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4 PM Eastern Time, October 31, 2006PHONE NUMBER
New Study Finds Tobacco Industry “Prevention” Ads Actually Encourage Kids to Smoke
COUNTRY Health Advocates Call on Industry to Pull Ads
A new study published today by the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH) finds that so-called “tobacco prevention” television ads paid for by the tobacco companies are ineffective and some of the ads actually encourage kids to smoke.
The study finds that the industry ads targeted at youth do not reduce smoking while industry ads targeted at parents have harmful effects. Specifically, 10th and 12th grade students exposed to the industry’s parent-targeted ads were more likely to approve of smoking, more likely to say they planned to smoke in the future, and more likely to have smoked in the past 30 days.
“This study shows that the tobacco companies are up to the same old dirty tricks. These ads are an attempt to clean up the image of tobacco companies and not about preventing kids from smoking,” said [ADVOCATE]. “These ads are a smoke-screen. Governments should not allow nor become involved in these so-called ‘youth prevention’ campaigns.”
The study involved youth-targeted ads by Philip Morris and the Lorillard Tobacco Company and parent-targeted ads by Philip Morris. The Philip Morris ads have appeared on television in countries around the world including Malaysia, Laos, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, several countries in Europe and Latin America and in cinemas in Australia. In addition to the TV ads, tobacco companies continue to distribute their so-called “prevention” materials to schools and doctors’ offices and to run radio and magazine ads about their programs.
IF APPLICABLE, ADD PARAGRAPH OF DETAILS ON THE TOBACCO INDUSTRY’S SO-CALLED PREVENTION ADS RUNNING IN YOUR COUNTRY. ALSO ADD STATISTICS ON TOBACCO’s TOLL IN YOUR COUNTRY
In the new AJPH study, which can be found at researchers used Nielsen Media Research television ratings data to measure youth exposure to the tobacco industry’s television ads in the United States from 1999 to 2002. They then compared these levels of ad exposure to youth smoking attitudes and behavior as measured by school surveys of 8th, 10th and 12th grader students. The final sample size was 103,172 students. The researchers adjusted their analysis for other factors that might have affected youth smoking, including smoke-free laws, cigarette prices and other TV advertising about not smoking.
The new AJPH study was conducted by researchers at Bridging the Gap, a policy research program based at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Michigan in the U.S. The lead researcher was Melanie Wakefield, PhD, of the Center for Behavioral Research in Cancer, The Cancer Council Victoria, Melbourne, Australia. The National Cancer Institute, the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation funded the study.