Teenagers who frequently encounter the Marlboro man, or other familiar icons of the tobacco and cigarette industry, may be more likely to be lured into lighting up, according to a study. Nearly a quarter of all high school students in the United States smoke cigarettes, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Of these, nearly a third will continue smoking and die early from a smoking-related disease.

Though cigarette advertisements have been tied to teen smoking before, the study — which appeared in Pediatrics — showed that tobacco ads have an impact even when other advertising doesn’t.

There had been speculation that previous studies had simply identified teenagers who were receptive to all kinds of behavioral prompts, such as advertising in general, said James Sargent of Dartmouth Medical School in Hanover, New Hampshire, who took part in the study along with German researchers.

“This study shows that it is the specific images from tobacco ads that predict smoking and not such a character trait,” he told Reuters Health in an email.

Sargent and his colleagues surveyed 2,100 teens aged 10 to 17 who had never smoked, showing them billboard advertisements for six different cigarettes and eight other commercial products, with all brand information removed.

Each teen was then asked how often they had seen each image and if they could identify the represented brand.

During the following nine months, about 13 percent of the teens began smoking.

The top third of teens in terms of exposure to advertisements and brand recognition had nearly a 50 percent greater risk of lighting up, on average, compared to teens in the bottom third.

This was true even after accounting for other possible risk factors, such as age, sex, family’s economic situation, school performance, and having a friend or family member who smoked.

Sargent said young teens were particularly vulnerable because that was the time at which they were eager to develop identities independent of parents.

“They do this by ‘trying on’ things they see others doing, much like trying on clothes in a store. They try smoking, in part because of the way they view other smokers and also in part because of what they think smoking might do for them,” he said.

“For example, a young male might adopt smoking to appear more manly — like the Marlboro man.”

Tobacco advertisements may directly or subtly hint that smoking is tied to sex appeal, independence or, for girls, thinness. Cigarette advertisements are banned from U.S. billboards, televisions and radios, and they have become rare in print magazines. Still, both the U.S. and Germany lag behind nations such as Italy and New Zealand, which have implemented total bans on cigarette advertising.

The researchers said that when teens abstain from smoking, they may be unlikely to pick up the habit later in life. But roughly 30 percent of teen smokers will continue to smoke and die early of a smoking-related disease, according to the CDC.

“In this way, smoking causes more death than alcohol, obesity and illicit drug use combined,” said Sargent.

Tobacco advertisements really do prompt teenagers to smoke, say the authors of a new study that calls for a ban on cigarette ads. In research involving more than 2,100 public school students in Germany, 277 young people who had never smoked before took up the habit after viewing tobacco advertising. Those who saw the most ads were 46 percent more likely to try cigarettes than those who saw no tobacco ads, the study found.

This “just adds weight to the idea of having the [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] be able to control tobacco marketing,” said study co-author Dr. James D. Sargent, a professor of pediatrics and family and community medicine at Dartmouth Medical Center in New Hampshire.

Sargent, who has done extensive research on the influence of media on teen behaviors, worked with German researchers to produce the study, published online Jan. 17 in advance of print publication in the February issue of Pediatrics.

“There is a mental model for how advertising works,” said Sargent. After viewing an ad, teens “start having favorable thoughts about smoking: ‘it might be fun, it might make me more socially accepted.’ This preceded any intent to smoke on their part.”

Eventually a teen who has seen tobacco ads thinks about trying smoking, and soon after that “they try it,” said Sargent.

Students involved in the study ranged from 10 to 17 years old, with an average age of 12.5 years, when the study began. They were shown 12 ads with branding removed — six for cigarettes and six for other products, including candy, cars and cell phones. They were asked to identify the product advertised and recall the brand if they could.

After nine months, 13 percent of the students who had seen tobacco ads began smoking, showing a strong connection between the behavior and tobacco advertising, said Sargent. And the more ads they saw, the more likely they were to start smoking, the study found.

Smoking was not related to advertising for other products, the researchers said.

“Each one of these studies that we do is another little block that supports causality, just another little piece of evidence,” Sargent said.

