Anti-Tobacco Lobby Stretching the Truth?

[POS Industries]

I've seen these commercials by an organization called "truth®" for a few years now, and this most recent one stuck out at me. I don't have a video, but a here is a summation of the campaign from it's own press release at www.americanlegacy.com, an affiliated anti-tobacco group.

Puppet: “As long ago as 1969, a tobacco company executive agreed to ‘Avoid advertising directed to young people.’ Yet ten years later, they supplied their products to be featured in The Muppet Movie.” In the Puppet spot, Derrick dresses in a puppet costume and hits the streets of New York to test exactly who is interested in G-rated images like puppets. The adults on Wall Street largely ignore him, while children in a park flock to him. Smoking in the movies continues to be an issue to this day: a national study of adolescents in the United States found that 38 percent of youth smoking initiation can be traced to exposure to smoking in movies.

This ad in particular grabbed my attention, as I couldn't for the life of me remember who all was smoking in that film, so I took to my trusty tubal internets and looked it up, finding that it was Orson Welles' character that smoked the single offending cigar in the movie. Further investigation shows that a number of other films were given the same accomodations, including Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and Superman II.

Having watched these movies, my opinion is that the tobacco products in question were already present aspects of the characters as they appeared in the film (as noted, Lois Lane apparently didn't smoke in the comics, but the producers of her film counterpart believed that being a chain smoker was befitting her characterization) and that deals were reached with tobacco companies like Philip-Morris to use receive contributions in funding in exchange for product placement. This is often done in movies when a certain product is going to be used anyway, as it appears here, so the production company might as well get a few bucks for it if they can.

Now, I do agree with the overall goal of anti-tobacco groups such as these, but I find myself agreeing less and less with their methodology. It seems as if they are fighting fire with fire, in a way, stretching facts in order to deceive the public so as to heavy-handedly save the people from themselves. I don't see how this is any better than the tobacco industries own similar methods, despite the idea that the anti-smoking lobby feels they're doing it for the greater good than simply for profit.