireland for 10 days.

Example: Under Nigel Gray’s leadership, Australian public health leaders sent a selection of the most popular Australian cigarette brands to the U.S. for tar testing. The results were published as “Smoking is a game of Russian Roulette—with some of the bullets more deadly than others.” The massive publicity and subsequent changes in sales patterns shamed the Australian tobacco industry into marketing lower-tar-bearing cigarettes.Example: New Zealand ASH generated heightened media interest by calculating and publicizing that the tar extracted from the cigarettes sold annually in New Zealand could pave 5.5 km of highway.

B. Angling for Pocketbook Stories

Whenever an issue can be translated into monetary terms, the media is intrigued. Studies on the health-related costs of cigarette smoking are almost certain to fuel print and broadcast stories as well as editorials. Other economic angles have been used successfully by anti-smoking activists.

Example: Massachusetts G.A.S.P. (Group Against Smoking Pollution) calculated the medical costs borne by state taxpayers as a result of smoking in Massachusetts - and dramatized the results as the equivalent of nearly $2.00 per cigarette package sold.

Example: In dramatizing the lives versus dollars at stake in the campaign to enact strong clean indoor air rules in New York City, Tony Schwartz’s counter-commercials noted that 100 New York City residents die each day

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from smoking caused diseases, while cigarette sales, including cigarette company profits, cost New Yorkers $1 million each year.

Example: Economist Gerry Oster calculated that each heavy smoker who quits spares the U.S. approximately $35,000 in health care costs.

C. Choreographing Newsworthy Events

Special events get attention. Tobacco companies know this. That’s why they invest heavily in sponsoring tennis tournaments and similar high-visibility activities. Anti-smoking organizations can’t afford to buy identification with big-time events, but can, with ingenuity, create news making opportunities.

Example: The American Cancer Society pioneered the annual event, The Great American Smokeout, and its creative variations, like New Zealand’s Non-Smoking week. The town of Whangamata vowed to give up smoking for a week, and the children were “deputized” as “smokebusters.”

Example: The Argentine Non-Smokers League sponsored a marathon bicycle race featuring a 75-year-old nonsmoker. Schools along the route were alerted and children were let out of school to cheer him on. A police escort paced the last leg of the race. The tobacco industry was then challenged to find a 70-year-old smoker—or any smoker—who could compete.

Example: The Ulster Cancer Foundation arranged to sponsor the N. Ireland team in the World Cup Soccer campaign. The team all nonsmokers, posed for the poster: “Join your world cup team—don’t smoke.”

Example: Michael Daube developed Western Australia Health Ministry’s “Death Clock,” a digital clock prominently situated in the Perth town square that ticks off the toll of estimated deaths from smoking in the current year. There was massive publicity at the unveiling of the clock and at periodic milestones (e.g., 10,000 20,000, 100,000 deaths). The tobacco industry’s outraged response simply fueled added media coverage.

Strategy No. 3: Shaming the Industry’s AlliesThe tobacco industry’s mythical economic and political power works best in

secret and in silence, as public officials and other community leaders are persuaded—or intimidated—to give priority to the industry’s economic welfare over public health. The spotlight of public attention can shame and deter those who would shelter the tobacco industry.

A. Making Cigarette Promotions “Off Limits” for Respectable People

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Despite the havoc caused by the smoking habit (or perhaps because of it) cigarette companies work hard to give the impression that smoking is a normal activity, and that cigarettes are a respectable product. Cigarette companies sponsor major sports and cultural events, hopeful that some of the legitimacy will rub off on them. Anti-smoking activists reap important media exposure by spotlighting these unlikely relationships.

Example: In New York City, when Marlboro sponsored a country music festival at New York’s famed Lincoln Center, DOC (Doctors Ought to Care) bought an inexpensive two-line classified ad on Page 1 of the New York Times that asked: “Is Lincoln Center being used to promote addictive products?” The ad invited readers to telephone a given number for a recorded message critical of Lincoln Center.

Example: The Committee for Common Courtesy, laden with the names of prominent New York citizens, represented formidable opposition to New York City’s Clean Indoor Air Act until network of citizen activists, the Committee for a Smoke Free Indoor New York City, uncovered the Common Courtesy Committee’s extensive economic ties to the tobacco industry. These relationships became the subject of both news stories and editorials, effectively discrediting the committee.

Example: The sponsorship by the Rothman Tobacco Company’s Winfield Cigarettes of a helicopter rescue service operated by the Auckland Surf Lifesaving Association led to protests under such slogans as “You can’t rescue a dead smoker.” The press coverage highlighted inconsistencies in public policies toward smoking.

