Home » Opinion » Book review
The selling of cigarettes and trendy 'coffin nails'
By Ni Tao |
January 30, 2010, Saturday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
IN 2005, France's National Library created a furor by airbrushing Jean-Paul Sartre's trademark cigarette from one poster of this apostle of existentialism. The move met with strong opposition from Sartre's family as well as the intelligentsia, for it was "anything but what Sartre could have approved of."
The tinkering could have made Sartre turn over in his grave. The chain-smoking philosopher is known to have two lifelong friends: cigarettes and Simone de Beauvoir, his female companion who was also a chain-smoker.
The cigarette has long been enshrined in French intellectual life. But the cigarette smoke that once wafted from Paris' Left Bank cafes, frequented by artists and intellectuals, is fast being dispersed because of official restrictions on smoking.
The French library's clumsy alteration of the Sartre poster was a well-intentioned move to purge pro-smoking messages -- especially those conveyed by an intellectual icon -- from French consumer culture. Tobacco-related health problems and resultant medical costs have led the Galois-smoking nation to impose a blanket ban on cigarette advertisements in public places.
What is happening in France has occurred on the other health-conscious side of the Atlantic. The scene of a cigarette dangling from the lips of actress Marlene Dietrich harks back to the days of swinging Hollywood in the 1930s. While there still are many smokers in the US, smoking as a cultural practice has more or less become quaint, old-fashioned and no longer so glamorous as was perceived earlier, according to Allan M. Brandt.
In his book "The Cigarette Century," Brandt traces the ups and downs of the US cigarette industry. As a novelty in the early 1990s, cigarettes weren't the favorite of salesmen, for smoking them was then seen as "dirty and indulgent." However, society's perception of cigarettes quickly shifted to the contrary after the smoking fad spread among soldiers during World War I.
Once the cigarette mania took hold, tobacco companies were no longer content with the profits made from mass-produced, similar-looking cheap packets and resorted to a new business strategy: brand differentiation. They redesigned their products' package, hired PR professionals to tout their wares and invested heavily in advertising in hope of turning even tidier profits.
They succeeded beyond their wildest expectation. For instance, the empowering message crafted for women is that smoking is emblematic of equality and independence.
This, coupled with the influence of stars like Dietrich, helped win more consumers. As Brandt argues, "The cigarette revealed the power of the technique of investing a commodity with cultural meaning ... to motivate consumption."
After experiencing heady growth for several decades, big tobacco finally ran into trouble. Since the late 1940s, the correlation between cigarette use and rising incidence of lung cancer and heart disease in the US has been highlighted, prompting public calls for holding tobacco companies responsible for related health problems.
A decades-long battle ensued between big tobacco and anti-tobacco advocacy groups and activists, and it still continues. It's waged on many fronts, in legislatures, involving lobbyists and in courtrooms, among many other places.
For years, better-resourced big tobacco out-maneuvered government watchdogs like the FDA and the health experts. It succeeded in obfuscating the understanding of health risks posed by smoking and pre-empting plans to expose their own deceptions and manipulations.
Companies also shrewdly exploited the American cultural norm of individual responsibility to their benefit -- "it's my right to decide" -- was, and still is the message.
Even when the link between smoking and health problems became irrefutable, the message was that people should be appraised of the risk and then the individual should decide. In this way, big tobacco got away with damaging people's health.
Luck began to run out for producers of "coffin nails." They had to place warning labels on cigarette packs and accede to a raft of industry regulations. They faced more and more lawsuits holding them responsible for selling dangerous products. They started losing class-action and individual lawsuits.
While smoking in much of the more health-conscious West is on the wane, it is a grave issue in China, where roughly one in four people lights up -- Chinese smokers now top 350 million.
The fact that the industry is a money-spinner and big employer has so far insulated it from serious measures to discourage smoking. The cigarette and cigarette smoke have so permeated Chinese culture that eliminating the noxious fumes would require not only stricter laws and law enforcement but also a sweeping cultural change.
