How tobacco protects you against the flu
- 1Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, University of California, San Francisco, California, USA
- 2Division of General Internal Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, USA
- N K Schneider, German Cancer Research Center, Im Neuenheimer Feld 280, D-69120 Heidelberg Germany; nick.schneider{at}dkfz.de
- Received 12 December 2007
- Accepted 30 January 2008
Abstract
Under the heading “How tobacco protects you against the flu”, the German chemical industry portrays a tobacco grower in an idyllic tobacco plantation. Despite the recent ban of transnational tobacco advertising within the European Union, using tobacco to promote another industry and potential societal health benefits might indirectly promote the social acceptability of tobacco to social leaders. The tobacco control community should thus monitor the use of other industries as a new method to circumvent the tobacco advertising ban and to support the social acceptability of tobacco by associating it with potential health benefits.
Footnotes
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Funding: This work was supported by the National Cancer Institute (grants CA-113710 and CA-87472) and the Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute. The funding agencies played no role in the conduct of the research or the preparation or revision of the manuscript.
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Competing interests: None.
