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.

Exposure to cigarette advertisements, but not other advertisements, is associated with initiation of adolescent smoking, according a study published online Jan. 17 in Pediatrics.
MONDAY, Jan. 17 (HealthDay News) — Exposure to cigarette advertisements, but not other advertisements, is associated with initiation of adolescent smoking, according a study published online Jan. 17 in Pediatrics.

Reiner Hanewinkel, Ph.D., from the Institute for Therapy and Health Research in Kiel, Germany, and colleagues examined the results from a longitudinal survey of 2,102 adolescents aged 10 to 17 who had never smoked. Participants were exposed to advertisements for six brands of cigarettes and eight commercial products at different frequencies. Initiation of smoking nine months after the initial evaluation was assessed as a function of advertising exposure.

The investigators found that 13 percent of adolescents started smoking during the observation period. The incidence of smoking initiation was associated with increased exposure to cigarette advertising: 10 percent in the lowest frequency exposure tertile, 12 percent in the medium-frequency exposure tertile, and 19 percent in the highest frequency exposure tertile. Exposure to other advertisements, for products, such as sweets, clothes, and mobile telephones, did not predict smoking initiation. High exposure to cigarette advertising remained a significant predictor of smoking initiation (adjusted relative risk, 1.46), even after controlling for other factors.

“The study results support the notion of a content-related effect of cigarette advertisements and underline the specificity of the relationship between tobacco marketing and teen smoking initiation,” the authors write.

Smokers had much incentive Thursday to quit for a day – it was the annual Great American Smokeout. Today, tomorrow and the next few weeks are tougher for smokers wanting to drop the habit permanently. Smoking is responsible for more than 440,000 deaths each year, and nearly 21 percent of Americans smoke. In Indiana the rate of adults who smoke is closer to 23 percent.

New warnings on tobacco products announced by the federal Food and Drug Administration last week may help persuade those trying to quit from succumbing to nicotine cravings. The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act requires large graphic warnings on cigarette packages. In June the FDA will select the final designs for labels, and then cigarette companies will have 15 months to update packaging and advertising.

Among the potential options for the new warning labels are pictures from autopsy photos and diseased lungs. The labels have to take up half the space on a pack and must include “color graphics depicting the negative health consequences.” The new warnings are also required in all tobacco advertising and have to take up at least 20 percent of content.

If an understanding of the health threats of smoking and the new stomach-turning labels still don’t dissuade committed smokers, there are always the high financial stakes. A pack of Marlboros now costs $5.34 a pack, and a pack-a-day habit costs close to $2,000 a year – that’s a really nice big-screen TV.

Recycling options about to explode

Residents are catching on to how much easier recycling is going to be, but may not yet understand the dramatic increase in the types of things the city soon will want residents to recycle.

Residents can currently recycle only No. 1 and No. 2 plastics. But after the new recycling contract takes effect in January, residents will be able to recycle plastics No. 1 through No. 7. That means that all the egg cartons, meat trays, old toothbrushes, plastic shopping bags and straws can be recycled instead of heading to the landfill.

It also means the city could get revenue from selling those commodities rather than paying to dump them.

Australia will move on Wednesday to restrict internet tobacco advertising, preventing retailers from promoting cheap or tax free cigarettes, as part of a campaign to cut smoking rates by 10 percent by 2018. Young Australians, aged 24-29, currently have the highest rate of smoking among Australians, who currently have a nearly 20 percent rate of smoking overall. Australia has some of the world’s toughest tobacco advertising restrictions and already bans advertising on television and radio, in newspapers and magazines, and at sporting events.

Retailers are prohibited from displaying cigarette packets in shops and cigarette packets carry graphic images of cancer and a health warning that smoking causes cancer.

“Prohibiting retailers from peddling cigarettes as ‘cheap’ or ‘tax-free’ on the internet is the latest step in the…government’s hard hitting and comprehensive action to reduce Australia’s smoking rates,” Health Minister Nicola Roxon said in announcing the new legislation to go to parliament.

“Together with our efforts to mandate the plain packaging of tobacco products from 2012, Australia is on track to have the world’s toughest measures against tobacco,” Roxon added.

“Tobacco use is Australia’s single largest cause of premature death and disease, killing 15,000 Australians a year and costing our economy A$31.5 billion.”

Smoking rates in Australia have been declining since the mid-1970s when the advertising bans first started, down from around 35 percent to 19 percent today.

The Australian Council on Smoking and Health welcomed the move.

“Cigarettes are now being heavily promoted on the Internet, and there are serious concerns that both online advertising and social networking sites are being used to promote tobacco to young people,” said council president Mike Daube.

University Park, Pa. — Bans on alcohol and tobacco marketing are among the least effective tactics for combating underage drinking and smoking, according to a Penn State economist, who has studied the effects of advertising since 1985. “My conclusion is that the emphasis on advertising bans and similar regulations in the public health literature is misplaced,” said Jon Nelson, professor emeritus of economics.

