US
This month, tobacco manufacturers will begin running self-critical, court-mandated ads as part of a settlement of a lawsuit with the Department of Justice (DOJ) over misleading statements that began nearly 20 years ago.
Two decades ago DOJ said that the manufacturers' statements on cigarettes and their health effects were deceptive, so the firms involved are being forced to spend millions of dollars on 30-45 second television ads to run five times per week during prime-time programming for the next year.
The ads will not show the graphic representations of the effects of cigarettes that most anti-smoking spots do, but rather will have simple text on a white screen with voice-over narration, like the disclosure statement at the end of a pharmaceutical advertisement.
Altria, parent company of Philip Morris, estimated it will spend $31 million on the ad spots, which will also include campaigns in newspapers and on company-owned websites. The company said that one ad will say, “Altria, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, Lorillard, and Philip Morris USA intentionally designed cigarettes to make them more addictive,” while another says, “More people die every year from smoking than from murder, AIDS, suicide, drugs, car crashes, and alcohol, combined.”
All the defendants in the original 1999 lawsuit are now owned by either Altria or British American Tobacco.