Carcinogenic Comics: Doral Cigarette Ads For Kids

Really is shameful how cigarette companies touted their garbage. These days, with all the anti-smoking regulations and campaigns, they have to sell their death in developing countries. Then there's the new fad of vaping - but smoking by any other name is just as bad for your health.

The problem with this article is that it assumes hand-drawn advertising is directed toward and appeals to only children. Not one of the examples in the article has a child even appearing in the ad. Just because they used a comic book style format doesn't mean they were aimed at children. Were these ads placed in publications specifically aimed at children? You didn't find these ads in Boy's Life or My Weekly Reader. As far as I know, the only comic book that ran a cigarette ad was the old, Willie the Penguin comic book, and that was an ad for Kool cigarettes, who must have thought it was a good idea because their mascot was a penguin. The tobacco actually self-banned tobacco ads in comics back in 1964. The Flintstones, as the article noted, was a primetime show that families watched together. While using the characters to sell cigs wasn't a brilliant move, they were not specifically aiming their ads toward the kids. Mom and Dad were watching as well. Lucy and Ricky advertised cigarettes to the same audience as well. It was a common practice to run commercials in a show that contained the show's characters. Cigarette companies were guilty of glamorizing smoking and trying to gain customers but so does every other product and, at the time, it was legal. While I doubt the tobacco companies would lose sleep if the ads did convince underage kids to take up smoking, to say that the ads were directed specifically toward them isn't correct. We are far better off that these types of ads are now banned because, adult or child, promoting smoking is a bad idea.