Reckoning with the history of racial marketing of menthol cigarettes
nursingclio.org
nursingclio.org
I think trying to persuade anyone to start smoking is evil.
But society is generally accepting of marketing that's tailored to different demographics, including race.
So what's especially noteworthy about marketing cigarettes differently to black people vs. others?
AFAIK, regardless of race, the tobacco companies wanted to maximize their profits at the cost of their customers' lives.
"Despite the advertising consultants’ success, as evidenced by increased product sales, many critics became concerned that their efforts would target white children, and so instead the tobacco companies turned their attention to Black consumers."
Wikipedia:
"Despite it being illegal at the time, tobacco marketers gave out free menthol cigarette samples to children in black neighborhoods in the U.S."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menthol_cigarette
Rearranged facts/claims from another website, the American Lung Association's:
* When inhaled, menthol can reduce airway pain and irritation from cigarette smoke and suppress coughing, giving smokers the illusion of breathing more easily.
* Tobacco companies have relied on the soothing and cooling effects of menthol to make cigarettes more appealing to new smokers, youth, Black Americans and LGBTQ Americans among others.
* Menthol cigarettes have also been found to increase both the likelihood of becoming addicted and also the degree of addiction.
* Flavors, including menthol, are one of the primary reasons kids start using tobacco products.
* More than 8 in 10 of Black Americans who smoke use menthol cigarettes.
* About half of youth smokers ages 12-17 smoke menthols. That percentage is higher than the about 40% of adults 18 and older who prefer menthols.
https://www.lung.org/quit-smoking/smoking-facts/health-effec...
Hey, your business is doing something detrimental to people. People have political power, so stop it.
What if we just do it to people that don't have political power.
Carry on.
You see this with large corporations being slowly forced to change their ways in their home countries while continuing the same practices in developing nations. Or locally, where businesses that affect air pollution are allowed in some populated areas but not others where those with political sway live.
Some people, when being told "don't sell your death sticks to children" would perhaps reconsider the whole selling death sticks thing. Others will find and exploit every weakness in the system to continue making money from it.
https://borgenproject.org/top-6-facts-about-smoking-in-devel...
Of particular note, is the tactic where if a government tried to restrict harmful products, you buy politicians and undermine the whole democratic process. Reference the decades of wasted money and lives that the "Merchants of Doubt" have caused, likely the greatest and most effective attack ever on human civilization.
Perhaps it is marketing that is fundamentally evil.
Why should we be accepting of an entire industry dedicated solely to trying to convince people to buy things they literally do not need?
Jesus said that it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. To what degree is our materialistic society harming us?
Marketing is no more evil than programming or any role. All roles have people use it detrimentally and unethically.
I'm a marketer and only once felt less ethical in my role (pushing credit cards for a bank group) but most of the time is good work, promoting decent products to people as an alternate to the popular choice, which in itself drives competition and product improvement. While I would personally love to see better ad regulation in the world to do thinks like reduce billboards and tracking etc I still think it clear the world would be a worse place if companies were not allowed to promote their product.
But essentially every advertisement I’ve ever seen is so far removed from “providing information” that characterizing them as such is a joke.
What they provide is a made up story of how good your life will be with this product (it bad it will be without it). That isn’t providing information, it’s manipulating people.
I would say this is more what you notice. A huge amount of advertising is about brand awareness. Logos on sports teams etc Awareness is often not telling people anything, only trying to become part of someone's consideration set when they price compare 3 car insurances type thing. Or much of the comparison sites are paid ads essentially but they do it in a way that provides good information. Or if you watch Marques Brownlee type youtubers, a bunch of what they do is an ad but their brand is to give honest opinions while paid. Or how many ads simply show a product and a price type display?
Absolutely some ads are manipulating, but I suspect if you consciously look around you'll see many if not most are not manipulating, and your conscious brain seems to remember the ones you dislike hence to view it is the vast majority.
Anyway feel free to hate marketing :) I would really like to see less outdoor ads and better regulation in general but at the risk of being a bit specific to your wording I felt I needed to show another side to that view.
Let's try it this way:
Does "marketing," as a paid business practice, cause more harm than good?
(NGL, when someone argues that their thing isn't evil by arguing e.g. "any practice can be good or evil" and not a direct and clear explanation of why their thing is good, big red flags.)
I would have criticised it more as a false dilemma than strawman :) But I did that because I think it shows exactly your question. Imagine a world where there was zero marketing. I suspect you'd see far more entrenched companies e.g. as how does the new start-up get the word out fast enough to not flame out while they hope the market realises they exist. Far less competition as companies cant promote their prices leading to the entrenched companies charging higher margins and all that entails. It democratised many services like watching videos or email as this is ad funded so all people can utilise these services rather than the people that can afford.... though I guess you could position this is a bad thing due to the rise of social media.
There's a few... how much better do you think the world would be without marketing?
The article doesn't really dig into what's so bad about menthol. It makes the smoke feel cool, which provides sensory relief. But it's like drinking alcohol to feel warm -- it increases an individual's mental tolerance without doing a damned thing physically. It even seems to make the cigarettes more addictive, which strongly resonates with me, probably because they diminish the body's "stop that, it hurts" response. Clove cigarettes have a similarly numbing sensation (and delicious flavor). As a teen I couldn't understand why those were banned in some places... now I only wonder why menthols didn't get the axe when other flavors were banned in the US, though I've always harbored a suspicion about the brand of Obama's guilty pleasure.
I'm a full time smoker, but I'll turn down a menthol if offered one. I'd rather suffer through nicotine cravings than subject myself to a Colgate coffin nail.
"Cognac 101: The Beloved Brandy of Black Culture". https://www.cuisinenoirmag.com/cognac-brandy-of-black-cultur...
> The story of cognac’s penetration into our culture is unique and it continues to serve as a benchmark for brands to learn how to engage with us authentically and with intention.
Yes, addictive cancer sticks must be exactly the same thing as selling people houses.
Yeah that seems pretty racist actually.
After they were banned there was no disparagement, only "where did you get those?".
Efforts to target community leaders were lead by a famous black marketing executive: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/903894678. And Tom Burrell has blood on his hands.
My opinion is the blame is misplaced, actually there shouldn't be any blaming. A smoker is not a victim. An adult willingly started a harmful addictive habit. The state has no authority to regulate this. It may save lives to ban harmful substances but a government does not exist to save lives. When you buy a cigarette you are well warned of the dangers right there in the box, it is not the government's place to prevent people from enganging in risky behavior because regulating people private decisions is beyond its authority. The government however can regulate when such a behavior affects others like where you smoke, require you to pay insurance for the inevitable medical care you will need and require tobacco companies to advertise against their own product if they wish to sell it. From cigarettes to fentanyl, it is not a government's place to prohibit a substance.
But get out the pitchforks when they try to tell multinational corporations to stop selling death sticks to children!
What I said obviously speaks against your own body as well. The fact is if you have a secular government and a democratic one at that they lack authority to do many of the things they are doing. They exist to govern liberty not enforce world views and keep people from hurting themselves. Democracy should be like Unix, if you decide to shoot yourself in the foot it should enable you to do it in the most efficient way possible.