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EDITOR'S CHOICE |
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Tobacco marketing through a wide variety of media has long been a part of the adolescent experience. This month's cover image of the cowboy is familiar to generations of former, current, and future adolescents. Like the cowboy himself, this image harks back to former times and simpler ways.
Today's tobacco advertising has its own distinct flavor. Gone are the cartoon characters that proved wildly successful in marketing tobacco to youths. In their place are more confusing and sophisticated campaigns, ostensibly designed to reduce the level of direct marketing to adolescents. They nonetheless retain the cunning ability to attract young consumers through deliberate manipulation of antismoking messages.
All antismoking campaigns are not the same, as reported in the forum on youth smoking in this month's Journal. The funds from the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) were used to establish the American Legacy Foundation—a national, independent public health foundation—and myriad other state programs that are beginning to make progress in the pitched struggle for the attention of US adolescents. Matthew Farrelly and his colleagues compared the "truth" campaign, sponsored by the American Legacy Foundation, with the "Think. Don't Smoke." campaign, sponsored by Philip Morris, USA (901). The results demonstrate that exposure to the "truth" countermarketing advertisements was consistently associated with an increase in anti-tobacco attitudes and beliefs, whereas youths exposed to the "Think. Don't Smoke." advertisements were more likely to be open to the idea of smoking.
Accordingly, it is imperative to remain vigilant. Today we are witnessing an "evolved" debate. Instead of a choice between protobacco messages and anti-tobacco messages, youths are now forced to distinguish between anti-tobacco messages designed to prevent youth smoking and anti-tobacco messages designed to encourage youth smoking. Anne Landman and her colleagues, in another youth smoking article, provide evidence showing that tobacco industry youth programs do more harm than good for tobacco control (917). How far have we truly evolved?
New outlets for expanding sales have not gone unnoticed. Web sites, in addition to selling clothes, electronics, food, and almost every other imaginable product, now sell cigarettes. Also in this month's issue, Kurt Ribisl and his colleagues report that youths are beginning to buy cigarettes via the Internet. They "emphasize the need for the passage and enforcement of policies to restrict youths' access to tobacco products through this venue."(p940)
According to Mark Schapiro in the May 2, 2002 issue of The Nation, "Tobacco is one of the most globalized industries on the planet. More cigarettes are traded than any other product, some trillion "sticks," as they're known in the business, passing international borders each year."(p11) Youths throughout the world are subjected to a barrage of images, many designed specifically to encourage impulse purchasing of tobacco products without attention to legally required health warnings. Indeed, Melanie Wakefield and her colleagues carefully document, also in this month's Journal, the point-of-purchase marketing practices in the United States that have filled the void since the 1998 MSA billboard advertising ban (937).
Still, there is cause for celebration. Thanks to the efforts of the American Legacy Foundation and other courageous anti-tobacco groups, the cowboy on the cover is accompanied by a partner far more apt than the sidekicks that we saw growing up: a body bag.
Related articles in AJPH:
This article has been cited by other articles:
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  S. Whitelaw and J. Watson Whither health promotion events? A judicial approach to evidence Health Educ. Res., April 1, 2005; 20(2): 214 - 225. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
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