“Can a cartoon picture of a camel make you start smoking?
“Not at all,” said Tammie G., 15, who said she knows a lot of smokers. “If somebody wants to try it, it is because they usually see people around them do it—their friends usually. If they want to try it, they will. If they like it, they’ll start and if they don’t, they’ll stop.”
“I just did it to be cool,” said Christian Dunlop, 18, a graduate of Glendale Adventist School.
Why do so many teens think smoking is cool? Why don’t they worry about cancer and emphysema and all the other things in the Surgeon General warnings? Maybe it’s because advertising affects us more than we want to admit. Maybe a single billboard of the Marlboro Man has little effect, but we’re talking about more than billboards here.
“A lot of times kids don’t realize that it’s not simply billboards or magazines… tobacco companies try to promote a cultural view of smoking that will make it appealing,” said Rep. Henry Waxman, one of Capitol Hill’s leading tobacco foes. He represents the 5th District, primarily the Westside of Los Angeles.
Just look at Joe Camel, Waxman said, referring to the cartoon icon once used to promote RJ Reynolds’ Camel brand. Joe Camel was banned in a 1997 Federal Trade Commission lawsuit.
“They came up with the idea of Joe Camel and tested it in France. They saw how successful it was and came back to the U.S. and wanted to turn it into a major advertising campaign. All of a sudden the camel was everywhere… jackets, hats, paraphernalia, school bags,” said Waxman, who described himself as a former chain-smoker.
Waxman also cites cigarette advertising at racing events, sporting events, minority-oriented events, artistic events at museums, dance and jazz festivals as ways that smoking has dug its way into our minds, creating an association between smoking and the sports and arts we love.
“They want to buy themselves respectability,” said Waxman.
Ads led teens to smoke more Marlboros and Camels
Waxman’s ideas are backed up by a major 1990 study of California smokers that showed that advertising definitely resulted in more teens smoking particular brands—Marlboro and Camel. The study by Dr. John Pierce and others, which appeared in the Journal of American Medicine Association Dec. 11, 1991, also said: “There is strong evidence that most smokers become addicted when they are minors and do not understand the long-term consequences of smoking.”
Though tobacco companies have publicly denied it, teenagers have been exclusively targeted by Big Tobacco, specifically R.J. Reynolds and Philip Morris, the nation’s top cigarette manufacturers. This has been documented by secret internal company documents that were obtained through lawsuits and congressional investigations led by Rep. Waxman and others (see box on page 21).
R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. is not the only company going after teens. Waxman’s office released documents that made cigarette companies look pretty bad, including Brown and Williamson Tobacco Corporation, which makes the Kool brand, and Philip Morris, which makes Marlboro.
“The teenage years are… important because those are the years during which most smokers begin to smoke, the years in which initial brand selections are made, and the period in the life-cycle in which conformity to peer-group norms is greatest,” stated a 1975 memorandum to R.B. Seligman, Philip Morris Vice President for Research and Development.
Teen tobacco use is up by one third
The tobacco companies are obviously doing a good job at getting teens to smoke. Tobacco use among teens has jumped by nearly one-third in the last six years, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, as reported by the Los Angeles Times. It rose from 28 percent in 1991 to 36 percent in 1997, the study showed.
The Los Angeles Times reported: “People ask: ‘How can this be happening when so much attention in being paid to teen smoking?'” said Dr. Michael Ericksen, director of the Center for Disease Control’s office on smoking and health. “I think the answer is that there has been a lot of rhetoric but virtually no action. I think it’s time for the rhetoric to stop and the action to start.”
Getting the tobacco industry to loosen their grip on underage children has been hard. For one thing, supporters of the tobacco industry argue that the industry should not be singled out; and that it is entitled to advertise its products just like every other company. Some smokers don’t want cigarette prices to go up since adults would have to pay the higher prices too. And lobbying has been extensive to convince the public that such laws are wrong.
Laws to reduce teen smoking stalled
Legislators have advanced lots of ideas to punish tobacco companies, including banning smoking in bars, forbidding certain ad campaigns, fining the companies and using the fines to pay for people’s smoking-related health care costs. Rep. Waxman said that since the tobacco companies are so good at marketing, they should be held responsible for creating a campaign that would reduce teen smoking. He would like to see a price increase in tobacco products, more power given to the Food and Drug Administration to regulate sales, more federal laws on smoking in public places and the tobacco tax money put into research on addiction and health care for uninsured children.
The Bipartisan No Tobacco for Kids Act of 1998 is now being considered in Congress. The bill contains the full set of measures recommended by the Koop-Kessler Commission: a price increase to discourage youth smoke; full FDA jurisdiction; company-specific youth reduction goals; a national education campaign and other prevention initiatives; restrictions on environmental tobacco smoke; international tobacco control; and an accountability board to disclose documents and oversee future industry conduct. The bill does not fund extraneous federal programs. Instead, the money will go toward reducing the $3.8 trillion federal debt.
The tobacco industry has made the bill unlikely to pass this year, Rep. Waxman said in an August statement. However, he emphasized that he is committed to fighting for legislation next year.”