Alcohol and Tobacco Advertising should be Heavily Regulated or Banned Altogether? Agree or Disagree? In an attempt to reach a massive potential market, companies have array of options to choose from, but over time advertisement has proven to be an avoidable choice in this pursuit. Since all the companies have the right to buy air time on any media to advertise their product, alcohol and tobacco manufacturing companies have taken this advantage to spread their products (Harrison, Roy, and Waun 59-65). However, there have been debates for decades now, whether these two products need to abolished. Because high health risks are associated with consumption of alcohol and tobacco products, women, adolescences, and expectant mother are the most vulnerable. Besides being naturally dangerous, they are causal factors of various diseases. These include varied cancers, respiratory complications, liver cirrhosis, and heart diseases (Watson, Victor, and Sherma 284-289). In cases of long term use, they result in deaths. Therefore, since lives are precious than economic gains attain from alcohol and tobacco, their advertisements should be block and efforts directed to sweep them out of the community completely. During the advertisement of alcohol and tobacco product, persuasive approaches are implemented where images of health people drinking and smoking while having merry moment are used. According to research by Haustein and David, the mythical imageries applied have a tremendous impact on adolescence (5-8). Annually, there have been programs trying to save fifty percent of adolescences indulged in these harmful substances, but with the frequent adverts on media, the effort and resource channeled for it go to waste. As a result, school dropouts, early pregnancy, high infection rates of sexually transmitted diseases has been registered in adolescences under influence of alcohol and tobacco. Notably, their academic performances also deteriorate alongside their health (Schmitz, and Richard 68). Ultimately, they become societal bothers since they stair head societal problems including crimes, rapes cases, and poverty. Therefore, to curb these menaces and also save the innocent adolescences, alcohol and tobacco advertisement masterminding the whole mess should be abolished. When it comes to diseases, statistics depicts that approximately more than a million people perish from direct and indirect effect of alcohol and tobacco annually in United States alone. Cigarettes alone, contributes seventy percent of the statistics through cancer and respiratory related infections (Bayard 34). Also, nonsmokers who by accident inhale unfiltered chemical content of tobacco smoke are highly vulnerable. Pregnant women using both or either tobacco or alcohol risk themselves and the babies they are exacting. As a result, they are likely to give birth to babies with fatal alcohol disorder (FAD) and or fatal alcohol effects (FAE) (Watson, Victor, and Sherma 305). Further, these children are prone of suffering mental disorientations in the future. On the other hand, deaths emanating from a fire started by carelessly dropped cigarette filters have claimed thousands of lives every year. Considered the two in terms of human health and physical safety and wellbeing, cigarettes and alcohol advertisement should be abolished Economically, these two products are among the highly taxed thereby, making them large gross domestic product contributor. The heavy taxes levies have been applied in an endeavor to discourage the users (Bayard 43). But, there are advertisements by the companies to count tackle that, where consumers of these drugs have an opportunity to win prizes out of continues consumptions. This has not only swayed people, but it has also deteriorated users of these substances economically. Both being addictive substances, their users are unable to control their consumption rate and this has impacted financial irresponsibility on parents affected since they overspend on the drags forgetting their family responsibilities (Harrison, Roy, and Waun 78). Therefore, why should alcohol and tobacco advertisement still stand with these kinds of damages they cause? In summation, health hazards impacted by both alcohol and tobacco as a result of misleading adverts is worrying and need urgent responses measures to curb further damages. Lack of informed and autonomous decisions by adolescences makes them gullible to false adverts on alcohol and tobacco. In totality, this drugs need to be completely made illegal starting with completely banning their adverts.
Works Cited
Bayard, Steven P. Respiratory Health Effects of Passive Smoking: Lung Cancer and Other Disorders. Washington, DC: Office of Health and Environmental Assessment, Office of Research and Development, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1992. Print.
Harrison, Louis B, Roy B. Sessions, and Waun K. Hong. Head and Neck Cancer: A Multidisciplinary Approach. Philadelphia, Pa: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2008. Print.
Haustein, K.-O, and David Groneberg. Tobacco or Health?Berlin: Springer, 2010. Print.
Schmitz, Cecilia M, and Richard A. Gray. Smoking: The Health Consequences of Tobacco Use : an Annotated Bibliography with Analytical Introduction. Ann Arbor, Mich: Pierian Press, 1995. Print.
Watson, Ronald R, Victor R. Preedy, and Sherma Zibadi. Alcohol, Nutrition, and Health Consequences. New York: Humana Press, 2013. Print.
