Women as Victims of Tobacco Corporations




women smoking Despite all-prevailing informational campaigns to educate us about harmful effects of smoking, women still smoke a lot, and this fact is confirmed by recent statistical data. While doctors and scientists scare us with gloomy stories about lung cancer, clogged arteries and aged skin, and some alternative researchers claim that smoking improves memory and raises the level of “feel good” hormones, we, women, still face a hard dilemma: to smoke or not to smoke. However, how free are we to choose?

Do you know that top multinational tobacco corporations spend billions of dollars on sponsoring tobacco-friendly research, as well as on massive advertising campaigns aimed at their potential victims, and women are targeted especially aggressively? Teams of skilful researchers and consultants work on development of intricate psychological programs to hook women on tobacco by using our numerous weaknesses and susceptibility - offering, for example, cigarettes with a taste of chocolate, which supposedly would discourage us from excessive eating and would help us lose weight… Tobacco companies are trying to find ways to advertise cigarettes as an alluring and prestigious commodity for women in order to make us believe that smoking is for the “cool and sophisticated”.

In one of the reports developed by “Philipp Morris” and recently made public, consultants of this influential tobacco company point out the advantages of producing thinner and longer types of cigarettes in order to continue exploiting women: such company trick should create an illusion among female smokers that they consume a product, which is “healthier” and “more prestigious”. As women usually have no idea how much nicotine and tart is contained in these “healthy” types of lung rockets, they do believe that what they smoke is not as harmful as regular cigarettes, which is very far from being true. It is also interesting to note that the document analyses some reasons of female smoking and tries to turn them into the advantage of tobacco producers, for example, stating that women smoke more and buy stronger cigarettes when they are stressed and unhappy in their private lives. Therefore, “unhappy women” become a sweet target for cigarette corporations.

Other reports indicate that various tobacco manufacturers add to cigarettes chemical substances that work as appetite suppressants, including “unique fragrances” of cognac, vanilla, honey, and peppermint.

It is expected that in the future women will consume even more tobacco products than now - mostly because of aggressive advertising and other promotional campaigns that cigarette corporations launch in the Third World countries. Smoking among men is expected to remain on the same level.

Deanna Campbell

Related:
Which Stop Smoking Pill is Best to Choose?

Related Posts

Posted on August 10, 2007 
Filed Under Smoking and Women

Comments

Leave a Reply