June 2004 LSAT Section 2 Question 15

Kendrick: Governments that try to prevent cigarettes from being advertised are justified in doing so, since such adv...

Mayme-Medlock on July 17, 2020

How does A not resolve the discrepancy by making both advertisements illegal?

I understand that, realistically, A is drastic, but in terms of the argument, why do we eliminate it? If a government is justified in preventing advertisements that encourage unhealthy behavior but cigarette advertisements cannot be made illegal if fatty food advertisements are legal, do we not resolve this by making both illegal? Maybe I just missed something in the original argument or am not thinking about this correctly. Thanks in advance!

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shunhe on July 20, 2020

Hi @Mayme-Medlock,

Thanks for the question! So I think the problem here is that you’re trying to change the stimulus, which you can’t do. When we’re resolving this apparent conflict, we’re given two things that conflict with each other (in this case, government is ok in trying to prevent cigarettes from being advertised, but not ok in making cigarette advertisements illegal). And we’re trying to find something that’ll help both of those statements be true at the same time.

Now let’s say we accept (A), that any advertisement that encourages people to engage in an unhealthy practice should be illegal. Well, this certainly helps bolster the first sentence. But it directly contradicts the second one, and thus doesn’t actually “resolve” anything. We can’t just say that it’s resolved by making both advertising for cigarettes and fatty foods illegal; we need to find a way for advertising for cigarettes to be legal, but preventing cigarette advertising to be justified by the government. (A) doesn’t do that, so it’s incorrect.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.