I don't really have a position on the issue one way or the other, but it is insane how quickly this somewhat small issue (compared to stuff that everyone has been talking about for decades, like abortion) became part of the culture war, I already see "come and take it" memes being made.
I still don’t understand how tobacco companies faced any consequences and became the be of the few corporations generally recognized as immoral
Maybe, like the 60s-70s cartoonishly obvious pollution (rivers catching on fire etc), it was just too obvious and public and widespread
There’s like, an imperceptible cause with gas stoves. Nobody has to drive the bus as long as nobody kicks up too much of a racket
I watched a doc on them, and the tl;dw is that at one time the "fairness doctrine" mandated that if a TV channel showed tobacco ads, then they also had to show anti-smoking PSAs. Even though the PSAs were heavily outnumbered by the ads, over time they worked, and white people almost completely quit smoking, so the tobacco companies lobbied to ban their own advertisements in order to stop the PSAs. The legacy of the anti-smoking PSAs is still pretty strong in our culture, though the tobacco industry stayed afloat by targeting the black community (even funding orgs like the NAACP) and eventually found new life when vapes were invented.
WOWWWW that is wild stuff. never heard any of that before
why not just stop advertising?
It's kind of a prisoners dilemma. Even if all the big companies recognize the stakes and pull ads, it only takes one of them betraying the others to eke out a small sales advantage for themselves while harming the industry as a whole.
oh I see lmao absolutely amazing that capitalism can create this kind of equilibrium
"The battle is won when the average corporate journalist is regarded in the same way as the average tobacco executive. They have a job; they're promoting their product; their product is cancerous and deadly; they're often bright people; they're often good people; but beware of what it is they're selling you."
-- Micheal Malice, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNYGhsf5G1k