The Ethics Of Advertising: The Dangers Of Tobacco Advertising

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Tobacco advertising lure young people into believing smoking is fashionable without realizing the dangers attached to tobacco. Tobacco causes cancer; I would support any government, including the Indian government that will increase tobacco tax both on advertising and all tobacco products. Tobacco is one of the most dangerous consumer product known, which kills when used as the makers ' intended. Thus from an ethical standpoint, the Government has to discourage the habit, because it has responsibility for the welfare of its citizens. The banning of all forms of tobacco advertising and promotion can be regarded as a central platform of comprehensive tobacco control policy. For example, Australia has high tobacco taxes. Tobacco cannot be sold …show more content…

India’s tobacco advertising is an attempt by producers of goods and services to persuade current and potential consumers to continue or start purchasing. Their intention of advertisers is to portray products in ways that will maximize their desirability to potential consumers. Now, lets focus our attention on the ethics of advertising by drawing a distinction between its informative and persuasive functions, arguing that pure 'information ' in advertising is 'moral ' because it facilitates rational decision-making and choice. However, 'persuasive ' advertising is argued to be unethical because, it affects consumers’ thinking by convincing them to buy goods, which they do not need or want. Smoking can be a very addictive behaviour which is quiet difficult to …show more content…

The tobacco business-sector, which mainly produced cigarettes, comprises only about 16% of the market, while remaining 84% was accounted for by other products like 'beedi, ' 'ghutkas, ' etc. The ban is likely having major impact on their sales. Without advertising, tobacco consumers will reduce drastically, therefore, consumers won’t be able to differentiate between products of different qualities, this can slow down the progression of Indian consumers up the scale from harmful tobacco consumption (like ghutka, zarda etc.) to more refined forms. The tobacco industry in India provides direct and indirect employment to 26 million people of this, roughly 6 million were farmers and almost 5 million were 'beedi ' rollers. The ban on advertising could cause millions of workers to lose employment. India is the third largest producer of tobacco in the world and with one of the lowest per capita tobacco consumption in the world; therefore the ban of advertising should be done with careful

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