The Economist : Smoke Signals

Main Category: Smoking / Quit Smoking
Article Date: 02 Oct 2007 - 1:00 PDT

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Below is an extract from the Economist.

Do public service anti-smoking advertising campaigns actually have an effect on the American public? Most teenagers would say not, but cigarette companies seem to think they do. This article is a fascinating study of a pair of long-running, directly opposed marketing campaigns: every attack on smoking has brought a rapid and generally better-funded counter-attack by the tobacco industry.

Firms responded to the first barrage between 1967 and 1970 by banning cigarette advertisements on television and radio; this removed the original anti-smoking adverts, which had been granted under an equal time ruling, while at the same time cutting tobacco advertising costs. Between 1985 and 2000, anti-smoking campaigns were mostly sponsored by individual states. The industry responded with expensive counter campaigns; by complaining loudly that the states were wasting public resources; and with a flood of filings under the Freedom of Information Act, which seemed designed to exploit bottlenecks in the system.

One industry initiative described in the article is particularly illuminating: the "Tobacco is whacko if you're a teen" campaign, paid for by Lorillard Tobacco in 1999. Lorillard, like other tobacco companies, was forced to fund "anti-smoking" advertisements by court settlements between industry and states: but this advert, with its ostensibly direct and hectoring approach to teenagers, had the effect unsurprisingly of boosting the "coolness" factor of smoking.

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