“More effective policies need to be sought to deal with issues of youthful risk-taking associated with alcohol and tobacco.”
Among the deficiencies, Nelson reported that there were problems with how researchers selected people to participate in their studies and how they drew conclusions from the data they collected.
“The studies, in fact, are deficient in so many respects that the big question is whether there’s any influence of marketing at all, especially the mass media,” Nelson said.
Policy makers and advocacy groups use these studies to initiate and justify bans on alcohol and tobacco product advertising in order to lower the social costs associated with using these products and to promote youth health. According to Nelson, the American Medical Association and the World Health Organization are among the organizations that uncritically cite these studies in their advocacy of tobacco and alcohol advertising bans.
Nelson recommended several ways to improve studies on youth alcohol and tobacco behaviors. Researchers who explore advertising’s influence on youth drinking and smoking should better identify why variables, such as peer and parental influences, are included in the study and choose variables that more effectively measure the exposure of alcohol and tobacco marketing in youth behavior.
In a recent review of 20 youth drinking studies and 26 youth smoking studies published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, Nelson found that only 33 percent of the results were statistically significant in linking marketing with youth drinking. He considered only 49 percent of the results significant on marketing and youth smoking behavior.
“These studies should be done against a well-defined scientific standard for an empirical investigation,” said Nelson. “There is really no such thing as a perfect study, but the object should be to get closer to those acceptable standards.”
Nelson identified longitudinal studies that measured the influence of a range of alcohol and tobacco marketing efforts including mass media, in-store displays, branded merchandise, movie portrayals and brand recognition. The participant in a longitudinal study is interviewed or surveyed over two or more years.
Nelson looked at these studies in two categories, youth drinking and youth smoking. Although these studies had common features, they were treated separately because they used slightly different models to explore advertising receptivity and exposure. Nelson then offered critical assessments of the studies in each category, paying particular attention to the consistency of empirical results among the studies.
The review reinforced findings in Nelson’s previous work. In 2001 and 2010 studies, he showed advertising bans in European countries did not reduce adult alcohol consumption. In 2003 and 2006 studies, he reported a similar finding for tobacco advertising bans.

From live.psu.edu, August 18, 2010

Researchers have launched a Facebook site calling for people to dob in tobacco companies advertising their products online.The site called Monitoring Tobacco Advertising, Promotion and Sponsorship 2.0 is a forum for people to report online cigarette advertising and is part of a University of Sydney research project.

Site founder Becky Freeman says tobacco companies are exploiting social media sites.

“The beauty of Facebook is the anonymity and the reach as well … you can reach thousands and thousands of people for a very low cost,” she said.

“If I were in the tobacco industry that’s exactly where I’d want to advertise.”

Ms Freeman says tobacco companies may also be setting up Facebook groups to help smokers cope with the stigma and social isolation smokers face.

“A lot of smokers now feel quite guilty and regretful about the fact they smoke,” she said.

But Ms Freeman says it is hard to prove tobacco companies are responsible for the content.

“So what we need is lots of eyes and ears on the ground,” she said.

“We’ve launched the Facebook site to try and engage the global community in this monitoring effort.”

Australian legislation does not require the tobacco companies to disclose their marketing budget or plans, Ms Freeman says.

“Advertising and promotional sponsorship [of tobacco products] has been banned in Australia for years and of course that doesn’t mean the tobacco industry is going to roll over and say OK,” she said.

As part of the study, YouTube content is also under scrutiny.

Ms Freeman says home-video style footage of concerts sponsored by tobacco companies could also be advertising campaigns.

“You want that user-generated feel. If it were quite slick and polished we could just point and say ‘yep, absolutely the tobacco industry has had a hand in that’,” she said.

Ms Freeman’s research prompted the Department of Health and Ageing to launch an investigation into tobacco companies’ use of social networking sites last October.

By Thea Cowie, Abc.net

The 12th Habano Festival in Feb 22-26 is one of the most important meetings regarding the marketing of premium-type cigars taking into account the high quality of Cuban cigars.

Main themes of the festival will be the Cohiba and the Romeo and Juliet cigar brands linking the product with women, according to organisers.

As in previous events more than 1,000 people from nearly 50 nations are expected to participate.
The programme includes visits to cigar factories, a trade fair, seminars, tastings, the Habanosommelier contest, a master class in cigar twisting, tours of plantations and a lecture on how to know how old cigar boxes by British Hunter and Frankau CEO, Simon Chase.

A welcoming gala night performance at Havana’s Grand Theater with a concert by six times Latin Grammy laureate pianist Chucho Valdes, will be dedicated to the presentation of new products.

A series of hard-hitting Government adverts showing smokers with maggots, rats and bugs falling out of their mouths may be “graphic and distasteful” but is “unlikely to cause serious or widespread offence”, the advertising watchdog has said. Skip related content

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) rejected 11 complaints over the content of the adverts which targeted smokers in the East and West Midlands areas with the highest number of consumers of illicit tobacco products.

The ASA said: “Although the leaflet’s imagery was unpleasant, we were of the view that because it was targeted at adult smokers, any distress or disgust caused was less likely to be disproportionate to the risk of the recipient consuming illicit tobacco and the hard-hitting approach was more likely to be considered justified by the target audience.”

The posters and leaflet, produced by the East & West Midlands Regional Tobacco Group (EWMRTG), highlighted the dangers of smoking with images of a shocked man smoking a cigarette with maggots, a rat’s back legs and tail, and bugs in his mouth, along with the warning: “Dodgy cigs may contain rodent droppings, bugs and dirt.”

The ASA did not uphold the complaints, saying the posters were suitable for public display.

“We considered that although the posters’ imagery was likely to be seen as graphic and distasteful, it was unlikely to cause serious or widespread offence, especially because of the serious message it carried: the danger of illicit tobacco and the need to give up smoking,” the ASA said.

“We considered that some children were initially likely to find the strong images unsettling, but because they merely showed shock and surprise on the faces of the smokers and did not depict the infliction of pain and showed tasteless but not violent images, children were unlikely to find them distressing.”

The adverts were designed “to stand out and be memorable, with a message that was very quickly understood”, the EWMRTG told the ASA.

The imagery was bold, unappealing and unpleasant to look at, but would make people think twice about buying illegal cigarettes and was not offensive, disturbing or disproportionate to the adverts’ aims, the EWMRTG said.

It added they were designed to have an “emotive effect” on the consumer and were hard-hitting as they sought to raise awareness of a serious health issue.