Kids Still Bombarded With Cigarette Ads

Study: Pact that would ban them ineffective

By Adam Marcus
HealthScoutNews Reporter

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WEDNESDAY, Aug. 15 (HealthScoutNews) -- The nation's leading cigarette makers have made little effort to comply with the spirit of a landmark agreement that would ban tobacco ads aimed at children, a new study suggests.

Under the terms of the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) signed by the tobacco giants and 46 states, tobacco companies promised to stop advertising to minors. But the study, which appears in the Aug. 16 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, finds that children still are heavily exposed to tobacco ads.

Dr. Michael Siegel, an associate professor in Boston University's School of Public Health, and Charles King III, a Harvard Business School researcher, reviewed pre- and post-MSA advertising trends for 15 cigarette brands in 38 magazines with large national circulations.

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"The numbers are really astounding. Kids are being bombarded," says Siegel.

Magazines were considered "youth-oriented" if either 15 percent or more of their readership or at least 2 million readers were ages 12 to 17, a standard cigarette maker Philip Morris adopted last year. They included such popular titles as People, Self, Hot Rod, Rolling Stone and Elle. The researchers classified three cigarette brands -- Camel, Marlboro and Newport -- "youth" brands, since more than 5 percent of junior high and high school smokers smoked them.

Magazine advertising for all 15 brands rose from $238 million in 1995 to $291 million in 1999, then dropped to about $217 million in 2000, the first year after the settlement. But the amount spent on youth brands in youth-oriented magazines was greater after the settlement: $56.4 million in 1995 vs. $59.6 million in 2000, with a large spike in 1999. The magazine business began experiencing a severe ad slump in 2000.

Using an ad-industry concept called "reach," Siegel and King say more than 80 percent of America's youth saw a magazine ad for "youth" cigarettes an average of 17 times last year. For Marlboro, the numbers were even more dramatic: 88 percent of the nation's young readers saw a pitch for the brand an average of 21 times in 2000 alone.

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