Antitobacco activists lift smokescreen behind teen smoking

Tobacco companies are faulted in recent studies for marketing tactics aimed at increasing youth smoking, while medical associations continue to work the prevention front.

By Susan J. Landers, AMNews staff. April 1, 2002.

Washington -- A sleek blonde deeply inhales from a cigarette as she looks out from the silver screen. A rangy leading man takes a drag between his lines. They are stars. And they smoke.

These descriptions do not come from any one movie but represent a pattern that antitobacco advocates say persists. And this continued presence of tobacco in films is one way cigarette makers hope to keep the habit hip -- especially for young people.

Overall, at least three recent studies indicate that the major tobacco companies are continuing to target young people with their marketing tactics despite an agreement reached in 1998 that forbids such activities.

On-screen smoking in movies, for instance, possibly primed by earlier tobacco industry marketing methods, has increased in recent years, according to one study, and is likely to influence the young people who are well-represented in theatre audiences.

In addition, tobacco companies are reaching out to the youth market both by focusing ads in many magazines read by young teens and placing ads in convenience stores which are popular with the junior high school crowd, said researchers.

Tobacco companies exploited inconsistencies between the 1998 ban on magazine advertising and the Food and Drug Administration's definition of youth magazines in ways that enabled the industry to reach as many young people as ever, concluded researchers and pediatricians Paul Chung, MD, and Craig Garfield, MD. Both are Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars at the University of Chicago. Their study was published in the March/April issue of Health Affairs. [...]