The Tragedy of Tobacco and the State: Part 5 – Hey Kids, Let Me Addict You

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASPA as an organization.

By Erik Devereux
August 23, 2024

This is the fifth column in a series on the responses of democratic governments to the public health disaster caused by nicotine addiction (first column, second column, third column, fourth column). The prior columns focus on a nexus of three interests in the policy process that have limited efforts to end nicotine addiction in the United States: The nicotine industry with its longstanding influence over the policy process, the health care industry that relies on income from treating the consequences of nicotine addiction and state and local governments that expect sales tax revenues from the sale of nicotine products to continue. This column turns to a fourth participant in the ongoing public health disaster caused by nicotine: The entertainment industry which has promoted cigarette smoking and nicotine addiction to children for generations. Smoking cigarettes in and of itself never was “cool”—it required the constant depiction of smoking in entertainment to sell nicotine to kids.

Latest statistics from the U.S. CDC show that just over 11 percent of all adults in the United States report being routine cigarette smokers. This is the lowest recorded rate since the 1964 Surgeon General’s report linking tobacco use with cancer and represents a major long-term shift in public health. Please note that these statistics do not capture “social smoking” or the vaping of nicotine products. Amazingly, the known rate of nicotine addiction among entertainers in music, film, and television is in the range of 80 percent or perhaps higher. Furthermore, that rate really has not declined while most of the U.S. population stopped smoking. It seems that to be “in the club” as an entertainer requires regularly consuming nicotine.

While there has been considerable scrutiny of the depiction of tobacco use in movies and television, the more important point is that children are very aware that their celebrity idols consume tobacco products. Bizarrely, but perhaps in keeping with the nature of the beast, there are numerous websites that focus on presenting imagery of actors, musicians and other celebrities smoking cigarettes or vaping. There are dark corners of the Internet where celebrities hawk vaping brands in a manner completely accessible to children.

The back end of all of this also is very concerning. When famous entertainers become ill and eventually die because of nicotine addiction, the role of nicotine in their demise often is hidden from view. One of the leading causes of death from cigarette smoking is COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder), a precursor to full-blown emphysema. Often you will see obituaries of celebrities referencing COPD as the cause of death when a more accurate statement would be nicotine addiction. Leonard Nemoy of Star Trek fame is one of the few celebrities ever to make it clear that his death was caused by smoking cigarettes and not simply COPD.

In fact, when celebrities publicly quit nicotine and confront the tobacco industrial complex, they often find their careers are in jeopardy. I know of several famous celebrities that have quit cigarettes, even a few who previously went way out of their way in public to glorify tobacco, but supermodel Christy Turlington is among a very small number to quit tobacco and confront the industry after her father died of lung cancer. Turlington subsequently has spoken of the chilling impact of her anti-nicotine activism on her career.

And what has the television and movie industry done in response to public campaigns against depicting tobacco use in programming accessible to children? One of the more annoying trends in this regard is the increase in films set in the first half of the 20th century, a time when nearly half of the U.S. adult population regularly smoked. Depicting smoking in these productions is defended thus as “historically accurate” by an industry that generally has never cared one bit about any such accuracy regarding other factors. The oft-seen “based on a true story” notice at the start of a movie usually means, “and now we take license to do whatever we want.” Imagine if there had been some other truly nasty personal habits of the 1930s or 1940s. What are the odds that an expensive movie production would get the “green light” solely to depict such for today’s children to see?

Children who decide now that nicotine consumption is cool because their entertainment heroes are addicts eventually will be tomorrow’s cancer and heart disease patients. Unlike those heroes who often have the resources to pay for advanced medical care, those grown up children who took up nicotine after seeing it used in movies, television and by their favorite musicians will not have the resources to get the best care. They thus will join the hundreds of thousands of U.S. adults whose lives will end prematurely so that others could profit.

Once again, we must ask what is the proper obligation of government in the United States in this instance? And what is the obligation of public administrators who know beyond a shadow of a doubt that nicotine remains an ongoing disaster?

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Author: Erik Devereux is Teaching Associate Professor in the Department of Public Policy, Management, and Analytics at the University of Illinois-Chicago. He has a B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Political Science, 1985) and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin (Government, 1993). He is the author of Methods of Policy Analysis: Creating, Deploying, and Assessing Theories of Change (available for free here). Email: [email protected]. More content is available here.

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