Anti-smoking ads rejected, study finds

Anti-smoking advertising funded by big tobacco companies may not prevent children from taking up the habit and may, in fact, have harmful effects on youths, according to a new study in the American Journal of Public Health.

The research, which will appear in the journal's December edition, analyzes the relationship between tobacco company-sponsored advertising campaigns and smoking-related beliefs held by more than 100,000 students.

It concludes that tobacco company-sponsored advertising campaigns targeted directly at youths "confer no benefit" and associates parent-targeted ads with "stronger intentions to smoke in the future."

Philip Morris USA, one of the nation's top tobacco firms, responded to the study's release with a defense of its current multimillion-dollar, parent-targeted campaign, "Talk. They'll Listen."

"The goal of our Youth Smoking Prevention program is to help prevent kids from smoking cigarettes," the company's statement reads. "We are committed to this effort because we firmly believe that kids should not smoke. We are the major national advertiser of youth smoking prevention communications to parents."

The study, however, finds that the "Talk. They'll Listen" campaign, launched in July 1999, may "invite rejection" from teens between the ages of 15 to 17 because of its authoritative tone and failure to offer a reason, aside from age, why youths should not smoke.

The study comes as no surprise to the president and owner of a Utah advertising company that has just entered its 10th year working with the Utah Department of Health on the state's anti-tobacco campaign.

"There are groups of us in the tobacco fight who've known for a long time that these ads are having the opposite effect," said Tracy Crowell of the Crowell/Love Partnership, which has worked with the health department's Tobacco Prevention and Control Program since November 1997.

"First off, what we're doing different from the tobacco companies is we really want kids to stop smoking or not to start," said Crowell, challenging Philip Morris' contention that its messages are intended to prevent underage tobacco use.

To date, some 50,000 students have created their own anti-tobacco ads through the partnership's annual "Truth From Youth" advertising contest.

"We involve our target audience, so they help us define the direction and the tone of the message," Crowell said.

Utah anti-tobacco advertising efforts use different campaigns for different risk groups, such as the "Svarnik and Bill" series, which targets high-risk teens.

"They're different, they don't fit the norm," Crowell said of the two "nerdy" friends who tend to go way over the top in their efforts to do something good — much, he said, like how most anti-tobacco folks seem to high-risk teens. "These kids don't want to be preached to."

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