It's like the gangster who guns down people in the course of business and then is feted for his good works at charity balls for the hospitals where his victims are treated. Because of the history of tobacco and the politics that surround it to this day, tobacco makers have been able to continue to sell their deadly product in the face of tens of thousands of studies linking the golden leaf to a rogue's gallery of killers and cripplers. And because of our country's experience with the failure of the Prohibition of alcohol, as well as the difficulty of stamping out cocaine, heroin and the like, there is a strong reluctance to ban tobacco. So tobacco remains a legal product, one of the most widely promoted and advertised. And they won the support of the likes of the American Civil Liberties Union as well as those who profit from the largess of tobacco advertising, including the ad agencies and the magazine and newspaper publishers.
Legal scholars debate the extent that the First Amendment protects commercial speech.
Limits have been recognized in some cases for ads for certain enterprises, such as casinos. Important principles were involved when lawmakers were considering extinguishing the right of a company to advertise a legal product. And Philip Morris masterfully told its side, either honestly believing it was a wronged party or cynically acting as a manipulator of truth. But the company's honesty is clearly in question. Philip Morris last year sued Dr. Alan Blum, founder of one to believe that it was an advocacy, perhaps of Doctors Ought to Care, a health promotion group, for making T-shirts that satirized PM's Miller Lite beer.