Tobacco Case Study

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Most people, adolescents and adults alike, are already exceptionally aware that tobacco use can impact their health negatively. Many also know that long-term tobacco use greatly increases the risk of developing cancer especially cancer of the lungs, which is the most common form of cancer around the world (American Lung Association, 2015); according to the American Lung Association, in 2012 there were 1.8 million new lung cancer patient cases and 1.6 million lung cancer patient deaths worldwide (American Lung Association, 2015). As the American Cancer Society explains,
Tobacco use accounts for at least 30% of all cancer deaths, causing 87% of lung cancer deaths in men, and 70% of lung cancer deaths in women” (Cancer.org).
With such a high …show more content…

Those in favor of the ban also detail their rebuttals for the potential risks of employment layoffs in the tobacco industry and measure exactly how much tobacco contributes to India 's overall G.D.P stating, “In India, analysts estimated that cigarettes contributed only 0.14% of the G.D.P and the health costs roughly translated to 0.21% of the G.D.P. ” (Ban on Tobacco Ads, 2001). Although this point seems completely reasonable at first glance, it only factors cigarettes and not tobacco products as a whole, which contributes about $900 million (U.S. dollars) of foreign exchange, and $3.4 billion (U.S. dollars) to India 's central exchequer (IBEF, 2015). While all of the health risks stated by supporters of the tobacco ban remain valid, they fail to justify the effectiveness of the overly-extensive advertising ban. Similarly, the argument in favor of the ban is hurt by the faulty logic of only factoring cigarettes when calculating the possible risk in reduction of tobacco revenue for …show more content…

in 1991, tobacco advertisements are not typically directed at children or adolescents, which was the main catalyst of the tobacco advertisement ban in India (Ban on Tobacco Ads, 2001). In recent years, more restrictions have been placed on what tobacco companies can display in their advertisements. For example, as a result of the Joe Camel lawsuit mentioned previously, the U.S. does not allow tobacco companies to: include any advertising towards youth, advertise at stadiums or arenas, and mandates that tobacco companies cannot sponsor events with audiences that include a substantial amount of youth (Hudson, 2002). The Indian Market Research Bureau further backs the argument against advertising 's actual effect on non-tobacco users with their survey conducted in 1998 which found, “49% of the respondents said they started smoking to see what it was like, 24% said 'all my friends smoke '; and no one said advertising had induced them to start smoking” (Ban on Tobacco Ads, 2001). As stated earlier, it 's vital that societal conditions outside of advertising are considered when measuring the effects of an advertisement ban. The results of this survey reinforces the idea that mistaking correlation for causation greatly distorts the scientific proof that allegedly endorses tobacco advertisement

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