Other known risk factors for teen smoking, such as parental and peer smoking, were controlled for during the data analysis, the researchers said.

“This [study] is very important because there are few, if any, longitudinal studies,” demonstrating a link between tobacco advertising and teen smoking, said Cheryl Healton, president and CEO of the American Legacy Foundation, an anti-smoking organization.

Previous research has mostly relied on cross-sectional studies, she said. That type of study documents incidence of a behavior at a certain point in time and may suggest a link between, say, smoking and advertising, but it doesn’t show cause-and-effect. A longitudinal study, on the other hand, follows participants for a period of time in an effort to demonstrate that one causes the other.

Advertising exploits themes that are meaningful to teens including sex appeal, masculinity for boys, thinness for girls, and social acceptance, according to research cited in the study. Most smoking starts during adolescence, and because tobacco is a powerful psychoactive drug, the path to addiction readily follows, the authors added.

Healton said tobacco companies spend about $30 million a day on advertising in the United States alone. They “have to get young people to smoke or else they will go out of business,” she said.

Although tobacco advertising is banned on American television, Healton said some TV programs promote smoking by showing characters lighting up.

“Sex and the City was the longest-running ad for Marlboro Lights,” she said, referring to the popular TV series.

In the United States, teen smoking has declined dramatically since its peak in 1997, according to data provided by Legacy. Yet, in 2007 about 20 percent of American teenagers reported smoking in the previous 30 days, the American Lung Association reported.

Tobacco has seen better days, but current research may breathe new life into the age-old cash crop.
Scientists have learned how to genetically modify tobacco to increase the oil in the leafy plant by as much as 20-fold, according to a report published in the Plant Biotechnology Journal.

Vyacheslav Andrianov, the report’s co-author and a researcher at the Biotechnology Foundation Laboratories at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, calls tobacco an attractive alternative “energy plant” (with potential similar to algae and switchgrass) since it can produce large amounts of oil and sugar more efficiently than other crops and does not compete with food supplies, unlike corn and soybeans.

Globally, the tobacco industry has been getting burned in this age of increased awareness of smoking-related health problems (causing a fall in cigarette demand), high-figure lawsuits and tax hikes. But major players like Altria Group, Inc. (NYSE: MO), the parent company of Philip Morris USA, which makes Marlboro, the world’s top-selling brand, have managed to shrewdly manage shrinking markets such as the United States by increasing prices and make inroads into booming markets like Russia where consumption is rising and the tax climate is attractive.

Tobacco farmers have been less fortunate. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations says tobacco production has fallen about 1.5% worldwide over the past 10 years.

The number of tobacco farms in the U.S. fell by 72% between 2002 and 2007, according to the U.S. Census of Agriculture. Large tobacco-growing states like North Carolina and Virginia have been particularly hard hit, seeing as many as 90% of farms in some areas either close down or be forced to turn to other crops to survive to downtrend.

Although commercial use of tobacco as a biofuel is conceivably five or more years away, farmers are hopeful about the prospects. “I got a lot of response from farmers that would like to grow tobacco in fields that are not being used right now,” Andrianov told the Associated Press.

Only time will tell if tobacco’s fortunes will rebound, but the possibilities are encouraging. If all goes as planned, the results could give smokeless tobacco a new meaning and ultimately leave any tobacco biofuel-related companies that emerge flaming hot.

By Shannon Roxborough, Energyboom

Smoking may be going out of fashion in many countries, but in Havana, Matt Frei finds Cuba’s love affair with the cigar continues.The United States famously takes a very fundamentalist attitude to smoking in public.

Want to light up in a restaurant or a bar in Manhattan? Forget it.

How about a stealthy cigarette on the pavement outside our office in Washington? No way.

They will call the cops. The people who do smoke are forced to huddle in underground garages and behind garbage bins as if they were doing crack cocaine.

For a very casual and occasional smoker like me the ostracism has been enough to make me quit for good. Until, that is, I went to Havana.

Smoking passion

Can you imagine my surprise when I saw the cleaning woman in my hotel room, vacuuming the carpet with a huge cigar protruding from her lips?

