Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 29, 1994 TAG: 9403290046
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jane Brody
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The study's authors say their findings provide the strongest evidence to date that cigarette advertising, despite industry assertions to the contrary, lures children to start smoking.
The study, published in a recent issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association, showed that the sales and advertising drive for women's cigarettes in the late 1960s and early 1970s coincided with a major increase in the numbers of teen-age girls who took up smoking, at the same time that smoking among boys was on the decline.
The study linked advertising campaigns for Virginia Slims, Silva Thins and Eve cigarettes, all of which were aimed at women, with striking increases in the start of smoking by young girls.
During a six-year period from 1967 to 1973, when sales of women's cigarettes skyrocketed, there was a 110 percent increase in the rate of 12-year-old girls who started smoking, a 55 percent increase among 13-year-olds, a 70 percent increase among 14-year-olds, a 75 percent increase among 15-year-olds, a 55 percent increase among 16-year-olds and a 35 percent increase among 17-year-old girls.
From the end of World War II to 1967, there had been only a slight increase in the start of smoking by teen-age girls, the authors noted. But in 1967, when sales of women's cigarettes took off, the rate of starting to smoke rose sharply among girls younger than 17, peaking in 1973 when sales of such cigarettes reached a record $16 billion.
After 1973, when sales of women's cigarettes began to drop off, so did the rate of starting to smoke for teen-age girls, the study found.
During the same six-year period, the study showed, smoking initiation rates among boys from 12 through 17 declined. By 1975, the percentage of boys and girls starting to smoke had evened out.
The new study, which is believed to provide the strongest link yet between tobacco advertising and smoking behavior by teen-agers, was based on national health surveys conducted among 102,626 adults who had been regular smokers at some point in their lives.
The study, directed by John Pierce of the University of California San Diego Cancer Center, examined when these adults took up smoking. It also showed that girls who did not go on to college were more likely than college-bound girls to start smoking at the time of the sales peak for women's cigarettes.
The finding runs counter to the tobacco industry's assertion that its marketing is not aimed at children and suggests that the industry's stated intent to discourage smoking by minors has been ineffective at best, according to Nancy Kaufman, a nurse who wrote an editorial in the same issue of the journal.
Kaufman noted that "virtually all smoking initiation occurs by the age of 18" and with the decline in adult smoking, "almost 1 million new smokers, 3,000 per day, of whom most will be children and adolescents, must be recruited each year to fill the void."
Smoking by teen-agers declined by about one-third in the late 1970s but it has remained almost constant in the last decade. Currently, 19 percent of high school seniors smoke and more than a million children under 18 become regular smokers each year, according to the Office of Smoking and Health, a division of the Public Health Service.
Demonstration of a strong link between tobacco advertising and smoking behavior by minors comes at a time of raging dispute over a more recent advertising lure: the use by RJR Nabisco of a cartoon character named Old Joe Camel to give Camel cigarettes a hip new image.
A study by Pierce published two years ago in The Journal of the American Medical Association demonstrated a sharp increase in the choice of Camels by teen-age smokers on the heels of the Joe Camel campaign.
Another study showed that 6-year-old children were as familiar with Joe Camel as with Mickey Mouse, and a third study showed that children found Joe Camel more appealing than adults did and were better able than adults to name the product associated with the character.
The authors of the third study, directed by Joseph DiFranza of the University of Massachusetts Medical School, concluded, "Old Joe Camel cartoon advertisements are far more successful at marketing Camel cigarettes to children than to adults."
Most recently, Joe Camel has been endowed with a string of slinky girlfriends, which has further enraged anti-smoking forces that had already been pushing for Joe Camel's demise.
The Federal Trade Commission has not responded to a petition filed in December 1991 by the Coalition on Smoking or Health calling for a ban on advertising using Joe Camel because of its apparent attraction to minors.
R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. said Tuesday that a company-sponsored survey of 1,100 youngsters conducted last November showed that Joe Camel was no more recognizable to children from 10 to 17 than any other advertising character, and that such recognition did not influence the youngsters' smoking behavior.
Thomas Lauria, a spokesman for the Tobacco Institute, the industry's lobby group, said that "peer pressure, not advertising, is what influences smoking rates."
He attributed the increase in smoking by young girls in the late 1960s to the women's liberation movement, "the time when bra-burning women were abandoning traditional roles."
But Pierce and colleagues, who did the study on smoking initiation by teen-age girls, said their findings indicated that "tobacco advertising plays an important role in encouraging young people to begin this lifelong addiction before they are old enough to fully appreciate its long-term health risks."
The researchers called for "urgent action to extend the ban on tobacco advertising to cover all forms of advertising and promotion."
Kaufman said that tobacco advertising was "a potent lure" for adolescent girls. She assailed the prominent use of women's magazines to sell cigarettes using ads that link smoking to fashion, beauty and slimness, saying that such advertising had resulted in a reluctance of most of those magazines to cover the hazards of smoking.
A second study in the same issue of the journal found that nearly half of 206 small stores in California illegally sold single cigarettes, and more often to minors than to adults. Such sales are believed to encourage smoking by minors, many of whom cannot afford to buy an entire pack at one time.
Sales of single cigarettes to minors in California violate three laws: a state ban on cigarette sales to minors and a state ban on the sale of single cigarettes, as well as a federal law prohibiting the sale of cigarettes without a warning label about the product's health risks.
The study's authors, Elizabeth Klonoff and colleagues at California State University in San Bernardino, noted that "enforcement has been minimal," although 45 states and the District of Columbia have laws intended to prevent minors from buying tobacco products.
"A survey by the Department of Health and Human Services found only 32 instances of enforcement, despite the fact that an estimated one billion packs of cigarettes are sold each year to persons less than 18 years of age," the authors wrote.
The study was conducted by sending one minor and one adult into each store to buy a single cigarette. Sales of single cigarettes are believed to have increased sharply with the rising price of tobacco products.
The stores that sold single cigarettes charged the minors an average of 20 cents for each cigarette, while adults paid an average of 18 cents. The authors believe that the "availability of these inexpensive, accessible tobacco products may facilitate experimentation in adolescents."
Forty-nine percent of the stores studied readily sold single cigarettes to the decoy customers. Single cigarettes were sold far more often to minors than to the adults and far more often in minority neighborhoods than in white middle-class neighborhoods, the study found.
"Minors were able to purchase single cigarettes during 34.4 percent of visits to white neighborhoods but could do so during 71.2 percent of the visits to minority neighborhoods," the authors found.
by CNB