Once upon a time tobacco companies promoted smoking on the airwaves. The mega-millions-of-dollars-a-year-salaried executives knew that their luxury lifestyles depended on "getting" Americans hooked on nicotine. Now, tobacco companies are back on the air touting their supposedly "do-good" educational marketing -- the Government's ban on cigarette marketing to kids be damned!
Our political landscape now includes chain-smoker Barack Obama. Before moving into the White House we must remember his wife Michelle and their two children have been exposed for years to his nasty-unbreakable-24/7 ugly habit. Mrs. Obama and her girls have possibly suffered for years with poor health. Mr. Obama's daughter's allergies are well documented. The entire family is prone to asthma, heart disease, cancer, and more. Tobacco companies actually sell their cigarettes with Barack Obama in mind despite the EPA's findings that smoking and secondhand smoke kills.
Interestingly, Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor shares President of the United States Barack Obama's smoking habit. In a November 1983 New York Times article about Sonia Sotomayor, she is referred to as "… smoking cigarettes incessantly."
Tobacco companies are the masters when it comes to marketing the smoking of cigarettes to teenagers. While they publicly call themselves "responsible marketers of tobacco," in fact cigarette companies' visions are just the opposite. Every day tobacco companies advertise on California's television to hype their companies' "do-good" programs for young adults. Their ads ramble on about their concern for the environment and about how their websites promote links to help smokers stop smoking. But all the while the tobacco companies know full well that their ads are only aimed at getting their names out to a new audience: they need new fresh young smokers.
What is extremely interesting about the new "do-good" educational advertising by cigarette companies on television -- and all media -- are their "sexy" female voices over the air. As the tobacco companies ostensibly educate us about their "upstanding" community values, the "sexy" female voices cleverly promote and advertise their cigarettes
through "fuzzy advertising" to 13, 14, 15, and 16 year-old children listeners. The California Department of Public Health's Tobacco Control Program cannot "control" every young person's habits in the State. Today's new culture includes "group" thinking. Groups of teenagers to young adults follow their peer-groups' eating habits, smoking preferences, and their drinking choices, to scrutinizing their groups' dating partners. More goofy Senate Bills or Assembly Bills signed into Law are not the answer. The "Smoke Free Cars with Minors" Law should prove that.
While California leads the nation with smoke-free everything, children, teenagers, and young adults continue to breathe second hand smoke in many areas including the dinner table, listening to their iPods upstairs while their parents smoke downstairs, and sitting with their "group" peers twelve hours every day.
Tobacco companies know teen-culture and they are the ultimate magician in reaching them. Are they responsible for using "fuzzy" supposedly-educational advertising to lure new California adolescents into a life of addiction? Yes, they are. Are the giant tobacco companies looking for new smokers? Absolutely. They have to promote their tobacco products: their financial existence depends on it.
The arithmetic is simple. Millions and millions and millions of their present customers are dying from lung cancer and other diseases related to tobacco. What's more, over the decades their "old" nicotine-addicted customers "puffed" their last breaths and have since been laid to rest.
Do the mega-rich tobacco companies' executives care about cigarette related deaths? No, the greedy tobacco industry executives only care about their homes in Boca Raton, Palm Beach, Aspen, Malibu, and Vail. They care about their yachts, luxury cars, and private airplanes. They also view Hollywood's popular "Sex in the City" show, which includes beautiful people smoking in every frame. "Sex in the City" provides the perfect picture to lure young people into smoking.
Children and young adults emulate what they see and hear. Tobacco companies have found a new way to enter into our children's rooms through so-called "educational advertisements." Cigarette companies bank on kids' listening to their "fuzzy" messages: Smoke cigarettes. After all, smoking works in selling Hollywood's liberal movies -- California's largest industry.
Tobacco companies have history on their side. Cigarette companies know that children become life-long smokers during their adolescent years. American advertising uses messages which are often filled with sexual innuendoes in an attempt to sell products. Cigarette companies know that their "sexy" female announcers can sell their cigarettes surreptitiously ... and keep the money flowing in.