If you’ve watched Mad Men, or have heard about it passing, then you know that folks used to smoke while doing everything back in the day. Smoking while working, smoking while sexually harassing their secretaries, even smoking while pregnant. And you know it was ad men who pushed smoking into the cultural forefront.
But when was the last time you’ve actually seen an ad for cigarettes? Long gone are the days of Don Draper types scoring deals with Hollywood to put cigarettes in the mouths of the biggest stars. Nowadays, smoking is a red flag the same way wearing JNCO jeans is.
Those cringey “Truth” ads worked. In tandem with better public understanding of the harms of tobacco and a lengthy list of legal actions taken by the federal government against the tobacco industries marketing tactics, lung cancer is no longer the killer it once was.
But we’re mortal, and people have to die somehow; and that new reaper is obesity. In the U.S. alone, the fast food industry is nearly worth two-hundred billion dollars. According the RWJ Foundation, McDonald's spent “2.7 times as much to advertise its products as all fruit, vegetable, bottled water, and milk advertisers combined” in 2012.
The government clamped down hard on tobacco companies after word got out that their product was slowly killing us. Does the name Joe Camel even ring a bell? He used to be a mascot heavy weight. Joe Camel wore a sweet leather jacket and drove a cherry-red corvette. He was right up there with Tony the Tiger and Trix the Rabbit. And just like them, his job was to advertise to children.
The federal government had to step in following the surgeon general's report, that yes, tobacco will kill you. The Master Settlement Agreement was signed and tobacco companies were banned from advertising using billboards, on public transit, with cartoons and to children. Before that tobacco ads were already banned from airing on television and radio. Then in 2009 the FDA allowed states to place further restrictions on tobacco marketing as they saw fit. There’s a reason you’ve never seen a cigarette ad.
Why the big focus on combating the tobacco industry’s messaging?
There is evidence that tobacco companies specifically advertise to minors, low-income groups and minorities. And there is evidence that those advertisements are effective. That’s why there has been so much focus on combating this messaging. Likewise, there is evidence that fast food companies specifically advertise to minors, low-income groups and minorities, all groups with a disproportionately high rate of obesity. When Quebec banned fast food ads targeted to children, it saw a decrease in childhood obesity.
The First Amendment is not absolute. You're probably familiar with the oft-cited example of not being able to shout fire in a crowded theater. Commercial speech is heavily regulated; advertisers are not allowed to straight-up lie to consumers, and there’s everything tobacco companies aren’t allowed to do. There isn’t much in the way of the federal government regulating fast food the same way they do tobacco.
All of the same sorts of arguments made when we debated what to do with cigarettes pop up again when discussing fast food marketing. The phrase “personal responsibility” gets thrown around a lot. Children tend to lack self-control. And if a cartoon can teach a child to share, then a cartoon can teach a child to want french fries.
You might say, “then parents should step in to control their kids, not the government.” If you’re concerned when the government tells you what to do, you should also be concerned when giant multinational companies with billion-dollar marketing budgets and an army of psychologists tells you what to you. Or maybe we should expect companies to practice personal responsibility and not partake in predatory practices.
And if they can’t control themselves, then we need an adult to step in and pass laws to control their behavior.