Let’s first take the basic questions about the significance and effect of such a ban on tobacco products. Based on the results derived out of a total ban on advertising of tobacco products in some other countries, it is now well known fact that this step alone has the potential of reducing tobacco consumption by as much as seven percent (7%). In India under the Cigarette & Other Tobacco Products Act 2003 prohibition of advertisement of tobacco has already been done but then tobacco companies were/are using the surrogate route. One of them is to advertise tobacco products in movies at subliminal level, which has been proved to be much more effective for them.
For a youngster in the 10-22 year age group the search for a role model shifts from his/her parents to some body much bigger and more macho. The role model is seen as the alter-ego; someone the youngster fantasizes to become like one day. Most of the youngsters, as most of them are; emotionally insecure, ignorant and confused. In search of their role model they want to emulate the big movie stars as they are the one’s who are seen as successful, famous, glamorous and rich. The roles these actors perform can on no account be separated from their personnel mannerism and preferences. When your role model appears like a demigod on a big 40 feet screen, flirting with the most beautiful lady in the world, speaking the dialogues in the most impressive way (since they are written by the best writers) wearing the best and driving the costliest car on the planet, breaking the bones of ten goons and simultaneously lighting a cigarette stick with style; you (as a youngster) would like to clone him in totality. The razor line between reality and drama is bound to fade as human beings are known to be carried by emotions and not logic. (Had logic been the driving force nobody would have been smoking.) The indelible imprints these things leave on young impressionable mind can not even be fully comprehended.
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