How not to make the case for freedom

Not that I necessarily know how the case for freedom should be made, of course, but Harry Mount's article in the Telegraph did rather set my teeth on edge. It starts:

The ban on tobacco advertising that came in on Valentine's Day was a blow to advertising agencies, but it won't stop a single person lighting up and, if the latest annual trading figures for the tobacco giant Gallaher are anything to go by, it won't stop money pouring into the manufacturers' coffers.

For fuck's sake. The whole point of advertising is to get people to do something. To change their behaviour. The idea that tobacco companies advertise because they fancy flushing some money down the toilet is absurd. And they certainly wouldn't have continued doing it down the ages if it hadn't been successful in the past. Making arguments like this insults the intelligence of the intended audience and loses them right from the beginning.

He goes on to say:

The companies that, before the ban, spent £25 million a year on advertising can now use the cash to make cigarettes even more delicious and tap into unmatured markets: Gallaher is spreading its operations into eastern Europe.

Oh no. Now he's making the claim that the tobacco companies are too stupid to know what they should be spending money on and what they shouldn't. And, of course, Harry Mount does. Hell Harry, you should be running a cigarette company yourself. But of course, you're not because you are not good enough. And you're not good enough because you're wrong about this and I would guess a whole bunch of other things.

Having made a complete fool of himself Mount does at least end up saying something sensible in the end:

If anything, more people will take up the habit. The naughty factor, which draws teenagers to cigarettes in the first place and sent bourbon sales rocketing during Prohibition in America, will soar, and fresh-faced children will rush in droves to the corner shop.

Mind you Iain Murray, of Edge of England's Sword might take issue with you about those Bourbon sales.

The problem with this sort of argument (and we have heard this sort of rubbish many a time from tobacco companies down the years) is that it misses the point.

Right from the start it falls into the trap of accepting the proposition that cigarettes are bad for you. Nonsense. They are clearly good for you (or at least for some people). If they weren't people wouldn't smoke them. Now, you can argue that in the long term they may do you some harm. But in the short term they do you a whole load of good.

Every day millions of people make a pretty informed choice. They decide either to give up smoking, be miserable and live for longer or to continue, enjoy the moment and accept the risk that they might lose a few years at the end of their lives. Given that those potential extra years are likely to be miserable many millions of people make the decision to keep on puffing away.

The other point is that if you ban informative advertising, which incidentally happened in the UK many years ago, it means that advertisers cannot inform consumers of changes to their product. So, if a tobacco manufacturer manages to produce a cigarette which is less likely to give you cancer or leave you with smoker's cough (something I believe actually happened a few years ago) it is virtually impossible for anyone to find out and therefore unlikely that the product will ever be launched.

Advertising bans cost lives.