2024-04-16 00:17:49
Since the 1970s, a several-meter-tall cowboy has been standing on the roof smoking. A drop is thrown on his shoulders.
This is an advertisement for Philip Morris International (PMI). The Marlboro cowboy can still be seen in some countries, such as Germany. Although the legendary advertisement has gradually disappeared from TV screens and posters, smokers are still attracted to Marlboro.
However, the once-popular brand cigarette may soon become a thing of the past.
Place – only in the museum
Marlboro, which has a market value of 35 billion USD, is still PMI’s most valuable product.
But the sales curve is falling. This is typical not only of this US company, but also of the entire market.
The tobacco industry is currently undergoing the biggest change in history due to increasingly stringent regulatory requirements.
Purportedly reduced harm products, such as e-cigarettes and e-cigarettes, are seen as a good chance to revive the faltering business for the future.
So the announcement made by Philip Morris International last summer is actually quite logical. The company has decided to completely abandon the production of traditional cigarettes in the coming years.
“Cigarettes belong in a museum,” the company’s CEO Jacek Olczak is convinced.
The image was different
However, this news raises at least one important question: is it really possible to quit smoking? Yes, it is harmful to health, pollutes the environment and is a completely irrational product. But isn’t that what makes it so attractive?
On the other hand, cigarettes didn’t always have a bad image. At the beginning of the last century, smokers were not yet considered weak-willed.
Cigarettes, like patent shoes, tuxedos or nice cars, were part of the image of the nobility.
On the fronts of the First and Second World Wars, cigarettes were like a substitute for food, suppressors of negative emotions, and prevented sleep in the trenches.
It was one of the few common rituals among soldiers.
In the 1950s, smoking was increasingly associated with lung cancer. But few really cared.
Back in the 1970s and 1980s, smoking meant fun and cool. Smoke rose in airplanes, offices, and television talk shows.
However, the evidence for the harmful effects of cigarettes was mounting. For example, the death of movie legend, heavy smoker Steve McQueen also led to a change in the image of cigarettes.
The fight is still on
21st century smoking is no longer associated with coolness, a sense of freedom – rather with a nightmare. With blackened lungs and gray smoker’s legs on cigarette packs.
Smokers were banished to the outskirts – small yellow squares on railway platforms or closed shaded areas in airports.
The fight against smoke continues, but in different ways in different countries of the world. For example, in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, smokers can be arrested and sentenced.
Australia is trying to use high prices to combat smoking: a pack of cigarettes there costs an average of 24 euros.
New Zealand had a different plan until recently. According to it, those born after a certain date would never be able to legally buy tobacco in their lifetime. True, the new government of the country rejected this idea.
Began to change the strategy
One strategy that really seems to be successful is alternative means.
For example, Sweden is proud to be an almost smoke-free country, with less than 5 percent of smokers.
The Swedish achievement was largely due to the traditional use of moist chewing tobacco. Although it contains nicotine, it is not smoke.
“Nicotine – yes, combustion – no.” This is the new attitude of the tobacco companies. Nicotine is addictive and harmful, but using non-combustible substances reduces health risks.
Philip Morris International wants to say goodbye to the company’s past that harmed people’s health.
The new self-awareness of the US company is primarily reflected in the product – the heated tobacco products. Tobacco vapor actually contains up to 95% less harmful substances than traditional cigarettes.
It didn’t take long for other tobacco companies to follow PMI’s path. Both Japan Tobacco International and British American Tobacco have already marketed both combustible tobacco products and devices for heating them.
Not a rarity on the screen
It is true that cigarettes are not disappearing everywhere.
While many of the newer movies don’t have the characters smoking them, some shows do the opposite.
For example, in HBO’s popular teen series Euphoria, there is hardly a single scene without a cigarette.
As in the series “Stranger Things” created by Netflix for a similar age group, some scenes of which were also filmed in Lithuania.
According to the Truth Initiative, a tobacco control organization, up until a few years ago, about half of all original series on Amazon and other platforms featured cigarettes.
In the middle of the last century, the number was probably close to a hundred. The cigarette was one of the most important props in the movie business.
Screen stars James Dean or Humphrey Bogart without a cigarette? It was unimaginable.
The cigarette has long been a reliable tool for characterizing heroes in the world of cinema. For example, in the movie “Casablanca”, smoking was still only for men. But in the romantic comedy Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Hollywood star Audrey Hepburn made the cigarette a sign of expression for a woman of that time.
The developers had to change
However, Hollywood also had to react when it was no longer possible to deny the harmfulness of smoking.
The cigarette was deprived of the main role, it was reduced to an attribute of gangsters and villains.
Heroes who fight for good things don’t smoke. James Bond, once elegantly portrayed with a cigarette by Sean Connery, has succumbed to the new trend and is no longer a smoker.
Cowboy killer
Cigarette production will not be stopped overnight – this is what Philip Morris International claims as well. But this one of the world’s largest tobacco producers will continue to implement changes.
For now, it’s clear that in some countries, the Marlboro cowboy will continue to smoke on the roof in the future.
Only for the actors who played him, not everything ended happily. According to Wikipedia, at least five of these guys died from the effects of smoking. That’s why this type of cigarette was even called the killer of cowboys.
in 1995 The widow of the late David McLean, Lilo McLean, even tried to claim money from PMI, claiming that the man was injured while pulling one package after another while filming a commercial. However, the lawsuit was dismissed and the woman still had to pay the tobacco company’s legal fees.
At the age of 72, in 2014, another “cowboy”, Eric Lawson, died of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the most common cause of which is cigarettes.
Interestingly, this heavy smoker, who smoked from the age of 14, became an anti-smoking campaigner before the end of his life and even starred in a commercial parodying Marlboro cowboys.
2024-04-16 00:17:49