B. Spoiling Their Fun

If the tobacco industry can’t gain legitimacy by joining in co-sponsorship of community events with other community leaders, it stages its own respectable events. So we have tennis tournaments and art contests named after cigarette brands. And, of course, the tobacco companies hold stockholders meetings, just like other public companies. All these activities represent attractive opportunities for smoking control activists who employ humor, caricature, even street theater to burst the bubble of tobacco company legitimacy.

Example: When Australia’s BUGA UP (Billboard Utilizing Graffitists Against Unhealthy Promotions) entered a tracheotomy patient, still smoking cigarettes through his neck, in the widely publicized search for Australia’s “Marlboro Man”, the media coverage drove Philip Morris to cover. In its embarrassment, the company awarded the prize in secret, shy of the favorable publicity it had anticipated. Also in Australia, pickets, sky-writers and costumed street players ridiculed the John Player tennis and auto racing tournaments, shaming other corporate sponsors to back away from future identification with tobacco-sponsored events. (In the U.S., DOC has effectively promoted an alternative to the Virginia Slims Tennis Tournament: “Emphysema Slims!”)

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Example: David Sweanor, staff counsel for the Canadian Non-smokers’ Rights Association, bought single shares of tobacco company stocks so he can attend tobacco company stockholders meetings to raise uncomfortable, news-making issues on corporate social responsibility.

Example: A plan by the British brand, John Player, to enhance its elegance by sponsoring a fine art contest (mentioned earlier) went astray after British ASH arranged to enter a grim—but powerful—portrait of a lung cancer victim.

Example: In Washington, D.C., a Continuing Medical Education conference at Georgetown University devoted to a discussion of the evidence on involuntary smoking was exposed as funded by tobacco interests and disproportionately loaded with researchers supported by the industry. Amidst effective publicity, the outcry by smoking control leaders shamed Georgetown into canceling the conference.

Strategy No. 4: Getting Bonus Audiences with Public Service Announcements and Counter-commercials

Smoking control advocates can gain free time and space for anti-smoking “public service announcements” or “counter-commercials.” The principle benefit of such prepared spots is that the organization that prepares them, rather than the news media, controls their content.

In some cases, even the refusal of the media to accept such counter-commercials can generate splendid news coverage.

Example: In 1981, child actress Brooke Shields made a TV anti-smoking message for the U.S. Government’s Office on Smoking and Health, but the Secretary of Health withheld it, bowing to tobacco industry pressure. The withdrawal became a news-making scandal, and the American Lung Association capitalized on it by volunteering to distribute the counter-commercial, resulting in great public fanfare.

Example: A graphic American Cancer Society TV spot directed at pregnant women was rejected by the television networks, whose censors considered its “smoking fetus” symbol in “bad taste.” The controversy resulted in far more exposure than the spot could otherwise have gained.

Most public health groups cannot afford to pay commercial advertising rates for media space or time, but must rely upon ingenuity and good will to gain free “public service” time. The larger voluntary health associations, like the American Cancer Society have used their prestige and community presence to gain such exposure. But, occasionally, a group will have a strategic purpose—and access to funding—to buy time or space. Just as marketing executives rely on commercials to make their sales pitch to a targeted, pre-selected audience, a smoking control

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organization that uses paid advertisements can maintain complete control over the timing, as well as the content of its message.

Example: In 1971, The Anti-Cancer Council of Victoria allocated $50,000 for a series of provocative TV spots, including one featuring the slogan, “Come to Cancer Country Where the Flavor Is.” The (anticipated) uproar over the censorship of this ad, while cigarette advertising continued unabated greatly helped to force a government ban on TV cigarette advertising.

Example: To get the attention of New York City’s Mayor Koch, DOC (Doctors Ought to Care) paid for a single airing on a local radio station of an ad developed by Tony Schwartz, using the recorded words of New York’s Mayor Koch condemning homosexual bath house operators as “selling death.” The ad asked why the Mayor wasn’t similarly concerned with smoking. The ad was, predictably, attacked by the tobacco industry, generating wide news coverage. Shortly thereafter, Koch sponsored a clean indoor air law.

Example: A paid ad placed in the national news magazine, Macleans, by the Canadian Non-smokers’ Rights Association challenged the government’s sponsorship of a National Tobacco Marketing Board, and its refusal to meet with health groups. The ad resulted in extensive press coverage with such headlines as “Non-smokers seeking equal time with fed.” The government was shamed into taking more aggressive action against cigarette advertising and marketing practices. (Earlier, CNRA used paid advertising to shame the Canadian Olympic Committee into withdrawing cigarette sponsorship of the national ski team).

