Antismoking ads begin after decade of delay
WASHINGTON — Decades after they were banned from the airwaves, Big Tobacco companies return to prime-time television this weekend — but not by choice.
Under court order, the tobacco industry for the first time will be forced to advertise the deadly, addictive effects of smoking, more than 11 years after a judge ruled that the companies had misled the public about the dangers of cigarettes.
But years of legal pushback by the industry over every detail means the ads will be less hard-hitting than what was proposed. Tobacco control experts say the campaign — built around network TV and newspapers — will not reach people when they are young and most likely to start smoking. “Their legal strategy is always obstruct, delay, create confusion and buy more time,” said Ruth Malone, of the UC San Francisco, who has studied the industry for 20 years. “So by the time this was finally settled, newspapers have a much smaller readership, and nowadays, who watches network TV?”
The new spots, which begin Sunday, lay out the toll of smoking in blunt text and voice-over statements: “More people die every year from smoking than from murder, AIDS, suicide, drugs, car crashes and alcohol, combined.”
Smoking remains the nation’s leading preventable cause of death and illness, causing more than 480,000 deaths each year, even though smoking rates have been declining for decades. Last year, the adult smoking rate hit a new low of 15 percent, according to government figures. That’s down from the 42 percent of adults who smoked in the mid-1960s.
Experts attribute the decline to smoking bans, cigarette taxes and antismoking campaigns by both nonprofit groups like the American Cancer Society and the federal government.
The new ads are the result of a 1999 lawsuit filed by the Justice Department under President Bill Clinton which sought to recover some of the billions the federal government spent caring for people with smokingrelated illnesses.
A federal judge ultimately sided with the government in 2006, ruling that Big Tobacco had “lied, misrepresented and deceived the American public” about the effects of smoking for more than 50 years.
A former smoker who was shown the mock-up ads called them terrible.
“They weren’t very compelling ads,” said Ellie MixterKeller, 62, of Wauwatosa, Wis., who smoked a pack a day for 30 years before quitting 12 years ago. “I just don’t know if I would have cared about any of that.”