Big Tobacco's Anti-Smoking Ads Boost Teen Smoking

In study, kids thought cigarettes were less harmful after viewing ads

By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter

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WEDNESDAY, Nov. 1 (HealthDay News) -- Anti-smoking ads on television produced by tobacco companies and aimed at parents may actually be encouraging children to start smoking, a new research paper reports.

"The tobacco companies are up to their old tricks," said Danny McGoldrick, director of research at the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. "Anyone who thinks that the tobacco companies have reformed are kidding themselves."

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McGoldrick was not involved in the study, which was led by researchers at The Cancer Council Victoria in Melbourne, Australia.

They looked at television ratings data from 75 media markets in the United States. The team specifically looked at average exposure to tobacco company-sponsored anti-smoking ads, both those targeted to youths and others targeted to parents. Some of these ads featured titles such as "Think. Don't Smoke" and "Tobacco Is Whacko If You're a Teen."

The researchers also looked over data from a U.S. national school-based survey from more than 100,000 children from 1999 to 2002.

The report was published in the Oct. 31 online edition of the American Journal of Public Health.

The researchers found that, among young children, there weren't many links between exposure to tobacco company ads and smoking attitudes and behavior.

However, among high school students, seeing parent-targeted ads was associated with kids expressing a lowered sense of smoking as harmful, a stronger approval of smoking, stronger intentions to smoke in the future and a greater likelihood of having smoked in the past 30 days, the researchers found.

The authors noted that, according to recent testimony, this appears to be just what one tobacco company intended.

"During questioning at a trial, Carolyn Levy, director of Philip Morris youth smoking prevention programs, admitted that the aim of their programs was to delay smoking until age 18. This contrasts with the aims of public health-funded programs, which are to encourage people to never take up smoking," the authors wrote.

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