Smoking brands may be targeting Muslims: study
Posted May 3, 2015 9:08 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – If you’re Muslim, tobacco companies could be targeting you with their advertising according to a new SFU study.
Cigarette brands may even be trying to change the wording of the Quran to fit their agenda. The Quran forbids harming your body, and study co-author Kelley Lee says cigarette companies try to get around that by depicting smoking as liberating and modern.
“It’s quite blatant and you can see this in the adverts that we’ve looked at. So it’s all about changing religious edicts and making smoking normalized,” she says.
Gauloises and Phillip-Morris are the main brands that are believed to have targeted Muslim countries, even insinuating that people who don’t smoke are extremists.
“It shows how far tobacco companies will go to keep their profits rolling in, and I think this is an example of that.”
The study was funded by the US National Cancer Institute and uses internal documents collected over a period of thirty years.
Lee says now steps can be made towards reducing the number of smokers in Muslim countries in a culturally appropriate manner.
Two of the main countries targeted by tobacco brands are Indonesia and Egypt.
(Story by Lauren Sundstrom)
