CKNW Editorial
for August 7, 2000

Like they do in the game of Bridge, let’s review the bidding here. Is it not accepted by all of us – excepting a few with an enormous self interest - that tobacco is a lethal poison and that smoking it is not only arguably the most addictive habit in the world but the most destructive? I have spoken to heroin addicts who say that tobacco is far harder to kick than tobacco. Smoking cocaine might be worse but that’s a hell of a league for tobacco to be involved in. We know that tobacco not only causes lung cancer, mouth cancer, emphysema, strokes, heart disease to just name a few but that it is a drug easily accessible and attractive to our youth.

Now surely, as a society, we admit another thing. Advertising works. Billions of dollars a year are spent by pretty smart companies on the basis that advertising increases their sales. And equally certainly we know that advertising often sets the fashions of the day. What’s in and what’s not can often be traced to advertising. Now in using the word advertising I’m really including the whole area of public relations because they are joined at the hip. Both disciplines involve selling, be it a product or a story … both consist in convincing people of what the convincer believes to be true. Huge PR firms like Burson-Marsteller make hundreds of millions a year by either playing up the virtues of their clients or suppressing their vices.

The Benson and Hedges people are likely to cancel the Symphony of Fire display next year … Export ‘A’ will likely not sponsor the ‘skins’ game in golf and DuMaurier may cease sponsoring their jazz festival. These sponsorships will end because the government of Canada’s rules against advertising their product off site will kick in.

Now, as a mature society, we have to ask ourselves a simple question – why do these purveyors of death want to put on these popular events? Because they are high minded citizens who simply wish to do good in their communities? Clearly the answer is that none of them have a charitable bone in their bodies. If they were in the slightest interested in the general public they would get out of the business they’re in and they would sponsor these events anonymously. These events provide huge advertising value to the tobacco giants. Because they are associated with such popular events, these monsters can play on the warm and fuzzy feelings we all get about something that comes our way apparently for nothing.

We want so badly to rationalize don’t we? We’d like terribly to believe that the tremendous public awareness for their products that fireworks, jazz festivals and golf games bring, do not sell smoking and the use of tobacco. We want so badly to believe – so we can enjoy – that we are prepared to suspend all our powers of reasoning. But in doing so, we're hypocrites for if we are to permit tobacco companies to so cheaply and effectively advertise their products we should let it all hang out and restore their ability to peddle their dangerous dope on radio, TV and in the press.

But, folks, this is simply advertising and PR and is treated that way. Make no mistake about it. If you don’t want tobacco advertised to your children, why would you accept that advertising if it has a firecracker, a saxophone or a Titleist golf ball attached?

Yes. It will be sad to lose these very popular events and maybe we should all write our MPs to get these sponsors exemptions from the severity of the law. But just before you sign your name to that letter of protest remember that it’s your kids the Benson and Hedges, DuMaurier and Export ‘A’ people are after. There is no way you can rationalize that away. These companies are not doing these so-called public spirited things anonymously for good reason - they are advertising and very effectively advertising the insidious products they produce.