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How the Tobacco Industry Hijacked the Women’s Movement
By Veda Peters, Tobacco Education Coordinator, BC Lung Association
May 27, 2010 - Millions of dollars continue to be spent by the tobacco industry to lure young women into buying cigarettes, an issue being tackled by all of us joining in support and raising awareness of the dangers of tobacco marketing towards women and girls for World No Tobacco Day 2010, celebrated on May 31st. It all started when tobacco advertisers saw how feminism could be used to their advantage.
The tobacco industry has a history of marketing to young girls and women, enticing them into a lifetime of smoking with adverse consequences for their health. Right from the early 1900’s, the tobacco industry focussed their marketing efforts on women, linking smoking to glamour and thinness and women’s emancipation.
One example is how cigarette maker Lucky Strike connected its advertising in the 1920’s with weight control. They coined the tagline “Reach for a Lucky Strike instead of a Sweet”, a campaign that contributed to more than a 300 percent increase in sales in its first year of the advertising campaign. Another is when Lucky Strike persuaded a group of New York debutantes to smoke in public during the 1928 Easter Parade. The images made it into newspapers and were later used in ad campaign billing cigarettes as ‘torches of liberty’ (in other words women’s liberation).
When in 1964 the US Surgeon General released its report linking cigarette use to heart disease and lung cancer, the tobacco industry responded with an aggressive misinformation campaign to raise doubts about the health risks of smoking. And despite the significant drop in the smoking rate in response to the Surgeon Generals’ report, a whole new generation of women was enticed into smoking.
Then again during the rise of the women’s movement in the late1960’s and early 70’s, the industry devised ‘women’s cigarettes’ such as ‘Virginia Slims’, and played once again on the themes of liberation and weight control. Perhaps some will remember the Virginia Slims marketing slogan, “You’ve come a long way, baby,” used effectively to exploit the politics of the day and identifying cigarette smoking with independence, equality and women’s right to choose their own path.
Fortunately, the past 40 years has seen enormous change in our understanding about the dangers of smoking and the adoption of ever-toughening tobacco control legislation as well as the prohibition of much of the advertising and promotions freedoms the tobacco industry once enjoyed – with Canada becoming a global leader on tobacco control. Most importantly, less than one in five Canadians smoke and most of those who do, want to quit.
However the fight continues with cigarette makers finding new and provocative ways to persuade women and men to smoke by exploiting every legal loophole there is. Most recently, package design and product development has been at the heart of their marketing strategy; the design of slim (lipstick-sized)and sleek cigarette packs and the promotion of snus and flavoured cigarillos. But in less developed countries where knowledge level is poor and regulations less restrictive, the same ads banned in North America in 1970 are being resurrected and used to enslave new generations of smokers.
Smart marketing works. That’s why the tobacco industry spends millions upon millions per day in order to attract new smokers and replace those who choose to quit or die from smoking’s health hazards.
According to the World Health Organization, half of smokers alive today will die from tobacco-related disease. Quitting smoking remains the single most important step anyone can take to improve their health.
For more information, contact:
Veda Peters, Tobacco Education Coordinator, BC Lung Association
T 604.731.5864 or TF 1.800.665.LUNG (5864) or E peters@bc.lung.ca