Book Review, Pamela E. Pennock, Advertising Sin and Sickness: The Politics of Alcohol and Tobacco Marketing, 1950-1990

"I think I'll take up smoking
Though I've never smoked before"

Tom Russell
"What Do You Want"

I've always been extremely uncomfortable with the moralistic overtones of anti-smoking fanatics. I am a non-smoker. But the condescension that non-smokers have toward smokers often makes me angry. To what extent should the government regulate the personal behavior of citizens, particularly when they are not hurting others? Yes, second-hand smoke can be bad, especially for children. But unless you are going to regulate the behavior of adults inside their homes, there is little to be done. Outside of that, second-hand smoke isn't really going to hurt you, unless you are in a band or work in a bar. It's not good for you, but neither are a lot of other things that people don't complain about either. They whine about smelling a cigarette and then drive 50 miles in their SUV through massive air pollution, stopping at McDonald's on the way home where they get everything super sized, and then sit and eat it on the couch while watching "American Idol"

On the other hand, there's little question concerning the lack of morality among tobacco officials. Their product does cause cancer, they knew it, and they didn't care. Should cigarette companies be able to advertise on TV? No, I don't think so. Should they target children through Joe Camel and other cartoon figures? Probably not. So clearly, there is a role for government regulation of legal drugs.

It is much the same with alcohol. While I don't smoke, I certainly do drink. It's hard to look back at the temperance movement without laughing. Yet, while prohibition was a failure, it did reduce Americans' drinking consumption. As Pamela Pennock shows in Advertising Sin and Sickness: The Politics of Alcohol and Tobacco Marketing, 1950-1990, the Prohibitionist movement was far from dead after World War II. It pushed for a total ban on alcohol, but knowing that was pretty well impossible, had to settle for reductions on advertising pushed on children.

The problem though with limiting advertising aimed at children is that the assumption remains that alcohol is a bad thing. The problem to me is not with alcohol per se, but with the underlying moralistic assumptions of American culture. The constant moralizing is combined with a consumer culture that undermines those morals and personal desires that shows the hypocrisy of so many Americans. They speak of "family values" and then drink, smoke, take drugs, go to prostitutes, cheat on their spouses, etc.

What if we focused on reforming Americans' attitudes toward pleasure rather than think of it as a bad thing that needs regulation? But I guess that would be swimming upstream against 400 years of American Puritanical moralizing. There's no doubt that anti-alcohol groups have done some good things. In the 1970s, drunk driving was not only extremely common but basically unpunished, even when someone was killed. Only with the creation of MADD and intensive lobbying did Americans begin taking drunk driving as a serious offense. I'm glad that has happened. We should continue to make driving drunk socially unacceptable and punishable by law. But I have to wonder if another way to fight these problems isn't making drinking an acceptable everyday occurrence that would make binge drinking less appealing to younger people, as well as a national investment in public transportation that would mean you could drink all you want and still have a reasonable way to get home without driving.

Pennock's book is an interesting overview of the policy debates taking place in the postwar years over restricting the advertising of tobacco and alcohol. I don't want to get into the details of the book in too great of detail. If you have a scholarly or personal interest in issues of alcohol history like I do, then it is an important book. But it is policy and therefore a bit on the dry side. I do want to focus on a couple of interesting issues she touches upon.

First, these debates mirrored postwar debates over free speech. Different makeups of the Supreme Court led to slightly different interpretations of the protections granted to advertisers and broadcasters over advertising sin. One argument the industries consistently fell back upon was the idea of the slippery slope. Once you start banning ads for alcohol and tobacco, what is next? Why not coffee? Sugary drinks? Anything that could be seen as bad for you might be next? Where do you draw the line? These are important questions for anyone thinking about free speech issues, regardless of their interest in these particular products. It is almost impossible to demarcate what is OK and what is not. Almost inevitably, reformers draw the line wherever they are comfortable, which makes it almost impossible to create lasting legal codes with any sense of logic. My sense is that we should ban very little. Perhaps restricting certain sorts of ads to late night hours works, but in reality it just gives those products an aura of naughtiness about them, which just reinforces the problem of overwrought morality in America to begin with.

Second, Pennock offers useful insights on the increased role of science in these debates. While the temperance movement after World War II was still dominated by aging prohibitionists, few took their arguments seriously. But once scientists began studying the effects of smoking, fetal alcohol syndrome, and other affects of these substances on bodies, the terms of the debate began changing. The moral component largely (but certainly not entirely) fell by the wayside and scientific evidence began to take over the now regulatory rather than prohibitionist movements. I think Pennock makes good points here, though she does overstate Americans' love affair with science in the postwar period (92). Rather, Americans were enamored with technology and the good life. Science brought us those things but we've never had a national love affair with science. Large numbers of Americans opposed to teaching Darwinism, discomfort with the effects of the atomic bomb in the early years of the Cold War, and today's baseless skepticism over climate change are just a few examples of the ambivalent relationship Americans have had with science. Technology we love, science we love only when it serves our desires.

My other big criticism of the book is the lack of focus on illegal drugs, especially marijuana. She tries to cut off this criticism early on by saying that she is interested in legal marketing practices (9). OK, but that is a narrow interest. Why not expand the study to ideas about regulation of drugs more generally and use marketing as a tool to understand these questions? I think bringing a discussion of marijuana to these broader questions would make the book all the more interesting and useful for current political debates. Certainly the kind of prohibitionist rhetoric that dominated the temperance movement continues to play a huge role in debates over marijuana. Plus such a discussion would help expose the absurdity of marijuana restriction, at least in comparison to the far more destructive and legal drugs, tobacco and alcohol.