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Part II: Capturing the Symbols of Debate

The symbols we employ to express our concerns over smoking are as important in the shaping of public policies as the scientific evidence on which we rest our case against smoking. Emotionally evocative symbols—more than logic—frame the public policy issues for the broad public audience.

The tobacco industry understands this all to well. Its advertising and marketing symbolism is designed to associate smoking with positive personal values, while its public policy propaganda is designed to associate smoking—and the tobacco industry itself—with positive public values.

In its investigation of cigarette advertising themes, mandated by Congress, the United States Federal Trade Commission has concluded in its May 1981 report, that:

Cigarette ads have continued to attempt to allay anxieties about the hazards of smoking and to associate smoking with good health, youthful vigor, social and professional success, and other attractive ideas, individuals and activities that are both worthy of emulation and distant from concerns relating to health. Most cigarette advertisements express at least one of these themes. Often more than one such theme can be found in a single advertisement. Thus, the cigarette is portrayed as an integral part of youth, happiness attractiveness, personal success and active, vigorous, strenuous lifestyle.

The dominant themes of cigarette advertising are that smoking is associated with youthful vigor, good health, good looks and personal, social and professional acceptance and success, and that it is compatible with a wide range of athletic and healthful activities. One theme is conspicuously absent from all cigarette ads. Although these ads contain the required general warning, they make no mention of the numerous and specific adverse health consequences of using the advertised product.

In its public relations propaganda—designed to quell community mobilization to treat smoking as a public health issue, the industry also seeks unrelentingly to associate smoking—and the tobacco industry itself—with powerful symbolic public values: Freedom—of choice, speech, and public behavior; individualism; economic growth; economic and political moderation. The industry would be known as the sweetly reasonable advocate of public civility, “common courtesy.”

Cigarette companies seek “innocence by association,” the identification of their corporate goals with the highest aspirations of women, racial and ethnic minorities, free market advocates, civil libertarians; civic and

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cultural organizations. They would artificially sustain the symbol of smoking as a badge of women’s or minority liberation through the company as the “good citizen” is nurtured through conspicuous “philanthropic” support for community organizations (and political contributions to community leaders). The industry seeks to preserve its legitimacy to deflect appropriate outrage from it unadorned identity as profiteer from death and disease.

In its abuse of symbols, the industry is not content merely to cloak its own activities in positive symbols. It has become expert also in the deployment of negative symbols, using symbols to trivialize the hazards of smoking and to discredit those who advocate remedial measures. Smoking control advocates are stigmatized as temperance fanatics and moral zealots, censors and elitists. By claiming the lower-paid minorities are discriminated against by workplace smoking control efforts, the industry public relations experts seek even to portray public health advocates as racists.

Industry spokespersons also seek to lower the level of appropriate public concern by employing de-humanized terminology in debate. A prime example is the industry’s insistence upon using the denatured term “ETS” (Environmental Tobacco Smoke), rather than the symbolically evocative term, “involuntary smoking.”

Public health advocates throughout the world, alert to these strategies, are effectively acting to capture the popular symbols of public debate, while tagging the tobacco enterprise with the richly deserved symbols of greed and corruption. In advocating health enhancing behaviors and public policies, these advocates take care to embrace strong affirmative symbols: Individual autonomy, freedom from harmful environmental influences, physical strength and well being, family welfare and social accountability for those who knowingly market harmful products.

The second task of this handbook is to alert heath advocates to this struggle over the symbols of debate, and to learn from those pioneers who have framed the content of their messages to win the hearts, as well as the minds, of the public.

How to Use Part II

Part II of this handbook is designed to alert the smoking control advocate to the principle symbols that tobacco public relations experts have employed either to defend smoking or to resist appropriate public health measures, and the counter-symbols that can help frame the debate in support of public health concerns. We suggest some effective short responses - appropriate for a quick print media comment or a 15-second broadcast media bite.”

Two Words of Caution:

Symbols are not arguments. They are a shorthand device - partly logical, partly emotive - for characterizing the arguments. Our objective here is

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not to provide technical debating points on each of the complex arguments over the regulation of cigarette marketing and smoking, but to help smoking control advocates stay alert to the symbolic games the industry plays, and the opportunities for creative responses in the media.

The tobacco industry employs experts to fashion sophisticated scientific arguments and legal frameworks to defend its appropriating of such symbols as the nature of “proof of causation” or “freedom of speech” in defense of advertising. This handbook will help puncture some of the most insidious of the industry arguments, but it is, unfortunately, well beyond its scope to equip the non-expert to formally debate the industry’s experts.

General Recommendations

Don’t let journalists treat paid tobacco industry spokespersons as the moral equivalent of public health advocates. Challenge their credibility:

Why should an industry which has, for a quarter century, denied scientific facts accepted by every independent scientific body be believed about anything?

