Word: tobacco
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...keep alive their shrinking market, tobacco companies have shown marketing genius by creating more than 300 brands that variously boast of being longer, slimmer, cheaper, flavored, microfiltered, pastel colored or even striped. A new R.J. Reynolds brand called Uptown looks typically glitzy with its black- and-gold box and promise of a tasty menthol blend. But the cigarette has provoked a response its maker never anticipated: passionate protest. Last week the tobacco company, which intended to begin test-marketing the cigarette next month in Philadelphia, canceled those plans after community groups and health organizations vehemently criticized the product. The reason...
...cigarette consumption has fallen in the U.S., tobacco companies have increasingly directed their marketing to specific groups, such as women, Hispanics and blacks. While 30.5% of white males smoke, 39% of blacks do. Uptown was carefully researched and designed: everything from its name to its packaging was tailored to the tastes of the black consumer. "If we were Sears developing a line of clothing for blacks," says a Reynolds spokeswoman, "this would pass without any notice...
...appreciate the protest. Civil rights activist Benjamin Hooks sees it as a form of paternalism. "Buried in this line of thinking," he wrote recently, "is the rationale that blacks are not capable of making their own free choices." His comments reflect the reluctance of some black groups to attack tobacco companies, which have donated money to support events and causes ranging from jazz festivals to the United Negro College Fund...
Nonetheless, the Uptown controversy underscores a growing concern that big corporations have targeted minority communities as lucrative markets for such products as tobacco, liquor and even junk food. A survey in Baltimore found that 20% of billboard advertising in white communities was devoted to smoking and drinking. In black neighborhoods 76% of the billboards promoted such vices...
...court ruling was rather narrow, declaring that the Liggett Group, which made the Chesterfield and L&M cigarettes Cipollone favored, violated a so-called express warranty that its products are safe. But the appeals court opened the way to a new trial on the broader question of whether the tobacco company was negligent in marketing cigarettes when it knew of medical evidence suggesting that smoking is hazardous...