One of the longstanding fallacies promoted by the anti-tobacco
movement is that tobacco use is solely driven by advertising and marketing by
large multinational companies, also known as “Big Tobacco.”
This is a weak claim because there is little independent
evidence to validate it. First, a
historical perspective: Tobacco was originally cultivated only in the Western
Hemisphere and was used by native Americans for thousands of years (here). In 1492, Columbus discovered the new
world, and tobacco. In the short space
of 100 years, tobacco was being consumed by people in nearly every corner of
the globe. This phenomenal explosion
happened at a time when a trans-oceanic voyage took months. In the 16th Century Big Tobacco
did not exist; consumption was driven then – as consumption is largely driven
now – by the human brain’s powerful affinity for tobacco and nicotine.
While it’s true that tobacco has been enjoyed by people all
over the world for hundreds of years, does Big Tobacco drive contemporary
consumption? To answer that question we
can turn to Federal Trade Commission reports on advertising, promotion and
sales of smokeless tobacco products (here) and cigarettes (here) in the U.S.
The chart on the left shows advertising and promotional
expenditures for moist snuff and chewing tobacco and the amount sold in the
U.S. from 1986 to 2010. At first glance,
it looks like the increase in moist snuff consumption from 36 million pounds in
1986 to 93 million in 2010, is related to the increase in advertising and
promotion. But moist snuff also
benefited from a sharp decline in chewing tobacco sales, as I noted in my
published study of smokeless tobacco use in 2000 and 2005 (abstract here, discussed in my blog here).
The second chart on the left shows advertising and
promotional expenditures for cigarettes and the number of cigarettes sold in
the U.S. from 1975 to 2010. During that
time, cigarette consumption dropped almost continuously from 600 billion per
year to 280 billion. In contrast,
cigarette advertising and promotion increased continuously from $490 million in
1975, to a peak of $15.2 billion in 2003; that was followed by a steep decline
to $8.05 billion in 2010.
What do these results show?
Cigarette consumption was declining in spite of substantial increases in
advertising and promotion. In 2004,
cigarette manufacturers finally realized that they could not influence this
trend, but anti-tobacco forces still refuse to believe it.
If tobacco advertising drives consumption, then Sweden
should be nearly tobacco-free because tobacco ads were banned completely in
that country in 1994 (here). The prevalence of tobacco use in
Sweden after 18 advertising-free years is similar to that in other developed
countries. The Swedish tobacco harm
reduction story is not exemplary because of an advertising ban, but because of
the availability and use of vastly safer snus.
The Swedish advertising experience will not be repeated in
the U.S., but Americans will continue to adopt Swedish tobacco harm reduction
methods.
