TOBACCO: STUDY SHOWS TEEN SMOKING LINKED TO ADS, PROMOS
Tobacco use among the nation's teenagers is directly linkedThis is part of the California Healthline Daily Edition, a summary of health policy coverage from major news organizations. Sign up for an email subscription.
to the amount of cigarette advertising and marketing they are
exposed to where they shop, study and play, according to a study
published in the AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PUBLIC HEALTH. The study,
which examined teens' exposure to pro-smoking messages "during
the course of their daily activities," found that 88% of 571
Northern California seventh graders who participated in a survey
"reported exposure to cigarette marketing." The majority of the
13-year-old participants said they saw ads in magazines, on
billboards, at stores and events; one quarter said they owned
cigarette promotional items such as hats and T-shirts.
DIRECT LINK: "After social influences to smoke" -- such as
parents and peers -- "were controlled for," the study found that
exposure to cigarette marketing was directly related to the kids'
self-reported smoking behavior. Experimental use of tobacco was
2.2 times more likely among those who owned promotional items and
2.8 times greater among those who had received direct mail from a
tobacco company. Exposure to ads in magazines increased the
likelihood of experimentation by 21% and exposure to tobacco
marketing in stores raised the possibility by 38%. The authors
noted that "the vast majority of adolescent smokers prefer the
most heavily advertised brands," and reported that they smoked
the brand whose advertisements they liked the most. They also
noted that young people are able to match cigarette brand names
with slogans and characters, and that more than half of teen
smokers and about one quarter of non-smoking teens own cigarette
promotional items.
A NEW GENERATION: The study notes that the proportion of
eighth graders who smoke rose from seven percent in 1988 to 18%
in 1993. According to the authors, "If tobacco use rates among
youth continue at current levels, 5 million American children who
are alive today will die from tobacco-induced disease." The
study includes a sociodemographic breakdown of teenage tobacco
use patterns, showing that 56.1% of teens who had experimented
with tobacco had parents who smoke, 26.8% had siblings who smoke,
and 24.2% were dating a smoker.
CONCLUSION: The study concludes that the Cigarette
Advertising and Promotion Code, which "prohibits advertising that
appears where large numbers of youth will see it," the use of
images that appeal to youth and the distribution of free samples
and promotional items to the young, "fails to protect youth from
the tobacco industry's marketing efforts." According to the
authors, the code's provisions are "too limited" to combat the
tobacco industry's use of 75% of its multibillion dollar
marketing budget on coupons, gifts with purchases and other
promotions that often attract kids. The study notes that the
tobacco industry spent $6.03 billion in 1993 to advertise and
promote cigarette consumption across the board, an increase of
16% from the previous year (Schooler/Feighery/Flora, September
1996 issue).