What evidence is there that marketing actually contributes to smoking?
Will ending tobacco marketing do anything? A large body of evidence—again, except for that funded secretly by the tobacco industry—suggests that marketing plays a major role in shaping consumers self-image, uptake of product use, and normalizing product use through the constant presence of brands and positive images. Marketing reinforces the habit for smokers who may be thinking about quitting. Marketing also suggests that cigarettes are like other consumer products. They are not. No other consumer product, used as intended by the manufacturer, kills 440,000 Americans every year. Voluntarily ending active marketing will end the propagation of deceptive messages that suggest cigarettes are associated with health, youth, vigor, nature, coolness, sexiness, and wealth. They are not. The things more accurately associated with cigarettes are sickness, suffering, weakness, thousands of toxic chemicals, environmental destruction, exploitation, poverty, and premature death.
