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YouTube Used to Attract Youngsters to Cigarettes

Smart move but it should be stopped asap

By Bogdan Popa, Security and Search Engines Editor

28th of September 2007, 12:27 GMT

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Although I don't know how smart you should be in order to try to make money by selling cigarettes to young people, the anti-smoking organizations are accusing the tobacco companies

of advertising on popular sites like YouTube. Obviously, a potential video published on Google's video sharing service would attract a very young audience and, since it uses luring mottos, it can do that extremely easy. The bad thing is that a part of the audience is really convinced to try a cigarette and you know it, only one for the beginning and the rest of the packet after it.

For example, one of the videos is entitled 'Smoking equals fun' which is quite sarcastic when you think that cigarettes can cause your death. Moreover, the folks from ABC News discovered a clip saying: "Here's a cigarette and a lighter which is all we need to perform the trick and see who's gonna win the bet."

As I said, the anti-smoking groups turned to YouTube to identify the clips and criticize the tobacco companies which use the online video sharing service to promote their business. "People standing around talking about how wonderful it is to smoke, how anti-smoking laws should be disobeyed. A lot of soft porn-style messages, the scantily clad women smoking cigarettes and showing how you should hold a cigarette, that sort of thing," Professor Simon Chapman from Sydney University's School of Public Health said for ABC News.

However, the tobacco companies are denying the rumors saying they are uploading videos on the websites visited by young people, sustaining they would never adopt such a strategy.

"We don't use the web to advertise or promote our products or smoking at all. And we don't think people should be able to advertise or promote tobacco on the Internet," Nerida White from Philip Morris said for ABC.

TAGS:

cigarette | youtube | google | smoking | tobacco

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