I do not think they distinguish between smoking and non-smoking rooms in Cuba.
The security guard hovering at the front door was chomping on something the tobacco industry proudly refers to as a “Wide Churchill”.

Cuba smokes with a vengeance. Perhaps it is another way of thumbing its nose at Uncle Sam.

It is certainly another item on the long list of idiosyncrasies.

From the vintage Buicks and Chevys rattling along the pot-holed streets like miracles of recycling, to the crumbling colonial facades, to the earnest posters calling for perpetual revolution, courtesy of the Castro brothers.

Exploding cigar

Lucky for cigars, Fidel Castro smoked them with relish. They were his official vice of choice.

Even today as an octogenarian retiree, he apparently still likes the occasional puff.

When he was younger Castro used to smoke as many as six cigars a day. He was so reliably hooked on them that the CIA even had the brilliant idea of blowing one of them up.

That was assassination attempt 105, I think, out of the 638 which the Cuban intelligence proudly lists.

For his part Castro took the threat seriously and recruited four of Cuba’s best cigar rollers to work undercover in a former palace that had once belonged to a sugar cane baron.

Here they rolled the Commandante’s daily supply in secret, safe from the tampering of the CIA. This is now the Cohiba cigar factory, producing perhaps the world’s finest and most expensive brand.

Cigar festival

Our visit to Havana happened to coincide with the annual cigar festival. This has to be one of the strangest trade fairs on the planet.

For a whole week some of the world’s most ostentatious capitalists descend on one of the world’s last bastions of genuine communism, to smoke themselves to near death.
The highlight is a gala dinner hosted by Habanos, Cuba’s state monopoly cigar manufacturer.

Cigars account for the country’s most lucrative export after nickel.

If you are a paying guest, the dinner costs $500 (£350) a head. They serve five courses and a different cigar with each one of them.

The charming young blonde woman I was sitting next to – the head of a well known international distributor – had brought along a packet of cigarettes, for a quick smoke between cigar courses. You do not want to be caught short. Do you?

It was an astonishing collection of guests.
There was the Japanese toy tycoon with the long ponytail.

The morbidly obese Beijing bigwig who used his monster cigar like a bayonet.

The Russian Mafioso with pitted skin that looked as if someone had stubbed several cigarillos out on his cheeks.

A brace of British lords, who squeezed their Cohibas cigars in deep appreciation of their elasticity, and the posse of very quiet Americans, who had slipped under the US state department’s radar.

The waiters – there were hundreds of them – glowered at the assembled crowd who were puffing on something that cost more than they were lucky to earn in a whole month.

The highlight of the evening? An auction of humidors, stuffed with cigars, which fetched $1m or so. The whole evening was the very definition of capitalist excess.

Smoky atmosphere

So why did the authorities broadcast it live on state television? And why did it not kick-off the counter-revolution in a country plagued by genuine poverty and shortages of just about everything?

It appears that national pride in Cuban cigars – still the best in the world – trumps resentment.

Call it another miracle trick of a regime that has already survived the collapse of communism and the illness of Fidel Castro. The dinner took place in a conference centre that resembled an airport hangar.

A thousands guests, each supplied with five cigars. Imagine the air.

This was either the passive smoking Olympics or for active smokers just another Friday night out in Havana.

So I joined in – with relish – trying not to lose face with the world champion smoker on my right. After four hours, only three cigars and one cigarette, I had to call it quits.

My lungs demanded it. My brain agreed.

I ran out of the giant hall, past guest and tables that had disappeared behind dense clouds of smoke. A waiter flung open the door, clearly fearing the worst.

I inhaled the night air like a drowning man gasping for breath.

The next morning I sent all my clothes to the hotel laundry, brushed my teeth about four times and began nursing a nicotine hangover that lasted for two solid days.

My big mistake was not to follow Bill Clinton’s edict. I smoked and I inhaled.

An Auckland academic says smoking rates in New Zealand would plummet if tobacco products could not be displayed at shops.

Dr Marewa Glover of Auckland University told a select committee today that progress in tobacco control was poor and it was having a particularly bad effect among Maori.

