Facts About Tobacco Advertising

Tobacco companies target their advertising in specific ways to specific audiences. If you are Hispanic, African American, a woman, or Alaska Native, there is advertising targeted directly at you.

There are over 438,000 deaths due to using tobacco in the United States yearly. Tobacco products are heavily advertised, as evidenced by the five biggest cigarette makers who spend over $35 million a day to promote smoking their product. You may be interested to know that tobacco companies are largely unregulated by the FDA, who is supposed to be protecting the American Consumer. Meanwhile, they sit by twiddling their thumbs as millions of people die directly related to the toxins and cancer causing additives contained in tobacco products. Makes you wonder who is in bed with who, doesn't it?

Although every pack of cigarettes made in the US carry the surgeon general's warning about the hazards of smoking, its no skin off of big tobacco's nose. You see, they know that anyone using their product is already hopelessly addicted to the nicotine. Therefore, no silly little warning is going to rain on their parade.

Here are some facts about tobacco advertising, Information courtesy of the American Lung Association:

What do the major cigarette companies spend their advertising dollars on?

The largest single category of advertising expenditures in 2005 by far was price discounts paid to cigarette retailers or wholesalers to reduce the cost of cigarettes to the consumer. This category accounted for 74.6 percent ($9.78 billion) of expenditures.
Coupons for discounted cigarettes, and retail value-added promotions, such as “buy one, get one free” were the second and third largest expenditures respectively. The price of cigarettes has a very significant effect on youth smoking. Every 10 percent increase in the price of cigarettes reduces youth consumption by 7 percent. Therefore price discounts and retail value-added promotions can negate the impact of state cigarette tax increases.

How does tobacco product advertising affect youth smoking?

A study published in the May 2007 issue of the journal Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine found that retail cigarette marketing increased the likelihood that youth would start smoking; cigarette pricing strategies contributed to increases all along the smoking continuum, from initiation and experimentation to regular smoking; and cigarette promotions increased the likelihood that youth will move from experimentation to become regular daily smoking.
A 2002 study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine concluded that youth who were highly susceptible to tobacco advertising and believed they could quit anytime were more likely to progress from experimentation to established smoking.

In its 2001 monograph “Changing Adolescent Smoking Prevalence,” the National Cancer Institute reviewed the evidence behind how tobacco advertising and promotional activities affect youth smoking initiation, and concluded that the studies show a the causal relationship between tobacco marketing and smoking initiation seemed unassailable.

How do tobacco companies market their products to women?

Women have also been extensively targeted in tobacco marketing. Such marketing is dominated by themes of an association between social desirability, independence, weight control and smoking messages conveyed through advertisements featuring slim, attractive, and athletic models. Partially as a result of this targeting, an estimated 178,000 women die from smoking-caused diseases each year.
As early as the 1920s, tobacco advertising geared toward women included messages such as “Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet” to establish an association between smoking and slimness.

In January 2007, R.J. Reynolds introduced a new extension of its Camel brand of cigarettes targeted at women and some would argue teen girls called Camel No. The cigarettes themselves come in a shiny black box with flowery hot pink or teal borders, and promotional giveaways for the product include berry lip balm, cell phone jewelry, purses and wristbands all in hot pink.

What are the state and federal laws governing tobacco product advertising?

Eight states and the District of Columbia place some restrictions on tobacco advertising and promotion. Furthermore, states and the District of Columbia restrict or virtually prohibit where free samples of tobacco products can be distributed to the general public.

States are limited in their ability to restrict cigarette advertising and promotion because of a provision in the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act, originally passed in 1966, that preempts states and cities from further restricting the time, place and manner of cigarette advertising and promotion. This same legislation was amended in 1971 to ban certain means of advertising concerning cigarettes, such as advertising on radio and television.
Tobacco companies are allowed to deduct the cost of advertising and promotion from their taxes as a business expense, which saves them in excess of $1 billion a year in taxes.

I dare them to ask for bailout money.

by Barb Hicks, RN