Son of the Marlboro Man
Rosenthal, James
Son of the Marlboro Man If you think tobacco ads have been banned from television and radio, you're wrong. Cigarettes were banished from the airwaves back in 1971, but chewing tobacco was left...
...The ads, which have run during football games and the Olympics, promote the idea that snuff dipping is clean, healthy, and consistent with a lifestyle of rugged individualism...
...Tobacco, also runs TV ads in which its four brands of fine-cut Kentucky "moist snuff" chewing tobaccos (Copenhagen, Skoal, Skoal Bandits, and Happy Days) are promoted by football and baseball stars and other celebrities...
...Between 1972 and 1984, U.S...
...Now that audience has been bequeathed to the manufacturers of chewing tobacco...
...Another study, conducted in Louisiana, found that 30 percent of the 14- and 15-year-olds surveyed were regular snuff-dippers...
...A lot of those who are buying it are adolescents...
...Tobacco, has quipped, "In Texas today, a kid wouldn't dare go to school, even if he doesn't use the product, without a can [of snuff] in his Levi's...
...Gives me real tobacco pleasure without lighting up anytime, anywhere," says country-rocker Charlie Daniels in one...
...Just a pinch between your cheek and gum and you'll enjoy that pure tobacco flavor," says Walt Garrison, an ex-football player turned rodeo star, in a commercial that is obviously derivative of the Marlboro-man pitch...
...Nevertheless, the Surgeon General has determined that it poses a cancer threat...
...The result: the billion-dollar chewing tobacco industry is running TV and radio ads strikingly similar to the old cigarette spots...
...James Rosenthal...
...It was the teenage audience, of course, that most worried critics of cigarette commercials back in the sixties...
...Compared with a similar survey done five years earlier, this represents a threeto six-fold increase in the use of snuff...
...Louis F. Bantly, chairman and president of U.S...
...One study conducted in Oregon high schools found that 23 percent of all tenth graders "dipped" snuff regularly—a greater percentage than those who smoked cigarettes...
...Numerous authorities have linked long-term use of moist snuff to mouth cancer, yet there are no labels on the product to warn consumers of this danger...
...It's true that snuff dipping isn't nearly as lethal as smoking cigarettes: you avoid the tars and carbon monoxide that smokers inhale when you chew...
...Cigarettes were banished from the airwaves back in 1971, but chewing tobacco was left untouched...
...At the very least, you'd think we'd want to avoid encouraging teenagers to take up the habit, but TV ads for chewing tobacco do just the opposite...
...The sponsoring company, U.S...
...The investment paid off: in 1971 the company sold 13,275 pounds of moist snuff...
...by 1983 that number had jumped to 31,300 pounds...
...Tobacco's TV advertising budget jumped from $800,000 to $4.6 million...
Vol. 17 • March 1985 • No. 2