She said outside the hearing that she disagreed with tobacco industry giant British American Tobacco New Zealand (BAT) that banning smoking or restricting its sale would merely produce an uncontrolled black market.

“There just will not be the death and illness to such an extent from so few people smoking, and the fastest way to do that is to get rid of the product off the shelves,” Dr Glover said.

She said BAT’s suggestion that they were offering a legal product which people were choosing to use was “a pack of lies”.

“Nicotine is highly addictive and people do not have freedom of choice. It’s a psychoactive drug, it works on the brain, it manipulates thought, it manipulates motivation and they are driven to smoke.”

Dr Glover said she didn’t want smoking banned but she wanted its over-the-counter sale banned, leaving it for internet purchase or grow-your-own customers only.

When asked about removing the product from visibility in stores but not removing them altogether, BAT managing director Graeme Amey said research showed this would have little impact on the prevalence of smoking.

But after Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei asked why BAT opposed this move if it would make no impact on smoking, Mr Amey said his company could lose market share as a result.

“We operate a commercial business and we are in the business of improving market share,” he said. “Brand switching would become an issue.”

Mr Amey would not tell the committee its marketing strategies in an open hearing, saying it was commercially sensitive. He said he would provide them to the committee confidentially.

Maori Party MP Hone Harawira thanked BAT for addressing the committee, but said he hoped that once the inquiry was complete, “we can ban these products forever”.

Dr Glover said much of tobacco marketing came via its packet design, and removing these from public view would therefore help reduce smoking.

She told the committee that more than half Maori women of childbearing age were smokers, more than double the rate of the whole population, and that smoking among Maori women 14-18 weeks into pregnancy was still high at 45 per cent.

She said 62 per cent of the 328 sudden unexpected deaths among infants (sudi) between 2003 and 2007 were Maori.

“Smoking during pregnancy is a key risk factor for sudi,” she said.

As well as restricting sale, Dr Glover said services to help people quit smoking needed to be easier to access.

“That sort of help needs to be as easy as going to the dairy to buy a packet of smokes.”

Several people told the committee how smoking-related illnesses had claimed the lives of loved ones in their families.

Ngaire Rae of Manaia Public Health Organisation in Whangarei said she had just buried her father, who died from a smoking-related disease at the age of 68.

She said her story was all too common in Northland, where a huge proportion of Maori were smokers.

“He should be sharing his life stories with his whanau, and instead we are deprived of his wisdom and his life stories,” she said.

“I am pleased make sure that there are some strong actions as a result of this inquiry. Let’s not make this a talkfest, let’s make sure your time and ours is not a waste.”

A subsidiary of Reynolds American Inc. has agreed to alter its marketing to specify that organic tobacco does not provide safer tobacco or cigarettes for smokers.
The settlement agreement involving Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Co. and the attorneys general of 33 states, including North Carolina, took effect Monday.

Santa Fe sells Natural American Spirit cigarettes and organic tobacco for roll-your-own tobacco users. Two cigarette styles — “light mellow taste” and “regular full-bodied taste” are listed on the pack as being made with 100 percent organic tobacco.

On its Web site, Santa Fe already has a disclaimer similar in size to the surgeon general’s warning. The disclaimer reads “no additives in our tobacco does not mean a safer cigarette.”

The disclaimers substitute “organic tobacco” in the place of “no additives.”

Edmund Brown Jr., the attorney general for California, said that the states were concerned that Santa Fe’s advertising may have been misleading consumers into believing that its organic products were less harmful than other tobacco products.

“There is currently no competent or reliable scientific evidence to support this conclusion,” the attorneys general said in the agreement.

The attorneys general had considered taking legal action because they felt the advertising may have been in violation of the Master Settlement Agreement.

“Stamping an organic label on tobacco products is ultimately a distinction without a difference,” Brown said. “Organic or not, cigarettes are bad for your health.”

Santa Fe said it agreed to make the changes even though “we believe our advertising is, and has been, truthful and not misleading.” The agreement states that the settlement is not an admission by Santa Fe that it has violated the MSA.

