In a letter to Florida's Department of Health last month, Philip
Morris
slammed Crispin Porter + Bogusky's latest "Truth" anti-smoking
ads as
"inaccurate, misleading and false" and demanded that the
client "correct
the advertisements" and "publish a retraction." In
short, Philip Morris
wants to throttle "Truth."
The real problem Philip Morris seems to have with "Truth"
is that it is
popular and effective. The most recent Florida Youth Tobacco Survey
indicates that smoking among middle- and high school students in
Florida
is down 38 percent since 1998.
CP+B's new ads excoriate Big Tobacco for embracing anti-smoking
initiatives aimed at young Americans while aggressively marketing
to
their peers in Africa, Asia and South America (a charge Philip Morris
denies). One spot shows a classroom of would-be Marlboro men reciting
their lines in different languages.
It's not a new accusation. In 1978, I wrote a story for Newsweek
documenting U.S. tobacco's invasion of the Third World, with its
caravans of musicians and students distributing Winstons, Marlboros
and
Larks to eager kids. I remember the outrage that story set off in
Philip
Morris' Park Avenue suite.
Today, teenage Marlboro girls distribute smokes all over the globe.
A
World Health Organization report released in 2001 reported that
in the
68 countries studied, up to one-quarter of schoolchildren age 11-15
had
been handed free cigarettes by marketers. Clearly, Philip Morris
has
little direct control over the activities of its overseas affiliates.
But neither is it likely to be upset by them. Since 1990, Philip
Morris'
domestic sales have grown by less than 5 percent; overseas sales
have
jumped 80 percent.
I must confess a personal involvement with these issues. In 1989,
my
father, a dockworker, died after a long and terrible battle with
emphysema. My mother, who never smoked, died two years later of
throat cancer, which doctors attributed to 40 years of inhaling
secondary
smoke.
The attack on CP+B -- cc'd to 28 Florida TV stations -- comes at
a bad time for anti-smoking efforts in cash-strapped states. Arnold's
decade-long "Make smoking history" campaign had its funding
gutted by
the state of Massachusetts and is now itself history. Arizona has
cut
anti-smoking monies from $10-15 million annually to $3-5 million.
Even
Florida's "Truth" spending is down to $5-6 million a year,
from $20-25
million in 1998. All of which may trigger a resurgence of smoking
among
teens and, ultimately, more needless death.
Meanwhile, The Freedom to Advertise Coalition, a lobbying group
that
includes the Association of National Advertisers, the American
Advertising Federation and the American Association of Advertising
Agencies, is gearing up to attack what it calls a "draconian"
Justice
Department plan to expand marketing restrictions on tobacco.
Talk about overkill. What the tobacco settlement did, however briefly,
was put both sides on a level playing field. Sure, the "Truth"
ads --
with their body bags, evil tobacco moguls and plotlines right out
of The
Insider -- are exaggerated. But they're no more an exaggeration
than the
Marlboro Man. In journalism, we call that balance.