YouTube Videos Promote Smoking, Study Finds

Cigarette ads that would not be allowed on television are now popping up on YouTube, according to a new study this week in the journal Tobacco Control.

Researchers from New Zealand searched the popular post-your-own-video site for references to five major cigarette brands — Marlboro, L&M, Winston, Benson & Hedges, and Mild Seven — and then analyzed 163 relevant video clips that ranked highly according to YouTube’s “most watched” measure. Many of the videos were old ads (some of them now outlawed in much of the world) or archival footage, and many of them featured celebrities. AFP reports today:

There were also scenes from films with popular actors and a cigarette whose brand was visible, extracts of tobacco-sponsored sporting events, and TV footage from the 1950s and 1960s, including The Flintstones, The Beverly Hillbillies and even the Beatles.

Overall, the researchers classified 71% of the videos as promoting a “pro-tobacco” message and a scant 4% as having an anti-tobacco message. The remaining videos were neutral.

The researchers write that many of the videos appeared to be “very professionally made,” and that companies’ failure to request removal of the videos for copyright infringement is “consistent with indirect marketing activity by tobacco companies or their proxies.” The major tobacco companies, however, deny any involvement in posting the YouTube videos — which can be done anonymously.

According to AFP, a spokeswoman for Philip Morris International, producer of Marlboro and L&M, said that her company never markets products on YouTube. “We have previously asked YouTube to remove content related to our brands and will be contacting YouTube again following this study,” she told a reporter.

http://wittywifesmarriageproject.wordpress.com wittywife

So what?

YouTube isn’t promoting smoking. The videos ‘promote’ smoking, if you want to call it that.

Let adults make their own decisions. Worried about what your kids are watching? Then monitor them. This isn’t that hard.

I loved watching Audrey Hepburn smoke in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Did it make me smoke as a teenager? No – my parent’s would have never allowed it.

Does it make me want to smoke as an adult? No, because I have a brain and can decide what’s right for me or not.

Seriously. No accountability. Blame smoking on YouTube? Seriously. Blame smoking on yourself. I don’t think there’s a person in this country that doesn’t know it’s bad for them.
http://wittywifesmarriageproject.wordpress.com wittywife

(parents, not parent’s. Typo.)
carpevis

And if the parents themselves smoke? What about normal teen rebellion. What about people who through no fault of their own are simply born stupid or impressionable?
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I agree that a person needs to take responsibility for themselves, but let’s face it, 50% of everyone on Earth is below average. If you’re an above average marketer trying to generate sales and all avenues of the most effective kind (Audio/video) have been made illegal for you, where are you going to turn? And who watches these videos? You can bet most of them fall into that below average category.
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I also agree that it’s not YouTube’s fault for having these things there, but there’s no doubt that people use YouTube for their own purposes and marketing is just one of them.
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I blame the marketers for the trademarked and copy-written videos being there in the first place and for not requesting that they be pulled in the second. I blame human stupidity for people taking up smoking in the first place.