If you want the point of view of smokers, interview smokers—not tobacco industry spokespersons. Who do they speak for? Only those who profit from maintaining millions of smoking addicts.

Note that the industry’s public relations spokespeople are paid to defend smoking. If they admit smoking’s hazards, they’ll be fired (and the companies they represent may be forced to pay damages to the victims of smoking). Most of those who speak out about the health hazards of smoking do so out of conviction and because of the scientific evidence, not because they are paid to do so.

Symbol No. 1: Not ProvenThough the scientific verdict against smoking is overwhelming, clear and

unequivocal, the industry pretends that it is not. Tobacco spokespersons deliberately employ terms, which imply that there remains serious doubt, controversy, uncertainty, or confusion over smoking as a major source of disease.

Tobacco Industry Symbols: “Open scientific question.” The smoking and health controversy.” “Only statistics.” “The causes of cancer remain unknown.”

Pro-Health Counter-Symbols: All terms which have no room for doubt that the causal relationship between smoking and disease is settled. “The smoking epidemic.” “Smoking or health.” “Lung cancer, heart disease, emphysema, etc. from smoking.”

Bites:

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More than 50,000 scientific studies have demonstrated beyond doubt that smoking is the greatest cause of preventable death in the world.

Cancer cures smoking.

Smoking: The Brown Plague of the 20th century.

The World Health Organization says more than one million smokers worldwide are killed by smoking each year.

Why do insurance companies give discounts to people who don’t smoke? Because they know nonsmokers live longer.

Many physicians now specify the cause of death as “lung cancer from smoking,” or “heart disease from smoking.”

Cigarette companies claim that “mere statistical evidence” is insufficient to prove that even one death is attributable to smoking. Yet these same companies put great faith in statistics when they invest $2 billion a year to advertise and promote cigarettes, even though it is impossible to establish except by statistics that even a single pack of cigarettes has been sold by advertising.

Recommendation: Treat the subject as settled. No authoritative scientific body questions the casual relationship between smoking and disease. The facts are entirely on your side. Press your advantage.

Recommendation: Cite the reliance by hard-headed businesses on the established casual relationship between smoking and death and disease: Insurance companies, for example, not known for their sentimentality, offer lower rates to nonsmokers. Collect examples of smoking-caused deaths from the obituary page of local newspapers. Many newspapers now cite smoking as a cause of death. Personalize by mentioning prominent local and national figures whose contributions to society have been prematurely terminated by smoking-caused disease.

Recommendation: Point out that the tobacco industry relies heavily on “purely statistical” evidence in deciding to spend millions of dollars on advertising. There is absolutely no direct proof-other than statistical correlation—that advertising makes anyone buy Marlboros. But Philip Morris plainly is convinced that advertising works.

Symbol No. 2 Everything Causes CancerThe industry attempts to make commonplace the risks of smoking by equating

its harms with the common risks associated with other products in daily use, blurring the relative enormity of smoking’s hazard as well as smoking uniqueness as a product, which has no indispensable social value. This spurious commonalty becomes for the industry a basis for arguing that smoking control measures are both

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unnecessary, and a precedent, which opens the floodgates to excessive regulation to society.

Tobacco Industry Symbols: “Why pick on smoking; to much of anything can hurt you.” “Even too much milk is bad for you.” “It seems as if everything causes cancer.” “Regulation of cigarettes and smoking pushes society down the slippery slope: First cigarettes, then alcohol; soon everything pleasurable will be banned or regulated.” “Focusing on cigarettes deflects public attention from more important health issues, such as AIDS and drug abuse.”

Pro-Health Counter-Symbol: Smoking as a unique hazard.

Bites:

Have you ever heard of a doctor who prescribes a cigarette or two before meals, or at bedtime? Yet many prescribe milk as essential and alcohol in moderation.

The degree of regulation appropriate for alcohol and alcohol advertising is a debatable point which is resolved by each society as it sees fit, balancing both the serious social and health hazards of alcohol, the ability of most users to maintain moderate, safe levels of consumption, and evidence that the moderate use of alcohol is not health threat for many people.

Automobiles involve serious risk, but they are indispensable to modern society, and the risks are substantially reduced when cars are engineered safely and appropriate traffic laws are enacted and obeyed.

Fat, sugar and salt are essential to life and become hazardous only when consumed in excess.

Cigarettes are the only legal product that, when used as intended, are lethal.

Smoking is not only a hazard to the smoker, but also to the nonsmoker who is involuntarily exposed to the smoke. Consuming fat, sugar, and salt is not a hazard to bystanders.

