5 ms·

Cigarette makers are making an awful amount of money and nobody is even talking about them. They have a huge influence on media, so many indirect advertising ev

by stunt 8y ago

Cigarette makers are making an awful amount of money and nobody is even talking about them. They have a huge influence on media, so many indirect advertising everywhere. Overhead on health care and even the environment that is all on taxpayers (smokers and non-smokers)

eadmund 8y ago
> Cigarette makers are making an awful amount of money and nobody is even talking about them. I don't think that's true. The maker of my favourite cigarette (I haven't smoked a cigarette in years, but I have nothing against smoking a cigarette every once in awhile) doesn't even distribute in this country anymore, due to massive lawsuit expenses. > They have a huge influence on media, so many indirect advertising everywhere. I believe that a single cigarette will get a movie an R rating (and that movies nowadays prefer larger audiences to more sophisticated ones, and hence avoid R ratings), and that cigarettes are completely forbidden on prime-time TV. Perhaps I'm wrong? > Overhead on health care and even the environment that is all on taxpayers (smokers and non-smokers) Last I heard the health costs were dwarfed by the Social Security savings due to regular smokers dying younger. You don't hear as much about cigarettes now as twenty years ago because the anti-tobacco forces won. Smokers are nigh-universally looked down upon. The only people who will smoke publicly are the poor. It's just not worth the social cost to smoke tobacco any more. There was an article recently about how science can regain its reputation. I think that the issue of smoking is a prime example of how things should have gone differently: the role of science & scientists was simply to point out that smoking causes cancer (and other diseases) & reduces quality of life. That's it: no recommendations to quit smoking, and certainly no recommendations for laws against it. Science is capable of making predictions based on data; it's not capable of deciding what should be done based on those predictions (that's a matter for ethics or philosophy or religion or morality or whatever). In the case of smoking, the debate should have been: given that smoking is bad for people, is it reasonable to use State violence to prevent them from smoking? I argue that the answer is clearly no, but certainly others would argue otherwise. The key thing here is that science has no input into that argument.
- deftnerd 8y ago
  Good question about ratings and cigarette smoking. Some quick googling pulled up this well-researched article [1] last updated a year ago that does indicate that the MPAA is more inclined to give an R rating to movies that show smoking, although they do consider some of the context. If it's a historical piece that had real-world smokers, they're more inclined to not let the smoking factor into the ratings because then it gets in the way of the intent of the writer/director to make the movie realistic. They are more inclined to allow smoking if it's used to make smoking look bad (the smoker is slovenly, coughs a lot, etc) or if the smoker has smoking-related consequences (lung cancer, being made fun of, etc). Television is a bit more nuanced. The TV ratings (TV-MA, TV-PG, etc) are self-assigned by the network showing the show according to their own guidelines, or a collection of amorphous industry "best practices". There is also a difference between Broadcast Network television and cable television. Cable television doesn't seem to feel a restriction on showing smoking characters, but a show on Network television that wants to have a character smoke has to work really hard to get approval. Here is an example from the NBC series "The Mick" [2] where they state: "When the Chernin brothers first mentioned to the writing staff that they wanted to do an episode about Mickey (Kaitlin Olson) and Sabrina (Sofia Black-D’Elia) smoking, we knew it would be a challenge. On cable, the characters can smoke themselves into oblivion, but on network television — let’s just say Mom and Dad don’t approve. So, how did we get the network to agree to a smoking episode? And why? Simply put, we were all excited about telling a story where Mickey and Sabrina’s bad habit and selfishness would affect the family, specifically Ben (Jack Stanton). We just had to convince the network that this wasn’t an episode glorifying smoking; it was an episode condemning it. Thankfully, Fox is like the cool parent of the network world and believed in our take enough to let us push the boundaries and show the characters actually smoking." So, it seems that television is more under the pressure of either wanting to "do the right thing" or not upsetting anti-smoking advocates that could perhaps start a campaign to get a show canceled. [1] https://www.thoughtco.com/mpaa-ratings-and-tobacco-use-in-movies-4071918 https://www.thoughtco.com/mpaa-ratings-and-tobacco-use-in-mo... [2] https://ew.com/tv/2017/01/17/the-mick-recap-season-1-episode-6/ https://ew.com/tv/2017/01/17/the-mick-recap-season-1-episode...

