Almost four out of five people in the United States don’t smoke cigarettes according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It’s just not OK to smoke cigarettes around most people, and it’s illegal to smoke cigarettes indoors in more and more places across our nation and our state.
As of November 2010, 28 states have now passed strong statewide laws requiring 100 percent smoke cigarettes free restaurants and bars — and 27 of them did it in the past 11 years. It’s a trend, which has gained tremendous momentum. (California was first, in 1994.) Michigan, Ohio and Illinois all have comprehensive statewide smoke cigarettes free laws. Here in Indiana, 41 cities and 19 counties have passed Smoke-Free Air Ordinances that include workplaces, restaurants and bars according to the Indiana State Department of Health as of March of this year.
Banning smoking cigarettes 100 percent appears to be an idea whose time has come. It’s popular with the great majority of the public as well.
Smoking is much less socially acceptable than the advertising leads teens and adults to believe. The cigarettes for sale companies spent $12.8 billion on advertising in 2009 according to the Federal Trade Commission — up from only $5 billion annually just three years before. A substantial part of that is being spent on in-store displays and promotional discounts and give aways.
Tobacco ads falsely suggest it’s OK to smoke cigarettes around friends, and create the impression that more people smoke cigarettes than actually do smoke. Tobacco advertising disguises cheap cigarette online as a normal American product. Don’t buy it. More and more teens are strongly anti-smoking cigarettes. The rate of teen smoking cigarettes has greatly declined in many states; in California, only 11 percent of teens smoke. Adults, too, often speak up about their anti-cigarettes feelings. People just don’t want to be in the same room with smokers.
If you’re a teen or an adult who believes advertising has no effect on you, consider this: one recent study published last October in the Indianapolis Star demonstrated that advertising plays a greater role than peer pressure in getting teens to smoke.
Another recent study by Advertising Age in January of this year proved that the three most heavily advertised brands are the same three brands most chosen by teens — Camels, Marlboros and Newport.
I’ve been asked by students here in Montgomery County when I teach Towards No Tobacco Use, “So how come cigarettes store advertising is legal, if smoking cigarettes is so bad for you? Why don’t they just ban online cigarettes ads?”
The Constitution and the First Amendment’s protection of free speech is the answer.
Free speech protects my right to say what I like in public. Sadly, it also protects the discount cigarette online industry’s right to say what they like in their advertising, and to place cheap cigarettes displays in stores.
In my opinion, buy cigarette online advertising should be banned or severely restricted. A private citizen should have every right to free speech, of course. But to my mind, advertising is quite a different kind of speech.
So for now, just because you see discount cigarettes products in stores in attractive displays, it doesn’t mean discount cigarettes are a normal, acceptable American product like chewing gum or apple pie.
Most judges in our present court system agree that the First Amendment protects advertising equally with private speech. One day, however, I have faith that the Supreme Court will see these forms of speech as separate and different, and will pass much stronger limits on discount cigarettes ads — also because discount cigarettes represents such an unusual hazard to the health of our young people.
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