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Cancer Resources > Cancer News > Cancer News from Reuters > Reuters Cancer News

Tobacco company magazine ads continue to target children

Last Updated: 2001-08-15 11:39:12 EDT (Reuters Health) - Although the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement with tobacco companies prohibits targeting magazine advertising toward children, tobacco companies continue to do so, according to a report in The New England Journal of Medicine for August 16.

"The reality is tobacco companies have not changed their behavior and they haven't had to give up the nation's children as the prime market for their product," Dr. Michael Siegel from the Boston University School of Public Health told Reuters Health.

Dr. Siegel and his colleague Dr. Charles King, III from the Harvard Business School, Boston, analyzed advertising expenditures for 15 brands of cigarettes in 38 adult- and youth-oriented magazines published between 1995 and 2000. In addition, they looked at exposure of youth to cigarette advertising during the same period.

"We found that cigarette brands popular among youth are still preferentially advertised in magazines with high levels of youth readership," Dr. Siegel said. "Despite what tobacco companies would like people to believe, we find strong evidence that the companies are still specifically targeting kids in magazine advertising."

Advertising expenditures of youth brands in youth-oriented magazines increased by 3.7% between 1995 and 1998 and by 15.2% in 1999. In 2000, expenditures declined to a level slightly higher than the level before the Master Settlement Agreement, the researchers found.

In addition, when Drs. Siegel and King looked at the percent of children exposed to cigarette advertising in magazines, they found no changes since the Master Settlement Agreement. "The average percent of kids exposed to magazine ads for the youth cigarette brands in 1998 was 85% and in 2000 the average was 82%," Dr. Siegel said.

The language of the tobacco settlement states that cigarette companies may not target youth directly or indirectly in their marketing, he noted. "In this study we find that cigarette brands that are popular among youth are more likely to allocate a higher percent of their advertising expenditures to magazines with high levels of youth readership. Our interpretation is that that is targeting."

One possible remedy is for state courts to enforce the terms of the Master Settlement Agreement and put an end to this practice, Dr. Siegel said.

"There may also be an ethical argument that magazines, especially magazines that have a high number of youth readers, have a responsibility not to contribute to the marketing of the nations' most deadly product," he added.

"Whatever the hopes were...the Master Settlement Agreement has not lived up to its promise," Dr. David A. Kessler from Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, and Matthew L. Myers from the National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids in Washington, DC, comment in a journal editorial.

The authors believe that Congress should pass legislation allowing the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to regulate tobacco. In turn, the FDA should strive to reduce smoking among young persons, help smokers to quit and "reduce the harm caused by the products that remain on the market."

Dr. Kessler and Myers conclude that "congressional action is not a panacea, but it can play an essential part in changing the scope and nature of the tobacco industry and in altering the role of tobacco in our society."

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