The AMA:
American Marketing Association?


At its web site, the American Medical Association says this about its mission:

The AMA has seven main functions: medical education, science, communications, the Council on Scientific Affairs, the health care system, policymaking and the House of Delegates, and ethics.

Now, the AMA can add "consumer market research" to its capabilities.

On December 2, 1997, the AMA issued a news release titled "Banning Smoking Could Boost Business for Restaurants and Bars."

The news release reported the results of a survey designed to find out whether people would change their dining habits if restaurants became smokefree. More than 2,300 Massachusetts adults were surveyed.

Although two-thirds of the respondents said ending smoking in restaurants would have no impact on how frequently they patronized those establishments, about one in five respondents said they would patronize bars more often if they became smokefree.

The AMA's press release said:

The survey has uncovered a potential new market for bars among non-smokers. Thirty-two percent of the population said that they never go to bars, lounges or places where alcohol is served. Ten percent of that group said they would start going if smoking were eliminated. In Massachusetts this amounts to 120,000 new customers for smokefree bars and clubs.

The researchers (Lois Biener of the University of Massachusetts and Michael Siegel of the Boston University School of Public Health) further stated in the news release that

Our analysis of a representative sample of Massachusetts adults suggests that smokefree policies are likely to increase overall patronage of restaurants and bars.

Since when does the AMA do market research? And to promote alcohol consumption--smokefree or otherwise? Did anyone read the AMA slogan, prominently printed on the news release--Physicians dedicated to the health of America?

What's next? The Budweiser frogs in surgical scrubs?

But the real irony is that the December 3, 1997 issue of Journal of the American Medical Association contained three anti-alcohol articles:

What a week for the AMA: promoting bars and prohibition.

Perhaps the AMA should stick to medicine?


Material presented on this home page constitutes opinion of the author.
Copyright © 1997 Steven J. Milloy. All rights reserved. Site developed and hosted by WestLake Solutions, Inc.
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