Tobacco Regulations in Canada and the US.

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Tobacco Regulations in Canada and the US

       Over the passed thirty years the Canadian and American governments have attempted

to intervene on the sale of tobacco products.  "Throughout North America, governments-

federal, provincial, state and local have declared tobacco to be public health enemy number

one."1  Smoking cigarettes has proven to be the main cause in developing illnesses such as

cancer, coronary diseases, heart attacks and lung disorders.   Since early nineteenth century the

dangers and effects produced by smoking tobacco products have been discovered and

discussed within society and in the political spectrum.  The government’s intentions regarding the

regulation of tobacco is a controversial issue. It is widely viewed that the government is more

interested in their own special interests and not as interested in creating laws that restrict the sale

of lethal products.  Governments have implemented several policies restricting commercial ads

concerning cigarettes on television and radio, they have forced cigarette companies to put health

risks on each cigarette package, created by-laws restricting where people can smoke and also

have placed harsher punishments for selling cigarettes to minors.  The most prominent

contribution to government's regulation of tobacco sales is through taxation.  Tobacco

companies pay large sums of money to the government to cover medical expenses of which

tobacco is considered the main cause.  Governments in Canada and the United States have

used the regulation of tobacco legislation to pull votes from non-smokers, to gain massive

amounts of money through taxation, and to maximize the budget for medical care that tobacco

companies must pay to compensate for federal medical expenses.

Brief History of tobacco

        Tobacco Companies actively market highly addictive and lethal products, and have

done so for many years in Canada and the United States.  The desire for profit and expansion,

rather than a concern for societal health, has dictated tobacco company operations. These

wealthy world powers continue to exercise unethical business practices in their approach to

conduct business at great costs both communal and economic to societies worldwide.  

Tobacco companies produce a product for society to desire and  benefit from it’s profit.  They

also satisfy legal responsibilities and obey laws although their political influence has frequently

slanted the government process in their favour financially.  Although producing and selling

tobacco is legal, the business is not automatically ethical and does not benefit society as a

whole.  

        Tobacco companies display a lack of ethical concern in producing, marketing, and

selling tobacco products. The addictive and harmful effects of cigarettes were already well

known by tobacco companies from the 1950’s.2  The need to keep a supply of consumers

addicted to nicotine in order to profit led to the development of the public relations industry.

Exposing the tobacco companies knowledge and business practices began with a paralegal

named Merrell Williams, Jr. He sent copies of a major tobacco company’s internal

communications from a law firm to Stan Glantz at the University of California at San Francisco

who then published The Cigarette Papers. This analysis of what the tobacco companies knew

and how they concealed it from the public was also published in the July 1995 issue of The

Journal of the American Medical Association3. This proved that the tobacco companies lied

about their findings.   Williams also found that psychological marketing was first used on women

and the children and included third party advocacy, subliminal message reinforcement, junk

science, advocacy advertising, phoney front groups, and buying favourable advertising and news

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reports. Sales to women increased with the implied message that ‘cigarettes keep you slim’

from Virginia Slims and slogans such as ‘Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet’4.  To break the

taboo that respectable women do not smoke, they produced advertising equating cigarettes with

freedom as a symbol of women’s liberation. Deluging society with decades of advertising on

television, in magazines, movies, radio, and billboards identified cigarettes with sex, youth,

freedom, and vitality.  The tobacco companies were not only aware of the dangers of smoking

and kept it from their consumers, they coerced ...

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