The Importance Of Tobacco Advertising

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There is a growing demand for businesses to adopt higher ethical standards in their practices and the customers are becoming curious about buying from businesses that employ in honest and moral advertising activities. (Carpenter & Erdogan, 2016). Heightened client sensitivity to unethical business practices is partially a result of the collective efforts of consumer activist teams and media that have delivered to public attention examples of the unfair business practices that are otherwise unnoticed. (Sundaram & Mitra, 2007). Tobacco advertising is one of the most debated topics on whether it can qualify as ethical or non-ethical. According to the World Health Organization, "tobacco accounted for over 3 million deaths in 1990, the figure rising…show more content…
This is an area where Governments have an especially important role to play..." (IBS, 2010, p.1). Apparently, the ones in favor of the imposed ban strongly agree with Bellamy. One of the main arguments in favor of the ban is that the target groups of these advertisements are children and young people who had not yet been introduced to smoking. There is an escalating concern that the tobacco companies are persuading younger citizens to consider trying tobacco products and eventually become regular smokers in the process, as this is integral for the tobacco companies to thrive. For example, the RJ Reynolds Tobacco company's advertisement for Camel cigarettes included a friendly animated camel character that appealed to younger people, which led to accusing the company of drawing children's attention to smoking. (IBS, 2010). A World bank report claiming that an inclusive ban that covered all types of media and all logos and brand names of tobacco backs the in favor argument heavily. The report included a study held for over a hundred countries, which showed that the ones that imposed comprehensive bans on advertisement and marketing of tobacco logos and brands had a significant decline in tobacco consumption as time passes. (IBS,…show more content…
But even beyond the moral issue, for a product such as cigarettes well known to have serious health risks, it would be difficult even to understand how an advertising campaign could be devised to convince people to smoke." (IBS, 2010, p.1). People opposing the ban argue that tobacco is consumed by adults, who are aware of the risks and are responsible for their own choices. They find the ban a direct violation of freedom of choice and contradicts the concept that freedom and risks are inseparable. Additionally, tobacco companies argue that tobacco is legal to plant and manufacture, therefore, it is only fair to allow its marketing. They argue that they don't promote the concept of smoking, they rather advertise to already smoking adults to help them make a choice between brands and that these advertisements affect the market share of brands, not the number of smokers. (IBS, 2010). From an economical point of view, ones who oppose the ban argue that a hit on the tobacco industry is also a hit on the employment rate of India, where more than 26 million people work in the different processes of the industry. (IBS,2010). Also, they find that the ban didn't account for the nature of the Indian market, in which the organised sector is only 16% of the tobacco market

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