Health Groups Slam Tobacco Marketing to Women

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The new campaigns are the latest in the tobacco industry's long history of targeting women and girls, the report said.

Bill Phelps, a spokesman for Altria, Philip Morris's parent company in Richmond, Va., took issue with the way the Virginia Slims marketing program was characterized in the report.

"Our products and marketing are meant for adults who smoke," Phelps said. "In the case of Virginia Slims, that's adult women over the age of 21 who smoke."

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He added that women can obtain the material being offered by Virginia Slims only by requesting it through Philip Morris's direct mail campaign, and those requesting smoking material must provide valid identification that they were over the age of 21.

"The only other way we market our cigarettes is in stores," Phelps added. "And the primary reason for that is to let the customer know the product is in that store and how much it costs."

Smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death among women, killing more than 170,000 women in the United States each year, according to the report. Lung cancer is the leading cause of death from cancer of U.S. women, and deaths are not decreasing among women as they are among men, according to cancer statistics released in December. In addition to lung cancer, smoking increases women's and girls' risk of numerous serious health problems, including heart attack, stroke, emphysema and many other types of cancer.

"Big tobacco's blatant targeting of women is just an extension of a decades-long campaign of fraud and deception designed to addict children and adults to its deadly products," John R. Seffrin, chief executive of the American Cancer Society and its affiliate, the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, said in the news release. "Congress must empower the FDA to regulate tobacco products to put a stop to the harmful practices of an industry that has had free reign for far too long."

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-- Robert Preidt