Well, it was just a matter of time before the e-cigarette
profiteers started exploiting another strategy from Big Tobacco’s marketing
playbook: product placement in major motion pictures.
Reports have surfaced this week that Canadian-based
SmokeStik International has paid the
producers of
Cymbeline to place its
drug delivery system in the lips of actress
Milla Jovovich throughout the
film.
Early word is that signs promoting
the brand are also visible in the film.
This is particularly ironic since e-cigarettes are banned in Canada, so
this Canadian company has to ram their poison down U.S. throats in order to profit
from people’s addiction.
The fact that this type of promotion is making a comeback is
partly becasue the FDA has dragged its feet to finalize
minimal regulations on the products.
In
addition, the ban on tobacco product placement in movies that was contained in
the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement does not extend to emerging products.
That doesn’t mean that tobacco use disappeared from
movies.
In fact, tobacco use is still
incredibly common in youth-rated movies (G, PG, and PG-13), and Big Tobacco continues
to find clever ways to get brand names into the hands of celebrities (movie
posters, photos supplied with national interviews).
While the practice of making direct payments
to studios to include tobacco brand names in movies has been banned, there is
no doubt that indirect payments are being made to slide this brand name imagery
into this type of collateral media.
Tobacco is displayed in photos provided for marketing materials for the movie "Fight Club", including a film review (left), a national interview with Brad Pitt, and the DVD cover. Notice the product placement for Marlboro lights included in the photo of Brad Pitt.
In all likelihood, this practice has already started with
e-cigarette manufacturers.
Since the
original purchase of Blu E-Cigarettes by Lorillard in the spring of 2012, those
products have appeared in multiple platforms.
This includes the high-profile use by
Julia Louis-Dreyfus during the
2014 Golden Globe Awards, and the use by
Kevin Spacey during a scene in
House of Cards.
Other characters have used electronic cigarettes in major
motion pictures, including
Dennis Quaid in
Beneath the Darkness, and
Johnny Depp in
TheTourist.
This type of use helps to
normalize an addictive drug.
However,
the six-figure contract to promote the
SmokeStik
brand name within a movie takes the marketing of these drug delivery devices to
a new level… a level that was so successful with traditional tobacco products
that the activity was banned nearly two decades ago.
Those of us that are working on the issue of tobacco use in movies
realize that these media depictions of smoking have an incredible impact on
youth tobacco initiation. In fact, in January 2014 the United States Surgeon
General went so far as to suggest that films depicting smoking deserve an
automatic R-Rating:
“Actions
that would eliminate depiction of tobacco use in movies that are produced
and rated as appropriate for children and adolescents could have a significant
benefit in reducing the numbers of youth who become tobacco users. It has been
suggested that the movie industry modernize the Motion Picture Association of
America voluntary rating system to eliminate smoking from youth-rated films by
awarding any film with smoking or other pro-tobacco imagery an R rating (with
exceptions for real historical figures who actually smoked or films that
actually depict the dangers of smoking or exposure to secondhand smoke).
Further, if such a change in the [MPAA] rating system would reduce
in-theater exposures from a current median of about 275 annual exposures per
adolescent from PG-13 movies down to approximately 10 or less, adolescent
smoking would be reduced by an estimated 18%.”
Here’s the thing: strategies
that have been used by Big Tobacco to encourage youth tobacco use are now being
employed to encourage youth electronic cigarette use. Those strategies include use by characters in
movies and specific brand product placement.
We know that it worked in the past, otherwise the next generation of
nicotine profiteers would not have bothered to recycle them.
“I don’t see a problem with glamorizing something that saves
lives,” said Bill Marangos, Smokestik’s Chief Executive Hypocrite. "I think we're, as an industry, trying to show people that there is a different way and it's an acceptable way to smoke."
That's the goal. Make addiction acceptable, especially among kids.
The long-term morbidity and mortality of electronic cigarettes
has not been established, and it will not be for 2-3 decades. Mr. Marangos
claims that we should promote his product in movies because they are
live-savers are at their best disingenuous; at their worst, his unsubstantiated
claims will be responsible for addicting another generation of young people to
a dangerous chemical with undetermined consequences.
And remember: by the time all of this is sorted out, Mr. Marangos will
have cashed the checks.
For more information on the issue of movie smoking and its impact on youth tobacco initiation, visit
SmokeScreeners,
Smoke-Free Movies, and
Scene Smoking.
