BOSTON, Mass. – American tobacco companies are not living up to a 1998 agreement to stop promoting cigarettes to children, a study of advertising in 38 magazines has found.
The companies continued to buy space in youth-oriented magazines to advertise cigarette brands popular with youngsters, said a report by Charles King of the Harvard Business School and Dr. Michael Siegel of Boston University.
The duo tracked advertising before and after the agreement between the companies and attorneys general in 46 American states. The deal said cigarette makers may not “take any action, directly or indirectly, to target youth … in the advertising, promotion or marketing of tobacco products.”
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About 3,000 children take up smoking every day in the United States, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
In June 2000, Philip Morris Inc. pledged that beginning in September 2000 it would not advertise in magazines with more than two million readers aged 12 to 17, or if 15 percent of the readership consisted of young readers.
Researchers used that standard to track compliance with the agreement. They found the amount spent to advertise three brands popular with young people – Camel, Marlboro and Newport – in youth-oriented magazines increased immediately after the settlement to $67.4 million US. That is higher than the amount, adjusted for inflation, spent on tobacco ads during any of the four years prior to the settlement.
In addition, both before and after the agreement, tobacco companies spent a disproportionate amount of money advertising youth brands in youth-oriented magazines, the researchers concluded.
Last year, for example, the companies spent about $20 million for each of the three youth brands, but less than $6 million per brand for adult-oriented products like Basic, Winston or Virginia Slims.
When it came to advertising placement, the tobacco giants consistently spent more in youth-oriented magazines like People, TV Guide and Sporting News than in adult-oriented publications like Time, Newsweek and Cosmopolitan.
Kessler and Myers said the year after the agreement was signed, “the marketing expenditures of the cigarette companies actually rose 22 percent to a record $8.24 billion” and the use of “free gifts that appeal to young people skyrocketed.”
The CDC said only five percent of the money given to the states is being used for smoking prevention.
At least 20 percent of the $206 billion generated by the settlement would need to be spent on prevention to counter costs associated with smoking, the CDC said.