Smoking kills more people than heroin, cocaine, alcohol, AIDS, fires, homicide, suicide and automobile accidents COMBINED.

Cigarettes are more addictive than heroin or cocaine, and by fare the leading preventable cause of death and disease in our society. Smoking is fatal under normal or “moderate” conditions of use. The habit has no redeemable social value other than to relieve its own addiction.

In terms of importance to preventive medicine, the control of smoking ranks with “the pasteurization of milk, the purification of water and immunization…” (Canadian Medical Association)

Recommendation: Don’t let them trivialize the hazards of smoking. There is nothing trivial, or commonplace, about lung cancer and other diseases associated with

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smoking. It is important to establish clearly that the smoking issue is unique: cigarettes are an addictive product, and a hazard of unique proportions. Yet, aside from restrictions on radio and television advertising, cigarettes remain the most unregulated consumer product in most countries!

Recommendation: Don’t concede that the regulation of cigarettes or smoking sets precedents for an over-regulated society. All societies take appropriate measures to regulate hazardous products and behavior. For example, toxic chemicals far less hazardous than second-hand smoke have been banned from all use.

Symbol No. 3: Freedom of SpeechThe tobacco industry’s public relations experts, lawyers and lobbyists seek to

portray themselves, not as profit seekers, but as defenders of fundamental freedoms. So they invoke “freedom of speech” in defense of tobacco advertising. In this way they seek to enlist support from well-intentioned civil libertarians, media interests, and the business community generally, against restraints on cigarette advertising and promotion.

Tobacco Industry Symbols: “Freedom of Speech.” Freedom of Press.” “Censorship.”

Pro-Health Counter-Symbols: “No freedom to inflict harm.” “No freedom to induce addiction.” “Freedom from psychological manipulation by advertising.”

Bites:

Freedom should be seen not as the freedom of the manufacturer to promote a known health hazard, but rather as the freedom and ability of society to implement public health measures.” (The World Health Organization)

No country has ever equated the selling of a product—especially a harmful, useless product—with the vital forms of political and artistic expression that command protection as fundamental civil rights.

No one is permitted to yell “Fire” in the middle of a crowded threatre. Democratic societies routinely accept restrictions on unrestrained speech when public health and safety is threatened.

If unfair and untruthful commercial speech were not regulated, other important rights would be placed in jeopardy, including:

-Our children’s freedom from deception, misrepresentation, and psychological

-Freedom from harm

-Freedom from addiction

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What civilized society recognizes the freedom to recruit a new generation of smokers from the most vulnerable population segments—young people and minorities?

The “free” press is less “free” because of its dependence on tobacco advertising. Even when smoking-caused lung cancer surpassed breast cancer as the leading cause of cancer death in women, US women’s magazines which took cigarette ads virtually blacked out the news.

“I just can’t help but think that those who talk about their constitutional right to free speech are really more concerned about their own profits. No one has a constitutional right to sell pro-drug propaganda to minors.” (President Reagan, criticizing entertainment productions that encourage drug abuse.)

Recommendation: Don’t be intimidated by the spurious logic of the argument, “If it is legal to sell, it must be legal to advertise.” The legality of cigarette sales is a bizarre historic accident. If cigarettes were a new product, to which a substantial portion of the adult public were not already addicted, there is no doubt that all civilized governments would bar their sale. Moreover, just because governments are understandably reluctant to deprive millions of addicted smoker from supplies of cigarettes, it does not follow logically that advertisers are free to attract new smokers. Many legally produced products have extensive restrictions imposed upon their sale and distribution, including pesticides, saccharin, prescription drugs, firearms—and cigarettes, which cannot legally be sold to minors, and stocks and bonds which cannot be advertised directly.

Leading Canadian newspaper publishers supported the government’s ban on cigarette advertising and sponsorship. The Globe and Mail said: “It is the sale of cigarettes that is the anomaly, not the ban on their advertisement; we see no constitutional right of a manufacture to promote a product which, when used precisely as the manufacturer intends, is demonstrably unsafe.”

Symbol No. 4: Freedom of ChoiceThe industry employs the free market symbol of “freedom of choice” to

discredit proposed regulation of cigarette sales and promotion. But no public health officials propose to limit the freedom of adult smokers to smoke either in the privacy of their own homes or in public places where their smoking does not harm others.

Tobacco Industry Symbols: “Freedom of choice.” We don’t need a national nanny.”

Pro-Health counter-Symbols: “Freedom of adult smokers to choose to smoke, except where their smoking harms other.”

Bites:

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Freedom of choice has no meaning to heroin addicts - or those who are similarly addicted to smoking.

