By Edwin Lim
“Guarding the people’s health is also our job as a people, and we must call out tobacco companies for continuing to spread fake information about vape and similar products”
If you google “vintage cigarette ads” you might be surprised at what you’d see. “MORE DOCTORS SMOKE CAMELS THAN ANY OTHER CIGARETTE,” declares one (yes, in all caps!).
“20,679 Physicians say ‘Luckies are less irritating,’” says another, adding the reason is “it’s toasted” (whatever that means).
These two ads feature photos of what look like doctors holding either lit cigarettes or packs of them, but another one stands out because it shows a photo of a baby with the supposed quote: “Gee, Dad, you always get the best of everything… even Marlboro!”
If still alive, that baby would be in their 70s now, and I wonder what they think about being in an ad that got it so wrong on so many levels.
Hindsight is 20/20, of course, and perhaps the dangers of smoking were not as well known among the general population.
But these dangers were certainly well known in the the tobacco industry, because as early as the 1950s studies were showing the adverse effects of smoking on the human body. The industry was already deceiving the people in the mid-20th century — using doctors (or actors dressed up as actors) and even babies in the grand ruse.
Today the tobacco industry is doing the same deception, albeit in less obvious ways.
One tactic it employs is to host “scientific forums” where health professionals are invited to listen to fellow health professionals talk about the benefits no longer of cigarettes (whose dangers are well known now) but of this relatively new product called vape and its variations like heated tobacco.
As in the 1950s ads, these products are called “less harmful” and even beneficial because they can supposedly wean smokers off cigarettes.
Recently, Senator Pia Cayetano riled against such forums and asked her colleagues in the Senate to join her in clamping down on them.
One particular forum caught her ire because it was billed as an “oncology-focused event” in its invitation to doctors and other health professionals.
The not-so-subliminal message being communicated is that vape and heated tobacco are not unhealthy and may be beneficial in the context of cancer.
That’s a load of BS, of course, because nicotine and the 70 other chemicals in cigarettes (including formaldehyde, lead, arsenic, and even radioactive elements such as polonium-210) are harmful to the body no matter how they are delivered.
The visibly angry Senator Pia pointed out that while the government is still trying to find funds to pay healthcare workers who worked in the frontlines and risked their lives during the COVID-19 pandemic, it also allows tobacco companies to hold such seminars “in the guise of being scientific forums.”
“They make health claims without the permission of the FDA (Food and Drug Administration),” she said.
“They can’t be allowed to use doctors and false information to deceive the people, especially the youth,” she added.
This is, of course, the FDA’s job (as lobbied by Senator Pia to be included in the Vape Law or RA 11900 which lapsed into law last July), and it must be made to answer for the forums that are being held right under its nose.
But guarding the people’s health is also our job as a people, and we must call out tobacco companies for continuing to spread fake information about vape and similar products.
We don’t want to be laughed at by future generations in the same way we ridicule people for believing that smoking is good 50 years ago.
(Edwin Lim is a health worker who advocates reforms in public health and sin tax).