Tobacco On Trial

In the trial last week, RJR President and COO Beasley said: “Our advertising isn’t responsible for causing anyone to start smoking — not adults or children”.

This is an old tobacco industry claim, a claim it has repeated for decades, usually when defending cigarette advertising. The advertising is only to get existing customers to switch, don’t you see. It has no other aim or effect.

Here’s how the president and chairman of the board of McCann-Erickson, the world’s second largest advertising agency, which handled $20 million of tobacco industry accounts, reacts to this claim:

“In recent years the cigarette industry has been artfully maintaining that cigarette advertising has nothing to do with total sales. Take my word for it, this is complete and utter nonsense. The advertisers know it is nonsense, the industry knows it is nonsense, and I suspect, the public knows it is nonsense. I am always amused by the suggestion that advertising, a function which has been shown to increase consumption with virtually every other product, somehow miraculously fails to work for tobacco products. The industry only advances this argument to try to undermine efforts to restrict tobacco promotion.”

JAMA 1981; 245: 1667-1668

Other advertising executives have the same reaction:

“As an argument [that tobacco advertising is only aimed at brand-switching and not at attracting new consumers] it is so preposterous it is insulting…to claim cigarette advertising does not encourage smoking flies in the face of all advertising knowledge and experience.”

Australian advertising executive, Legislative Action to Combat the World Tobacco Epidemic, p. 25.

“It’s time cigarette advertisers stopped the tripe that their advertising does not encourage people to take up smoking. Of course it does — it is high quality advertising that does its job very well”

Advertising News, December 2,1988.

Research finds that, yes, advertising increases consumption for this product, just like any other product:

Research on Tobacco Advertising and Consumption
factsheets.globalink.org/…

Effects of Tobacco Advertising
www.ash.org.uk/html/facts…

Advertising and Consumption
www.findarticles.com/p/ar…
“tobacco advertising is not an exception to the rule: advertising works and it works in part by building primary demand. ”

In fact, there is now a sizeable research base on the effect of tobacco advertising on smoking:

Bibliography: Advertising’s Effects on Tobacco Addiction Rates
www.medchi.org/grants/tob…

It finds that yes, surprise, cigarette advertising increases smoking. Yes, in both children and adults:

Two New Studies Show: Ads Get Kids to Smoke
www.no-smoking.org/feb98/…

Why and How the Tobacco Industry Sells Cigarettes to Young Adults
www.kstask.org/pdf/LingAJ…

Advertising is related to young people’s initiation of smoking
Dan Romer, Research Director of the Institute for Adolescent Risk Communication
www.tobacco.org/resources…

Environmental Risk Factors for Initiation
www.nida.nih.gov/Meetsum/…

So you may wonder: why does the industry even bother to deny this any more?

Because the truth is not consistent with the industry’s cozy explanation of its business: a passive supplier of a legal product enjoyed by adults. To state the simple truth here is to see the industry for what it is: a cause of smoking. And because the product is inherently lethal, that means this industry is a cause of death.

Once this fact is clear, it soon becomes clear that this industry is not just a cause but a leading cause, probably the leading cause, of smoking and smoking related death. This industry is an active, aggressive, massive, and highly effective promoter of a product that kills half its customers, that kills one out of five Americans today. That’s how this industry makes its money. But that’s something it can never admit in public.

And that’s why this industry has been so consistent for so long in its denials of what its advertising does.

So this isn’t really about whether cigarette advertising increases smoking. Of course it does.

This is about why this industry denies this fact in public, admits it in private, and exploits it to get new customers, to sign up a new generation of “customers for life”.

This is about how the whole issue of advertising a lethal product has played out. Advertising an addictive product. What it means that children are the most susceptible to this advertising. How the industry designs different advertising for different audiences, including 14 year olds.

Some reports on this:

Tobacco Industry Defenses of Advertising
www.quit.org.au/quit/Fand…

Tobacco Explained: Advertising
www.ash.org.uk/html/condu…

The Rise and Fall of Youth Cigarette Brands
roswell.tobaccodocuments….

How Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Affect Tobacco Consumption
www.globalink.org/tobacco…

Behind the Smokescreen: Tobacco Marketing and Kids
tobaccofreekids.org/repor…

Ethics and Tobacco Advertising and Sponsorship
www.ash.org.uk/html/advsp…

Sharing the blame: smoking experimentation and future smoking-attributable mortality due to Joe Camel and Marlboro advertising and promotions
tc.bmjjournals.com/cgi/co…

Influence of tobacco marketing and exposure to smokers on adolescent susceptibility to smoking.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entr…

A day in the life of an advertising man: review of internal documents from the UK tobacco industry’s principal advertising agencies
bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/c…

“This first significant glimpse inside UK tobacco advertising highlights three things. Firstly, it confirms the key conclusions of the past 20 years of tobacco control research. This has painstakingly established that tobacco advertising can increase consumption as well as brand share, that young people are a key potential target who are particularly susceptible…The internal documents show that, despite public pronouncements to the contrary, the industry has clearly been working on the assumption that all these findings are correct.”

Keep Smiling — No One’s Going to Die
www.tobaccopapers.com/kee…

Hooked on Tobacco: The Teen Epidemic; Consumer Reports, January 1995. Who is the Target? Ad Dollars and Teen Smokers
www.gaspforair.org/gasp/g…

Daily Document: “The Base of Our Business is the High School Student”
www.tobacco.org/Documents…

Britsh Medical Association: Tobacco Advertising & Promotion
www.bma.org.uk/ap.nsf/Con…

A very brief summary:

It’s a glorious half-truth that tobacco advertising is to encourage brand switching. Some advertising is aimed at that. And some is aimed at getting new customers, which for the most part means getting kids to smoke, getting kids to experiment until nicotine addiction takes over. Getting new customers is far more effective for the industry than getting existing customers to switch brands. And some advertising is aimed at undermining quitting, getting former smokers to start smoking again, and getting smokers to smoke more.

In short, tobacco advertising is aimed at pushing smoking, not just pushing brands. It’s a simple fact, and at this point a well documented fact. But it’s a fact this industry can never admit.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 6th, 2005 at 10:41 am and is filed under Notes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.