Cigarette Ads

The 1990s were a watershed of advocacy against what is routinely called Big Tobacco and in favor of consumers. In 1997, the state of Mississippi obtained a settlement in the amount of $368.5 billion to cover litigation against US tobacco firms. In 1999, the US Dept. of Justice sued Big Tobacco under the Racketeer-Influenced & Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), accusing the major companies of fraudulently concealing the health risks of smoking of which they were well aware; that lawsuit is pending as of May 2004.

The efforts against Big Tobacco reflect criticism of its business practices and concern about the health and well-being of tobacco users. Four monographs in particular give an account of the $368.5-billion settlement, explaining from different points of view the multistate coalition of public- and private-sector lawyers and industry whistle-blowers arrayed against the $50-billion tobacco industry. Mollencamp, et al., acknowledge that the settlement of the Mississippi case was significant but note that critics felt that its provisions, which restricted tobacco marketing and promotion but which also banned punitive

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that the girls were attracted by images of smoking women as objects of romance, as being accepted by their peers, as being affluent, and as being (ironically enough) healthy. Adolescent girls, as Hawkins and Hane explain, are not equipped to cast a critical eye on media messages, and are especially vulnerable to media messages that encourage smoking. They call for more media literacy and analyze that vulnerability as symptomatic of the power that patriarchal capitalist culture has to influence behavior. They suggest that there is some urgency attached to the imperative of educating young people inasmuch as since 1994 there has been a 36% increase in the number of adolescent girls who report smoking within the last 30 days; for African American girls the figure is 54%. However, adult women have come in for great marketing attention--from the 1920s, when smoking gained social acceptance among middle class women, to the present day. Until 1968, when Virginia Slims became a brand specifically and exclusively aimed at the female marketplace, the most prominent cigarette advertising that was directed at women was done by Chesterfield and Lucky Strike. Some of the ads emphasized the glamour of smoking, and their message was reinfor
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Approximate Word count = 2254
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)

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