In China, packs of cigarettes are presented as gifts during festivals and at wedding banquets; offering a cigarette is often the best way to ingratiate oneself with strangers. If cigarettes remain an integral part of China's social fabric, this nation too will be going up in smoke in its "Cigarette Century."
The tinkering could have made Sartre turn over in his grave. The chain-smoking philosopher is known to have two lifelong friends: cigarettes and Simone de Beauvoir, his female companion who was also a chain-smoker.
The cigarette has long been enshrined in French intellectual life. But the cigarette smoke that once wafted from Paris' Left Bank cafes, frequented by artists and intellectuals, is fast being dispersed because of official restrictions on smoking.
The French library's clumsy alteration of the Sartre poster was a well-intentioned move to purge pro-smoking messages -- especially those conveyed by an intellectual icon -- from French consumer culture. Tobacco-related health problems and resultant medical costs have led the Galois-smoking nation to impose a blanket ban on cigarette advertisements in public places.
What is happening in France has occurred on the other health-conscious side of the Atlantic. The scene of a cigarette dangling from the lips of actress Marlene Dietrich harks back to the days of swinging Hollywood in the 1930s. While there still are many smokers in the US, smoking as a cultural practice has more or less become quaint, old-fashioned and no longer so glamorous as was perceived earlier, according to Allan M. Brandt.
In his book "The Cigarette Century," Brandt traces the ups and downs of the US cigarette industry. As a novelty in the early 1990s, cigarettes weren't the favorite of salesmen, for smoking them was then seen as "dirty and indulgent." However, society's perception of cigarettes quickly shifted to the contrary after the smoking fad spread among soldiers during World War I.
Once the cigarette mania took hold, tobacco companies were no longer content with the profits made from mass-produced, similar-looking cheap packets and resorted to a new business strategy: brand differentiation. They redesigned their products' package, hired PR professionals to tout their wares and invested heavily in advertising in hope of turning even tidier profits.
They succeeded beyond their wildest expectation. For instance, the empowering message crafted for women is that smoking is emblematic of equality and independence.
This, coupled with the influence of stars like Dietrich, helped win more consumers. As Brandt argues, "The cigarette revealed the power of the technique of investing a commodity with cultural meaning ... to motivate consumption."
After experiencing heady growth for several decades, big tobacco finally ran into trouble. Since the late 1940s, the correlation between cigarette use and rising incidence of lung cancer and heart disease in the US has been highlighted, prompting public calls for holding tobacco companies responsible for related health problems.
A decades-long battle ensued between big tobacco and anti-tobacco advocacy groups and activists, and it still continues. It's waged on many fronts, in legislatures, involving lobbyists and in courtrooms, among many other places.
For years, better-resourced big tobacco out-maneuvered government watchdogs like the FDA and the health experts. It succeeded in obfuscating the understanding of health risks posed by smoking and pre-empting plans to expose their own deceptions and manipulations.
Companies also shrewdly exploited the American cultural norm of individual responsibility to their benefit -- "it's my right to decide" -- was, and still is the message.
Even when the link between smoking and health problems became irrefutable, the message was that people should be appraised of the risk and then the individual should decide. In this way, big tobacco got away with damaging people's health.
Luck began to run out for producers of "coffin nails." They had to place warning labels on cigarette packs and accede to a raft of industry regulations. They faced more and more lawsuits holding them responsible for selling dangerous products. They started losing class-action and individual lawsuits.
While smoking in much of the more health-conscious West is on the wane, it is a grave issue in China, where roughly one in four people lights up -- Chinese smokers now top 350 million.
The fact that the industry is a money-spinner and big employer has so far insulated it from serious measures to discourage smoking. The cigarette and cigarette smoke have so permeated Chinese culture that eliminating the noxious fumes would require not only stricter laws and law enforcement but also a sweeping cultural change.
In China, packs of cigarettes are presented as gifts during festivals and at wedding banquets; offering a cigarette is often the best way to ingratiate oneself with strangers. If cigarettes remain an integral part of China's social fabric, this nation too will be going up in smoke in its "Cigarette Century."
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