Truth anti-tobacco commercials
give tobacco corporations
and tobacco a raw deal

We’ve all seen them and love them. The anti-tobacco commercials made by Truth. They educate the public about the detriments of using tobacco through their extremely powerful television commercials. With this being said, I hate their ads. The commercials are simply creepy (especially the one with the ventriloquist).

I can’t stand the way in which they demonize the tobacco industry and turn them into a lighting rod attracting hatred. Last I checked, the Marlboro Company C.E.O. wasn’t gripping a cane and toting an oxygen tank on wheels through the Afghani countryside plotting on ways to fly airplanes into American buildings. That was Osama. So why does the Truth non-profit group want to make cigarette corporations appear as evil as him. Everybody knows corporations are evil, and we all know cigarettes cause cancer. Does the combination of these two evils necessarily mean that anyone involved with the tobacco corporation is evil squared?

The Truth commercials have the tendency to manifest macabre and negative human emotions. Their most recent commercial, which can be seen on MTV, shows a board room meeting of some generic cigarette company. It’s a bunch of corporate white guys sitting around a table in a tall building with a view overlooking a sprawling city, discussing which demographic they should target next. It’s a savage conversation about who they should target and how. They discuss making an eight pack of cigarettes because black people can’t afford the normal 20 pack. They talk about enticing the “Hipster crowd” to generate more profit.

This commercial is probably an accurate depiction of a typical corporate tobacco meeting, but that shouldn’t be as disturbing of a revelation as the commercial makes the viewer feel. Every company has the same type of meetings where they discuss possible consumers. Old Navy, Gatorade, and Nike are guilty of the same shallow marketing tactics as tobacco companies. The product they offer consumers is an important product and an American necessity.

Tobacco is a relaxing commodity that happens to have negative side effects. The tobacco plant didn’t sprout from the earth for its nutritional value or its inherent beauty…it is here for people to grow, harvest, dry, shred, and then burn with a Bic lighter and inhale. It was grown for those who enjoy the buzz from time to time. Nicotine was pre-ordained for the lunch break smoke session; for bars and for parties; lawyers, cops and constructions workers; Euro Trash and White Trash; it’s here for you and me. As long as people keep demanding it, tobacco companies will keep supplying it. Whether your flavor is a can of Skoal, a pack of Camel Filters, or Swisher Sweets Wood-tips, the point is that tobacco isn’t as bad as Truth makes it out to be..

Now let’s briefly discuss the truth behind Truth. They are right about the rigid fact that this addictive plant can very easily cause cancer. Tobacco products all have many carcinogens (cancer causing agents) and can lead to life-threatening diseases of all sorts. On their website they claim that “Tobacco companies make a product that kills 1,200 people everyday.” This is an irrefutable fact. The United States Department of Health and Human Services states that “Tobacco use remains the leading preventable cause of death and disease in the United States and continues to pose a formidable challenge to the public health community” (This came from a meeting with the United States Surgeon General at Howard University in Washington D.C.).

Based on these nasty facts I heartily commend Truth’s mission, but I absolutely hate the amount of hatred their advertisements dispense. Truth makes provocative commercials, but their creep tactics are too extreme for my liking. It’s not as if people who smoke can’t use common sense and instinct to predict that cigarette smoke burning their throats is probably bad for their longevity. There is no reason for them to need somebody sending shivers down their spine.

Thanks for your time, but I gotta go outside and have a smoke.

Zach Uhlmann
Columnist

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