[greenthrow]

More than Pepsi; cigarettes. This is the only way tobacco is really allowed to advertise anymore. This is why you see scenes of characters enjoyint cigarettes prominently even though it does nothing to move the story forward.

[robobro]

Plenty of creative people smoke, drink, and engage in other vices. I'm not confident that any significant number of cases that people smoke in media is due to funding from big tobacco. When I would light up on stage and drink some beer during house shows, as a musician, I know I wasn't getting any funding for it. Do you have any articles about big tobacco paying authors, screenwriters, game designers, etc to include cigarettes in their content?

What about capnolagnia (smoking fetish) films and photos -- is the smut industry getting paid off by big tobacco?

[dragonwriter]

> I'm not confident that any significant number of cases that people smoke in media is due to funding from big tobacco.

I’m fairly confident that much of it is, that spending on it is systematically not properly disclosed to the FTC, and that approximately 100% of the cases outside a documentary or newd cobtext involving a recognizable brand are paid (in cash or otherwise) product placement, the last bit the same as with non-tobacco brand placement, and the rest as has been documented through 1994 by internal tobacco documents compared to FTC reports, with no sudden shift after 1994 that would indicate a behavior change.

[dragonwriter]

“newd” -> “news”, wasn’t aiming for a portmanteau of “nude” and “lewd”.

[k_roy]

Let's be fair though, that actually happening in movies has dropped dramatically. So many people I know vape now, and there is basically no way you can make vaping look cool onscreen

[dragonwriter]

> Let's be fair though, that actually happening in movies has dropped dramatically

It has dropped somewhat from the peak in 2005 to a little below the 1991 level by 2016. And we know from comparison of internal tobacco firm documents on product placement with their reports to the FTC that almost half of what the companies internally documented spending on product placement between 1978-1994 (that’s the latest the internal records that have been subject to outside examination go) were not reported to the FTC as spending on paid endorsements as required, and that that includes 100% of product placement spending in that period after 1988. [0]

And, we know that recogbizable branding is still displayed on screen and that with every other categort of goods that invariably, outside of news/documentary context, involves direct or in-kind payment for promotional purposes.

[0] https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7kd981j3

[TillE]

The only reason people think smoking "looks cool" is because of decades of aggressive advertising from cigarette companies, which seeped into the culture.

[Paul-Craft]

Decades? Try a century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches_of_Freedom