Advertising bans don’t interfere with the choice of the adult smoker to continue smoking - only with the license of the cigarette advertisers to stimulate smoking and reinforce it as a desirable social norm.

“No one proposes to interfere with the freedom of consenting adults to commit smoking in the privacy of their own homes.” (U.S. Senator Robert Packwood)

Among adults, approximately 90 percent of smokers became smokers as teenagers. Virtually no one takes up smoking as an adult. Restrictions on the marketing and promotion of cigarettes are primarily designed to limit efforts to make smoking attractive to young people. Most societies do limit the free choice of 12-,. 13-, and 14-year-olds to take up lethal, addictive habits and any commercial efforts to persuade them to do so.

According to a former chief executive of R.J. Reynolds, cigarette advertisements make smoking appear to be pleasurable, fun, and “associated with happy occasions,” and “to a degree, with love and the outdoors.” Thus cigarette ads provide virtually no meaningful information germane to informed consumer choice.

For 25 years, the cigarette industry has sought to subvert freedom of choice by denying and distorting the critical information about smoking and disease that is essential to free choice.

Recommendation: Do not get backed into advocating a complete ban on cigarette sales and smoking. Most activists recognize that the attainable goal at this time is to prevent the recruiting of a new generation of smokers by restricting the promotion of cigarettes, and to ban smoking practices, which represent a hazard to or imposition on nonsmokers.

Symbol No. 5: Smokers’ RightsRestrictions on smoking in the workplace and public places are highly

threatening to the cigarette companies. Yet they can hardly oppose them on the grounds that they threaten cigarette sales and profits. Instead, the company spokespeople pose as champions of “smokers’ rights”—though polls consistently show that majorities of smokers themselves support, and even welcome, restrictions on smoking in public places.

Tobacco Industry Symbols: “Smokers have rights, too.” Freedom to smoke is a traditional social freedom.”

Pro-Health Counter-Symbols: “The right to clean air. “Freedom from indoor air pollution.” “There is no right to trespass on someone else’s lungs.” “Smoke if you must, alone, but, in public, respect my right to clean air and freedom from pollution.” “Ex-smokers have rights too. They have a right not to

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be cooped up in an environment where smoke subverts their efforts to keep from smoking.”

Bites:

Your right to smoke stops where my nose begins and my lungs are exposed.

Cigarette smoke is an air pollutant more than twice as cancer-causing as many toxic chemicals widely banned from use.

Children of smokers are more prone to bronchitis, pneumonia, and other respiratory problems. Fresh, clean, smoke-free air is good for children.

Polls in the U.S. consistently show that the majority of smokers support restrictions in the workplace and other public places where smoking can harm nonsmokers.

Many smokers rely on nonsmoking rules to help them break the addiction of smoking.

There is a recognized right to smoke in circumstances where smoking is not trespassing on nonsmokers: by consenting adults in the privacy of their homes and designated smoking areas.

The tobacco industry spokespersons pose as defenders of civil rights, arguing that workplace smoking restrictions are discriminatory toward minorities, women and the working poor—since they generally smoke more and work in open areas where smoking is restricted, while the “bosses” can smoke in their private offices. But it is nonsmoking women and minorities who now suffer the most, and are forced to work in close proximity to heavy smokers.

Recommendation: The tobacco industry’s assertion of smokers’ rights ignores the fact that certain rights must yield when they conflict with other, fundamental rights. Smokers can breathe the air in a nonsmoking area without suffering injury or discomfort. But nonsmokers forced to breathe air in a smoking area suffer involuntary injury and discomfort.

Symbol No. 6: Public CivilityTo deflect attention from the public health hazards of involuntary

smoking the tobacco spokespersons seek to transform the issue into a matter of mutual accommodation and courtesy, casting the nonsmoker duly concerned about his or her health in the role of social bully.

Tobacco Industry Symbols: “Common courtesy—not regulation.” “Mutual accommodation of smokers’ and nonsmokers’ rights.” Freedom from anti-smoking zealotry. “Resistance to moral dictatorship.”

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Pro-Health Counter-Symbols: “It’s not a matter of courtesy, it’s a matter of public health.”

Bites:

There’s nothing courteous about your polluting my air space.

Involuntary smoke can kill as surely as air pollution, reckless driving, and spreading AIDS. Are they merely matters of courtesy?

Your smoking threatens my health; my nonsmoking does nothing to you.

Many people are reluctant to ask strangers not to smoke, for fear of provoking resentment or anger. In the absence of rules and signs, common courtesy means smokers feel free to light up without regard to the feeling of nonsmokers.

Clear rules on indoor smoking promote courtesy, by defining and clearly marking the places where smoking is not permitted. That prevents embarrassment and needless conflict between smokers and nonsmokers.

