No Stupid Questions

Alcohol is bad, but smoking is worse.
Smoking is both way more addictive and it is a bigger health risk.
It's rare to be a moderate smoker, generally you either don't smoke at all, or if you do you are a smoker, with numerous health risks.
With alcohol moderate use is the norm, and only excessive use will make you an alcoholic, resulting in numerous health risks.

AFAIK it has only lately become known that even moderate alcohol use is still a health risk. AFAIK mostly causing intestine cancer.
So instead we have campaigns warning against drinking to much, which was also how it started with cigarettes.

To be fair, as an alcoholic, alcohol ads had zero effect on my purchases.

Before I quit, the only thing that influenced my buying was the calculator app on my phone. For beer it was Millilitres per can times cans per block divided by ABV, divided by price. Higher number good.. For scotch and port it was easier.

Cigarette companies themselves actually lobbied for cigarette commercials to be banned. For more information, look up "Knowing Better cigarettes" on YouTube since I'll have to write an essay to explain why and he puts it way better than I can

How is that legal?

Those considerations are always a trade-off. How much government should interfere with an industry, especially one that's been around since we monkeys climbed down from the trees? There isn't just the plight of alcoholics to consider. An advertisement ban would affect business and jobs. It would take a considerable chunk out of the advertising market that when gone world affect media, an already struggling industry. And AA doesn't quite have the deep pockets for lobbying. It's legal because it's complicated, not because it's just.

I happen to agree with you here; ads for alcohol should be banned along with those for any sort of gambling and prescription medication while I'm at it. This "drink responsibly" campaign is an effort to make it harder for lawmakers to decide. I'm reminded of that Soviet Union quote and i'm paraphrasing: we know that they know that we know that they know they're lying yet the lying continues.

One day at a time.

I do think that on a phone or computer one ought to be able to opt out, like how shops who spam me in email say "do you want to opt out of mother's day emails?" Because they don't want to send them if your mom or kid just died, right?

But I don't know how you would do that without sort of registering as an alcoholic, which seems problematic.

I'm literally subscribed to an industry newsletter and research cocktails for the community here, and haven't seen very many ads for any sort of alcohol though? Are you really seeing them all the time?

Big Booze

People make money on it. People don't care enough to organize around stopping it.

Cigarettes cause more deaths: 8 million per year compared to 2.8 million per year. Not disagreeing with you, just pointing out why perhaps there are more lenient rules.

I don't even see ads for drinking online, that's how banned they are in my country.

It's because cigarette companies started to advertise to kids.

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