Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, October 19, 1995 TAG: 9510190046
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Peer pressure, the example of family members who smoke, or a combination of the two are not nearly as powerful in prompting the smoking urge among children 12 to 17, when most start the habit, according to a study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
``Tobacco marketing is much stronger than peer pressure in getting a youngster to take the first step toward smoking,'' Dr. John P. Pierce of the University of California, San Diego, a co-author of the study, said at a news conference Tuesday. ``It is what starts adolescents down the slippery slope to addiction.''
The study was supported, in part, by the American Heart Association, one of more than 100 health organizations backing a Food and Drug Administration plan to control cigarette advertising and marketing.
Thomas Lauria of the Tobacco Institute, an industry lobby group, said that Pierce's data ``was at best dubious'' and amounts to little more than ``advertising bashing.''
``This flies in the face of what many government bodies have concluded,'' Lauria said.
He said a 1994 surgeon general's report and a Federal Trade Commission study have concluded that advertising is not a major factor in attracting children to cigarettes.
Dr. Joycelyn Elders, then surgeon general, said in 1994 when she released a report on youth smoking that tobacco company advertising and promotions make smoking attractive to children and urged, ``We shouldn't advertise something that we know to be a poison and a killer.''
The FTC commissioners, in a 3-2 vote, decided in June 1994 not to take action against R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. on a complaint that the firm's Joe Camel promotion was influencing children to smoke.
Pierce said the California study shows children are getting the smoking message from billboards, sports arena ads and merchandise offers.
The study by Pierce is based on interviews with 3,536 California adolescents who had never smoked - not even a single puff. They were asked questions that Pierce said measure a willingness or tendency to begin the smoking habit.
More than half the children said they were familiar with some cigarette brands and ads, and about one in five was eager to own a promotional item, such as a T-shirt, offered by cigarette companies.
About 84 percent of the children thought cigarette advertising promotes at least one benefit from smoking. Among the 16- and 17-year-olds, 76.2 percent said cigarette ads depicted the habit as enjoyable; 73 percent viewed it as relaxing; 67 percent as a means of reducing stress; and 41 percent believed advertisements depicted smoking as a way of staying thin.
Forty percent of the nonsmoking youngsters could name a brand of cigarettes they would like to try.
Pierce found that the Joe Camel ads were familiar to 60 percent of the children and were most often nominated in the survey as the favorite cigarette promotion.
by CNB