Santa Fe said that its organic tobacco is certified through the National Organic Program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Certified organic tobacco is grown without the use of pesticides and fertilizers prohibited under the program. The agreement allows it to continue to advertise its tobacco as organic or 100 percent organic.

“We came to an amicable agreement, and there was no fine involved,” said Alexandra Pratt, a spokeswoman for Santa Fe. “It made sense to make the agreement, which adds more clarity, which is what the California attorney general wanted.”

Santa Fe said it is sending new marketing materials to distributors and retailers. They have to be in place by March 23.

By Richard Craver, Journalnow

The more that teens see cigarette ads, the greater their risk of taking a puff. A new study shows that the particular content of tobacco marketing resonates with youth and that the vivid imagery in tobacco advertising captures their interest, although teens typically are more resistant to the promotional seduction of other products.

“Cigarettes have created a brand for every personality trait,” said study lead author Reiner Hanewinkel, Ph.D., director of the Institute for Therapy and Health Research in Kiel, Germany.

“If you are looking to project independence and masculinity, think of the lonely cowboy in the Marlboro ads,” added Hanewinkel, who collaborated with Dartmouth Medical School. “On the other hand, if you’re looking to project a desire for romantic relationships, and friendships are playing a role, then you will choose Lucky Strike if you are a man and Virginia Slims if you are a woman.”

Kids with high exposure to tobacco advertising were twice as likely to have tried smoking and three times as likely to have smoked in the past month, compared to those with low exposure. Exposure to tobacco advertising also was associated with higher intent to smoke in the future among the never-smokers, suggesting that it affects how adolescents perceive smoking even before they start.

The study, which appears online and in the April issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, has relevance for the United States and other nations with partial advertising bans similar to Germany’s restrictions.

The 2008 survey involved 3,415 German schoolchildren, ages 10 to 17, in rural and urban areas. Students saw images (with all the writing and brand logos removed) of six cigarette ads and eight commercial products such as clothing, cars, candy and detergent.

With the brand information missing, researchers measured adolescents’ ad recognition by applying psychological assumptions about attention and memory. They inquired about how frequently students had viewed each ad image and asked about smoking habits and intentions.

“We were amazed at how often they had seen the images and could correctly recall the cigarette brand,” said study collaborator James Sargent, M.D., a professor of pediatrics at Dartmouth. “For example, 55 percent had seen the Lucky Strike image and almost one quarter correctly decoded the brand.”

After analyzing the data, the researchers assessed how likely nonsmokers were to try smoking. Researchers classified survey participants as current smokers if they reported smoking at least once a month.

“This is a well-done study. They controlled for all the things they needed to control for,” said Stanton Glantz, Ph.D., director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research & Education at the University of California, San Francisco. Among the outside variables was whether a parent or peers smoke.

“It’s a nice contribution to the literature showing that cigarette advertising is very powerful,” Glantz said, noting the strong link between the amount of ad exposure and the level of youth response.

By Susan Kreimer, Cfah

The 2008 WI Youth Tobacco Survey found that 7 percent of high school students and 3 percent of middle school students use chewing tobacco. Its use is more common among boys than girls.
With the numbers doubling in the years from middle school to high school, it is very important that our youths are educated about chewing tobacco, its effects on their bodies, and the products and advertising aimed at them by the tobacco companies.

Many people have the incorrect assumption that because chewing tobacco is smokeless, it is also harmless, since the poisons and chemicals are not released into the air. However, that is not the case. Chewing tobacco contains 28 cancer-causing agents, all of which are absorbed into the bloodstream during its use. In fact, chewing tobacco is more addictive and harder to quit than cigarettes. Using spit tobacco eight to 10 times a day can put as much nicotine into the body as smoking 30 to 40 cigarettes, since the nicotine content of spit tobacco is two to three times greater than a single cigarette. Nicotine is more addictive than cocaine or heroin (“About Spit Tobacco,” ETR Associates, 2007).

With the smoking bans that are being implemented around the nation, tobacco companies are changing the focus of their advertising — turning more to promotion of smokeless products as discreet alternatives to cigarettes in places where smoking is not allowed (www.cancer.org). This is creating a new tobacco user — one who smokes in their home, and uses smokeless products in public, posing even more serious health threats to their bodies.

