From the early days of Hollywood the tobacco industry has used devious promotional tactics to get consumers hooked on nicotine, the latest being candy flavored tobacco masked in colorful packaging much like Halloween candy..
To mask a carcinogen in colorful packaging with tantalizing flavors such as pineapple, sour apple and chocolate in smokeless products that can be chewed, snuffed and are dissolvable is unconscionable. The flavors are also available in Cigarillos and cigars.
These products are readily available in convenience stores and are causing concern among parents, teachers, health advocates and physicians throughout the state of Florida.
One in six kids in Florida between the ages of 11 and 16 have tried these products and the youth erroneously believe the products to be less harmful than their non-flavored counterparts. These products are widely considered to be a gateway to a lifetime of tobacco addiction.
Municipalities throughout Florida have taken action against these products. Sarasota County passed a resolution urging local vendors to cease the sale and marketing of all candy-flavored tobacco products, Fort Myers City Council has signed a resolution urging retailers to stop selling the products along with an effort that is underway in Charlotte County.
The candy-flavored cigarette was banned under the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act in 2009. However, menthol cigarettes, flavored cigars, cigarillos and smokeless products were not included. The FDA is examining options for regulating these remaining categories of flavored tobacco products.
Unfortunately this is an industry that hasn’t had a history of regulating itself, nor its sleazy subliminal promotional tactics. In the early days of Hollywood nearly every scene in a movie had someone smoking or lighting up, during World War II a dying soldier was depicted asking for his last puff, and during the 50′s the industry handed out sample packs of smokes outside of high schools.
Even today there is a Broadway play where an actor lights up 8 times during a show, and you can believe these scenes were not written into the play by happenstance.
The industry sells, promotes, flavors, packages death causing products. They just don’t pull the trigger.
2 users commented in " Candy Flavored Tobacco, Industry’s Latest Tactic To Get Kids Hooked On Nicotine "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackWhat happened to the libertarian?
Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control act. But that’s governmental regulation. Who is the government to tell us what and when to smoke, whatever that may be. It’s up to the parents to supervise their children, not the government. Keep the governments hands off my puffs and chews. The industry has a lousy history of regulating itself. So what!. Do you want some socialist taking over the free enterprise system for the purpose of destroying free market capitalism? Sounds like Alinsky to me. Smoking in a Broadway play. Tobacco has infiltrated the actors’ union. These Marxists are everywhere.
The column had nothing to do with your concept of my political philosophy , but did have something to do with an industry that markets and packages a product to kids that is addictive and kills without disclosing the facts.
This is a moral issue, one that lacks corporate responsibility – it is unconscionable.
The point here deals with nicotine products that slipped through the cracks without the requirement to provide full disclosure of the fact it is a carcinogen, yes, which is required for all other nicotine products. And, for the industry to use tried and true promotional tactics to kids wrapping the product as a candy in Halloween packaging without full disclosure is proof they haven’t learned anything from their past.
It is a classic strategy employed by this industry for eons to use a subliminal approach to promote its sales for nicotine products to get an addicted population of consumers without their knowledge.
This industry knew long before it was disclosed to the public that it was marketing a carcinogen.
I was a consultant to a pharmaceutical company marketing a smoking cessation product and the tobacco industry saw them as a competitor.
Furthermore, there are memos on the internet that have been disclosed through depositions that reveal the industry knew of its dangers long before scientists disclosed it. Just Google any one of the tobacco companies and you can find this out for yourself through court proceedings.
I know that 1 in 5 in the US smoke. The product is still on the market and that’s the consumer’s choice to buy it and use it, just as it is their right to bear arms. With full knowledge of the dangers of the product , it is their right to pull the trigger on their life, and perhaps others.
Leave A Reply