By Manish Pant
“Tobacco use kills people.” It’s a simple, undeniable statement. Trying to convince somebody otherwise, let alone an entire generation, seems pointless, right? But that’s exactly what the tobacco industry is trying to do in a desperate attempt to get younger generations hooked on its products.
You see, the tobacco industry has a big problem: Its products kill more than 8 million people per year. For us, that means watching family members or friends suffer through illness and ultimately losing the people we care about too soon.
For tobacco companies, it simply means 8 million fewer customers each year. And, if no new customers started using their products, tobacco companies would eventually go out of business. To fix their problem, tobacco companies are trying their hardest to replace these customers. Who are they targeting? Our generation. Here’s how they’re doing it.
Tobacco Companies Have A Powerful Tool On Their Side: Nicotine
Nearly everyone knows that cigarettes contain nicotine and that nicotine is the component that gets users addicted, unable to quit even when they want to.
But not everyone knows that the new products these companies are rolling out, like e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products, also contain nicotine and are therefore also addictive. In fact, some are designed to be even more addictive than cigarettes. One study found that JUUL could deliver more than five times the nicotine of cigarettes.
The industry tries to make these new products look less harmful—sophisticated and high-tech, even. But, just like cigarettes, they’re highly addictive. And, getting people addicted at a younger age means a steady stream of life-long profits for tobacco companies, at our expense.
Tobacco Companies Target Us With Deceptive Advertising
There’s a reason this year’s World No Tobacco Day theme is all about the tobacco industry’s manipulation of young people. Look around and you’ll see tobacco companies’ misleading marketing is everywhere.
Take social media, for example. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram are one of the industry’s favourite ways to reach us. Tobacco companies hire young influencers to attend music festivals, travel to exotic destinations, go to exclusive parties and more. The goal? To make us believe that tobacco use is linked to sophistication, excitement and spontaneity.
A global tobacco company, British American Tobacco, is even going so far as to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic, sending branded facemasks to influencers. (Fight back by creating your own anti-tobacco social media content for a chance to win up to USD $5,000—hurry, the deadline is 31 May!).
In India, companies use surrogate advertising as a way to get around tobacco ad bans and influence young people. Surrogate advertising is when a company with a bad reputation sponsors a ‘feel good’ campaign that’s seemingly unrelated to their product so that people associate their company with positivity.
One recent example is ITC Limited’s Stay Strong Moms campaign, where the tobacco company hosted virtual concerts to “pay tribute to mothers, who are keeping their families cheerful and safe during such challenging times.” (Seeing surrogate advertising like this elsewhere? You can post it here to help hold tobacco companies accountable.)
What these marketing campaigns don’t show is the sickness, financial strain, and other harms that tobacco addiction actually causes.
Tobacco Companies Manipulate Laws And Regulations Meant To protect People
The tobacco industry is infamous for trying to buy good favour from governments. Why does it want to get on the good side of governments around the world? So it can influence laws to ensure people can easily buy and use their products. When cigarettes and other tobacco products are cheap, easy to get and available to use in public spaces, tobacco companies can make more money.
Giving donations to governments is how tobacco companies try to ‘pre-pay’ for favours in the future. When they do things like donating COVID-19 relief funds to “vulnerable sections of society” in rural India and providing meals to those in need, they only do it because it could increase their chances of getting what they want when they ask for lower tobacco taxes, rollbacks on advertising and smoking bans and other favours that would increase their profits.
Don’t Let Tobacco Companies Take Advantage Of You
The tobacco industry is in trouble, and it knows it. That’s why it’s targeting us to fund its future success. Tobacco companies are doing their best to make their addictive products desirable and easy to access and use. In exchange, all they ask for is your health, your money and your future.