When smokers choose to smoke in the privacy of their own homes, the courtesy decision is theirs; nonsmokers can choose to leave. But nonsmokers can’t choose to leave their workplaces.

In a perfect world, common courtesy would prevent all harmful behavior—littering, speeding, stealing, assault, murder. If common courtesy were always sufficient to prevent harm, we would need no laws.

When two people share an office, or sit next to each other in a public place, courtesy may restrain smoking, but is not practical.

Recommendation: Avoid letting the debate degenerate into a conflict between militant smokers and nonsmokers. Wherever possible, focus the debate on the misappropriation of “common courtesy” by the tobacco industry in its effort to create conflict between smoker and nonsmoker. In the name of “courtesy,” the industry generates ill will. Its militant manifestations (“Freedom from anti-smoker zealotry”) fortify the paranoid smoker’s belief that he or she is being imposed on, and even the mild form (“common courtesy”) is designed to portray the concerned nonsmoker as a bully.

Symbol No. 7: Maturity, Sophistication, LiberationAs the educated, middle class market for cigarettes erodes, the industry

casts around for new growth markets: women, minorities, and young people looking for ways to gain maturity, sophistication, liberation. The immature, undereducated, poor and psychologically insecure also rank high on the industry’s prospect list.

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Tobacco Industry Symbols: “Smoking is an adult custom.” You’ve come a long way, Baby.”

Pro-Health Counter-Symbols: Smoking as a symptom of immaturity, dependence social conformity: “Adults don’t play Russian roulette with their health.” “There is nothing independent about being addicted to cigarettes.”

Bites:

Smoking isn’t an adult habit; it’s a killing habit.

To suggest that smoking is an adult or liberating habit patronizes adults: there is nothing mature about and adult with a pacifier dangling from his or her lips.

What’s sexy about an addiction?

Are heroin and cocaine adult habits?

Women who smoke like men die like men.

As educated, mature men and women shun smoking, the cigarette companies step up their advertising to young people, the poor, and minorities. This is colonialism, not liberation.

Recommendation: Avoid acceptance of social stereotyping. Seek out as spokespersons those who identities belie the false symbols: athletes, student leaders, heroic figures, risk-takers, role models. (Tobacco’s social symbols are particularly deflatable by ridicule and caricature).

Symbol No. 8: LegitimacyAs the public increasingly questions the legitimacy of an enterprise that

promotes and profits from “pushing” a lethal, addicting drug, the industry seeks to buy respectability through heavily publicized community sponsorship and philanthropy.

Tobacco Industry Symbols: The Good Corporate Citizen; friend to women, minorities, communities. Highly publicized support for sport, music, the arts, community pride events: Virginia Slims tennis; Marlboro Cup races; John Player art contests; Newport Jazz Festival, and the Vatican Art Exhibit.

Pro-Health Counter-Symbols: “Death and disease merchants.” “Profiteers from human misery.” “Drug pushers.” “Emphysema Slims.” “Carcinoma Cup.” “John Slayer art.”

Bites:

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When good citizens associate with criminals, they are judged “guilty by association;” why do-good citizens allow themselves to accept money from cigarette companies seeking “innocence by association?”

We manage to finance art exhibits without looking to organized crime for help. Culture can survive without providing a cloak of legitimacy for an industry that kills on a far greater scale.

In the United States, the tobacco industry was honored for supporting the President’s campaign against child abuse. Isn’t cigarette advertising designed to make smoking attractive to young people a form of child abuse?

Recommendation: Promoters of sports and cultural events need to be reminded that they are keeping bad company. “Good citizenship” of companies is measured less by their largess than by the kind of products they promote and the marketing strategies they use. Tobacco industry efforts to identify its product - a principle cause of emphysema and heart disease - with sports where physical condition is tested, is in itself a deception; it ought to be possible for cultural events to flourish without providing a vehicle for the advance of health crippling cigarettes.

Symbol No. 9: Everybody KnowsHaving spent as long as 50 years denying the evidence against smoking, the

industry now insists that, whatever the risks of smoking, everyone knows them. Therefore, stronger warnings and other public health measures are unnecessary.

Tobacco Industry Symbols: “Everyone knows smoking may not be good for him or her.” “Existing warnings are sufficient.”

Pro-Health Counter-Symbols: “Few smokers—and fewer young and uneducated potential smokers know just how serious a risk smoking is to them!”

Bites:

There are degrees of “knowing,” When smokers light up, are they as aware of the peril as they would be if they had just stepped out of a surgery involving a lung operation?

Smokers and young people do know that smoking has something to do with lung cancer. But few know of the even greater risks of heart disease from smoking.