Additionally, the smokeless products that the tobacco companies are advertising have an increasing appeal to teenagers, due to the variety of candy flavors that are available. A recent study by Portland State University Chemistry Professor James Pankow found that smokeless tobacco products have up to 700 percent more flavor additives than candy! The high levels of flavorings are used to cover the taste of the tobacco, luring kids into using it because of the good taste, and not forcing them to think about the health risks associated with its use.
Anti-tobacco advocates state that parents who don’t smoke are not aware about the new threat coming from smokeless flavored tobacco, as they simply have no idea that such products exist. The landmark Tobacco Control act adopted last June, and put into effect in November, prohibits the sales of cigarettes with any flavoring besides menthol; however, the ban doesn’t cover other flavored tobacco products.

Chewing tobacco users face a multitude of health risks, including cancers of the lip, tongue, cheeks, gums and floor and roof of the mouth, nicotine addiction, oral leukoplakia, gum disease and gum recession, heart attack and stroke . According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, oral cancer is the sixth-leading cancer in men, and almost 75 percent of people diagnosed with oral and pharyngeal cancer use tobacco. Additionally, only 56 percent of people diagnosed with mouth or throat cancers live longer than five years.

Feb. 14 to 20 was Through With Chew Week. Established in 1989 by the American Academy of Otolaryngology — Head and Neck Surgery Inc., the week serves as an educational campaign to decrease spit tobacco use and increase awareness of the negative health effects of using these products . Locally, our Youth Initiatives group organized a number of events to increase awareness of the dangers associated with chewing tobacco. These kids have taken a stand to not use tobacco products, to educate their peers about the risks associated with the use of tobacco and to fight against the tobacco companies and their deceptive marketing practices. Join the kids in their efforts: Educate yourself about the dangers of chewing tobacco, and consider developing an action plan to quit if you are a current user.

Wendy Young is a Marshfield Clinic AmeriCorps Member serving the Inner Wisconsin Coalition for Youth (IWCFY), working on prevention activities with students in the local schools, including Wisconsin Rapids public and parochial, Immanuel Lutheran, Nekoosa, Pittsville and Auburndale. IWCFY is a network of community members promoting and facilitating healthy lifestyles.

About 200 South Mississippi teenagers will soon be on the front lines in the battle against Big Tobacco.

“Second hand smoke affects the development of a baby’s brain.”

“Smoking while you’re pregnant affects the development of the child.”

Those were just some of the messages they heard Tuesday during a LEAD Conference in Biloxi. LEAD stands for Leadership, Engagement, and Activism Development. The high school students learned how to lead the movement against smoking, especially among young people.

“This is basically a call to action. We want to disseminate the message among as many people as possible. And with us reaching this group, we certainly hope we can make a difference,” said Dena Pope, Youth Programs Coordinator for the Mississippi Department of Health Office of Tobacco Control.

The teens created eye-catching posters and bandanas, with words that inform people about the deadly effects of tobacco use. They also learned how small, inexpensive toys can be effective tools in spreading the message that tobacco kills.

One instructor held up baby doll with a piece of paper attached.

“I put a fact on there, representing how second hand smoke affects children,” he explained.

According to the Mississippi Health Department, 20-percent of Mississippi youth are smokers. And 69,000 high school students in our state will eventually die from smoking.

Some of the teens at the conference know first-hand about the dangers of smoking. Jennifer Ladner of Ocean Springs High School lost her grandfather to a smoking-related illness.

“The tobacco industry is really targeting youth. They’re really using us as targets, as replacement smokers as they call us,” said Ladner. “We really need to step up and for our generation to speak and get the word out there that tobacco is not a good thing.”

Jennifer helped push for a no-smoking ordinance in parks around Ocean Springs. She wants to inspire other teens to join her and become an anti-smoking activist.

“They can stand up for anything they believe in and they can make an impact as youth,” said Ladner.

The LEAD Conference was part of the Mississippi Health Department’s Generation Free Program. Members will make other stops this week in Jackson, Greenville and Tupelo.

By Trang Pham-Bui, Wlox