by stunt 8y ago

eadmund 8y ago

> Cigarette makers are making an awful amount of money and nobody is even talking about them. I don't think that's true. The maker of my favourite cigarette (I haven't smoked a cigarette in years, but I have nothing against smoking a cigarette every once in awhile) doesn't even distribute in this country anymore, due to massive lawsuit expenses. > They have a huge influence on media, so many indirect advertising everywhere. I believe that a single cigarette will get a movie an R rating (and that movies nowadays prefer larger audiences to more sophisticated ones, and hence avoid R ratings), and that cigarettes are completely forbidden on prime-time TV. Perhaps I'm wrong? > Overhead on health care and even the environment that is all on taxpayers (smokers and non-smokers) Last I heard the health costs were dwarfed by the Social Security savings due to regular smokers dying younger. You don't hear as much about cigarettes now as twenty years ago because the anti-tobacco forces won. Smokers are nigh-universally looked down upon. The only people who will smoke publicly are the poor. It's just not worth the social cost to smoke tobacco any more. There was an article recently about how science can regain its reputation. I think that the issue of smoking is a prime example of how things should have gone differently: the role of science & scientists was simply to point out that smoking causes cancer (and other diseases) & reduces quality of life. That's it: no recommendations to quit smoking, and certainly no recommendations for laws against it. Science is capable of making predictions based on data; it's not capable of deciding what should be done based on those predictions (that's a matter for ethics or philosophy or religion or morality or whatever). In the case of smoking, the debate should have been: given that smoking is bad for people, is it reasonable to use State violence to prevent them from smoking? I argue that the answer is clearly no, but certainly others would argue otherwise. The key thing here is that science has no input into that argument.

deftnerd 8y ago
Good question about ratings and cigarette smoking. Some quick googling pulled up this well-researched article [1] last updated a year ago that does indicate that the MPAA is more inclined to give an R rating to movies that show smoking, although they do consider some of the context. If it's a historical piece that had real-world smokers, they're more inclined to not let the smoking factor into the ratings because then it gets in the way of the intent of the writer/director to make the movie realistic. They are more inclined to allow smoking if it's used to make smoking look bad (the smoker is slovenly, coughs a lot, etc) or if the smoker has smoking-related consequences (lung cancer, being made fun of, etc). Television is a bit more nuanced. The TV ratings (TV-MA, TV-PG, etc) are self-assigned by the network showing the show according to their own guidelines, or a collection of amorphous industry "best practices". There is also a difference between Broadcast Network television and cable television. Cable television doesn't seem to feel a restriction on showing smoking characters, but a show on Network television that wants to have a character smoke has to work really hard to get approval. Here is an example from the NBC series "The Mick" [2] where they state: "When the Chernin brothers first mentioned to the writing staff that they wanted to do an episode about Mickey (Kaitlin Olson) and Sabrina (Sofia Black-D’Elia) smoking, we knew it would be a challenge. On cable, the characters can smoke themselves into oblivion, but on network television — let’s just say Mom and Dad don’t approve. So, how did we get the network to agree to a smoking episode? And why? Simply put, we were all excited about telling a story where Mickey and Sabrina’s bad habit and selfishness would affect the family, specifically Ben (Jack Stanton). We just had to convince the network that this wasn’t an episode glorifying smoking; it was an episode condemning it. Thankfully, Fox is like the cool parent of the network world and believed in our take enough to let us push the boundaries and show the characters actually smoking." So, it seems that television is more under the pressure of either wanting to "do the right thing" or not upsetting anti-smoking advocates that could perhaps start a campaign to get a show canceled. [1] https://www.thoughtco.com/mpaa-ratings-and-tobacco-use-in-movies-4071918 https://www.thoughtco.com/mpaa-ratings-and-tobacco-use-in-mo... [2] https://ew.com/tv/2017/01/17/the-mick-recap-season-1-episode-6/ https://ew.com/tv/2017/01/17/the-mick-recap-season-1-episode...