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 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