All the blogs of Laurel L. Russwurm aggregated in one place
For the next year, TV, newspapers, and the web will run massive ads from tobacco companies admitting that their products kill people, that they were engineered to be addictive, and that they covered this up
After losing their 19-year court battle with the US Department of Justice, tobacco giants Altria, R.J. Reynolds, Lorillard and Philip Morris USA are now beginning to run their court-ordered “corrective statements” as full-page newspaper ads, major web display ads, and primetime TV spots, containing frank admissions that they violated federal racketeering and fraud laws when they conspired to cover up the fact that their products killed their customers and that they intentionally designed their products to be as addictive as possible.
The ads will run for a full year – the TV ads have to run five nights a week, between 7PM and 10PM on ABC, NBC and CBS.
Antismoking groups abroad are paying to run these ads elsewhere; for example, the Cancer Council Western Australia is replicating the ads in Australian media.
One ad reads “Smoking is highly addictive. Nicotine is the addictive drug in tobacco,” the ads say.
“Cigarette companies control the impact and delivery of nicotine in many ways, including designing filters and selecting cigarette paper to maximise the ingestion of nicotine, adding ammonia to make the cigarette taste less harsh, and controlling the physical and chemical make-up of the tobacco blend.
“When you smoke, the nicotine actually changes the brain — that’s why quitting is so hard.”
Another ad reads, “More people die every year from smoking than from murder, AIDS, suicide, drugs, car crashes, and alcohol combined.”
The tobacco industry hasn’t learned its lesson. Murray Garnick, a spokesliar for Altria, who own the Marlboro trademark, publicly stated that his employers were now manufacturing “less risky tobacco products.”
