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NEWS & VIEWS

TOBACCO ADS STILL AIMED AT KIDS; EXPERTS ADVISE STRONGER PROTECTIONS

Kids are still being targeted by cigarette company advertising despite settlement.

The concession, made by tobacco companies as part of a Master Settlement Agreement of 46 states’ lawsuits against them, called for the companies not to "take any action, directly or indirectly, to target youth..." in their advertising or marketing, the researchers point out.

"But ‘targeting’ isn’t defined in the agreement, and the companies still are finding ways to reach kids with the message to smoke," says lead study researcher Michael Siegel, MD, MPH, associate professor at Boston University’s School of Public Health.

	Cigarette Ad Spending Goes Up One Year After Agreement

TOP Cigarette Ad Spending Goes... Philip Morris Agreement's Impact... Experts Call for Stronger...

 
The study found that cigarette ad dollars spent in youth magazines actually increased in the year following the settlement—from $219 million in 1998 to $291 million in 1999. In 2000 cigarette ad spending dropped to $216 million—a drop of less than two percent from 1998 levels.

"And we found that cigarette brands that are popular among youth smokers are more likely to advertise in magazines that have higher levels of youth readership," Siegel adds.

"If they weren’t trying to reach kids, you wouldn’t expect to find that the specific brands that are popular among youth are precisely those brands that are advertising most heavily in those magazines read by large numbers of kids; it just doesn’t make sense," notes Siegel.

	Philip Morris Agreement’s Impact Is Less Than Expected

TOP Cigarette Ad Spending Goes... Philip Morris Agreement's Impact... Experts Call for Stronger...

 
One company, Philip Morris, promised in the 1998 agreement that starting in September 2000, it would advertise only in magazines with less than 15 percent of readers between ages 12 and 17 and fewer than 2 million readers.

But even if other tobacco companies followed the example of Philip Morris, it wouldn’t stop cigarette ads from reaching kids, researchers found, because over half the nation’s youth are still getting the message that "smoking is cool" from other ad placements.

"Even if Marlboro [a Philip Morris product] hadn’t put any ads at all in youth-oriented magazines in the year 2000, they still would have reached 57 percent of the nation’s youth that year just through ads in adult magazines," notes Siegel.

The data shows that on average, 82 percent of the kids in the US were exposed to magazine ads for youth cigarette brands (brands that are popular among young smokers) in the year 2000.

"There was kind of a perception out there among the public that the Philip Morris policy was going to substantially reduce youth exposure to cigarette ads in magazines, and our study suggests that this simply is not the case," emphasizes Siegel.

Unfortunately, states Siegel, research has also shown that ads enticing kids to smoke are very effective, regardless of where they appear.

	Experts Call for Stronger Protections

TOP Cigarette Ad Spending Goes... Philip Morris Agreement's Impact... Experts Call for Stronger...

 
In an accompanying editorial that appeared in the journal, two prominent tobacco-control advocates pointed out that as the tobacco companies reduced magazine ad spending, the amount they spent on store displays, discount promotions on brands popular with kids, and free gifts appealing to young people "skyrocketed," resulting in kids still being bombarded with tobacco company ads.

The editorialists—Yale University School of Medicine’s dean and former US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) head David A. Kessler, MD, and the National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids’ president Matthew L. Myers, JD, agree with Siegel that with tobacco ads still enticing kids to smoke after the 1998 Agreement, stronger action—including placing tobacco products under control of the FDA—makes sense. The American Cancer Society (ACS) agrees.

"The tobacco companies continue to try to hook new generations of customers on their addictive and lethal products because they need to do that for the very survival of their industry," says Dileep G. Bal, MD, MS, MPH, President of the ACS.

"By ostensibly targeting adults (especially vulnerable 18 to 24 year olds), tobacco companies know that kids will get the message that it is cool and sophisticated to smoke and so they do," Bal says. "It is a known advertising fact that kids "aspire up" and this is used ingeniously by the Tobacco Industry in their Madison Avenue blitz. More than 80 percent of adult smokers began smoking at 18 or younger, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)."

"As a vital part of its mission to reduce suffering and death from cancer, the ACS strongly advocates a wide range of actions to reduce tobacco’s impact on public health," Bal emphasizes.

Those actions entail not only effective restrictions on tobacco-marketing practices directed toward kids, notes Bal, but also include support for:

• Strong regulation of tobacco by the FDA;
  
• Effective clean indoor air laws and restrictions on smoking in public places; and
  
• Congressional passage of the newly-introduced Medicare, Medicaid, Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Smoking Cessation Act to expand Medicare and Medicaid coverage for smoking-cessation materials and services.
  

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