Large numbers of young women still do not know of the risk of smoking to the unborn child.

Polls show great gaps in knowledge, partly because tobacco companies have managed to confuse the issue.

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The tobacco industry is a bit like the man who murders his parents and then pleads for mercy as an orphan. For 25 years, it professed that the case hasn’t been proven.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has found that cigarette advertising is deliberately designed to deflect smoker’s attention from concerns about the risks of smoking.

Recommendation: No industry spokesperson should be allowed to get away with saying, “The risks of smoking are well-known,” without being pressed: “What, exactly, are these risks, if they are so well known?” Since the industry admits to no specific risks, this question is difficult for them to handle.

Symbol No. 10: Economic BenefitsThe industry’s political influence rests, in part, on interlocking relationships

with other special interests (the “tobacco family”), none more important than its alliances with those who speak for the small tobacco grower. In its struggle the tobacco industry seeks to point up the disruptions that will occur with a substantial reduction in the sale of cigarettes.

Tobacco Industry Symbols: “Brown gold.” “Tobacco farm economy.” Tax revenues (for education, etc.), jobs, international competitiveness, advertising support for “free media.”

Pro-Health Counter-Symbols: Economic burdens of smoking-caused disease.

Bites:

Economic benefit? What about:

- Health care costs attributed to smoking-caused disease estimated at $22 billion in the U.S. alone?- Loss of work-years and productivity estimated at $43 billion?- Loss of head-of-household wage earners killed by smoking related disease- Higher welfare costs?- Loss of farmland otherwise available for alternative (nutritional) crops?- Loss of scarce timber crops to inefficient flue curing?- Expropriation of tobacco profits by multinational companies, contributing to balance of payment problems of developing nations? World glut of tobacco production?

While the cigarette manufacturers proclaim their concern of the economic fate of the small farmer, they readily subvert the interest of that same farmer in pursuit of profits—as in the United States where tobacco farmers have been severely hurt by the decision of the manufacturers to shift to cheaper imported tobacco.

Recommendation: A decline in demand for tobacco would have serious consequences for small farmers accustomed to the idea that this is a legitimate

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product, and a decent way to make their living. But, however unfortunate, the disruption of tobacco farming is not, in the long run, a valid reason for tolerating practices that promote a large-scale health menace.

If it were not for the last ditch resistance mounted by tobacco companies, many of these farmers would have recognized long ago that their future rests in shifting to other crops. Health advocates must be aware of the painful adjustment for these farmers, and many will want to support programs to encourage the orderly transition of these farms to other, wholesome, crops.

Symbol No. 11: Regulations Don’t WorkWe know that cigarette smoking is so complex a psychosocial behavior that

only a comprehensive set of remedial measures, working synergistically together, can combine to retard smoking in our society. There is solid logic and evidence to support each smoking control regulation proposed, but absolute scientific proof of the effectiveness of cigarette advertising bans, for example, will never be possible to obtain. The tobacco industry public relations experts exploit this reality by distorting and misrepresenting the evidence of effectiveness, by assuming in their rhetorical attacks that smoking control advocates bear the burden of producing absolute proof before adoption of any smoking control policy is justified, and by belittling all responsive measures.

Tobacco Industry Symbols: “Advertising bans don’t work.” “Nobody reads warnings.” “Restrictions on sales of cigarettes designed to keep them out of the reach of children won’t work because children rebel against authority.”

Pro-Health Counter-Symbols: “A public health epidemic;” “the 20th century’s Brown Plague.”

Bites:

The misery, disease, and death caused by smoking are so vast we must take every promising action to halt its spread.

No civilized society waits for certainty before acting to halt the spread of an addictive killer.

The only countries which have succeeded in reducing smoking are those, which have adopted comprehensive smoking control measures.

Since half of the nearly 50,000,000 US smokers start smoking between their 15th and 16th birthday, we must adopt the same standards in judging whether to take action to prevent smoking as we do for any addictive drug or disease affecting our children.

In an epidemic, you don’t wait for proof that quarantining the cause will halt the disease; you take all rational measures against spreading the disease.

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The burden of proving that cigarette advertising and promotion does not entice young people to smoke who might not otherwise must rest with the industry that spends billions of dollars making cigarettes attractive and alluring.

If the smoking control measures proposed will be so ineffective, why does the tobacco industry resist their adoption so fiercely?

Recommendation: Remember, there is nothing unprecedented about regulating the marketing of hazardous products. Regulation preserves socially useful products for common use by reducing the risks. Cigarettes are unique only in the sense that there is society to fail to take every practical step to protect nonsmokers and to prevent the recruiting of a new generation of smokers.

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