The Impact of Tobacco Promotional Events Action Items
What you can do:
(See: Why even Phllip Morris Hated Phillip Morris)
Help us identify where the tobacco industry is promoting its products.
These might include booths at community events such as:
- Fairs
- Concerts
- Parades
- “Bar Nights”
- Newspaper/magazine inserts
- Coupons and discounts
- Personal interactions and messages (e.g., birthday cards).
Have you been to a rodeo or county fair and seen a large tent or truck distributing tobacco samples to "Adults Only"?
Please let us know where you have seen promotion of tobacco.
Send us an email
Even mere awareness of a tobacco promotional event
increases youth smoking susceptibility... 
- One study found that a child who is aware of tobacco
promotional activities and has a friend who owns tobacco
promotional items is 3.4 times more likely to smoke than others
who do not.11
- At least two other studies have shown to that desire to own
tobacco promotional items increases youth susceptibility to
smoking almost as much as does actually owning those
items.12,13
“The fragile, developing self-image of the young person needs all
the support and enhancement it can get. Smoking may appear
to enhance that self-image in a variety of ways. If one values,
for example, an adventurous, sophisticated, adult image,
smoking may enhance ones self-image…This self-image
enhancement effect has traditionally been a strong promotional
theme for cigarette brands and should continue to be
emphasized.”
- RJ Reyonolds Tobacco Company, from a document
entitled, Some Thoughts About New Brands of Cirgarettes for the Youth
Market, 1973.
An estimated 1/3 of adolescent experimentation with
smoking can be directly attributed to tobacco promotional
activities...
- If a child is not only aware of, but has also participated in,
tobacco promotional activities, (s)he is 9.3 times more likely to
smoke than kids not aware of tobacco promotions. And if that
child received free tobacco product samples while participating in
a tobacco promotion, that child will be 21.8 times more likely to
smoke than the other kids.14
- In a longitudinal study, children who owned a tobacco
promotional item and who named a brand that attracted their
attentions, were 2.7 times more likely to become established
smokers within the next 5 years.15
- Research has shown that branded tobacco paraphernalia is used
by youth to ‘try on’ or to assimilate the identity of a smoker.16 As
shown in Philip Morris documents as early as 1969, the
permanence of that ‘identity’ is soon to follow: “Smoking a
cigarette for the beginner is a symbolic act, . . . ‘I am not my
mother’s child, I’m tough, I am an adventurer, I’m not square’
. . . As the force from the psychological symbolism subdues, the
pharmocological effect takes over to sustain the habit.”17
“[Jack Daniels’ merchandizing campaign is] an example of a
viable positioning executed in a ‘nonstandard’ but authentic and
unpretentious way, which not only reached [young adult]
consumers, but converted [younger adults] into walking
billboards.”
RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company, from a document
entitled, Are Younger Adult Smokers Important?, 1985.
"[T]he base of our business is the high school student.” Lorillard
.
- Tobacco Company Executive, 1978
References
11Altman, David G., et al. “Tobacco Promotion and Susceptibility to Tobacco Use
among Adolescents Aged 12-17 Years in a Nationally Representative Sample.”
American Journal of Public Health. Nov 1996; 86(11):1590-1593.
12Feighery, Ellen, et al. “Seeing, wanting, owning: the relationship between receptivity
to tobacco marketing and smoking susceptibility in young people.” Tobacco Control.
1998; 7:123-128. Available at http://tc.bmjjournals.com/cgi/reprint/7/2/123
13Pierce, John P., et al. “Tobacco industry promotion of cigarettes and adolescent
smoking.” JAMA. February 1998; 279(7):511-515.
14Altman, David G., et al. “Tobacco Promotion and Susceptibility to Tobacco Use
among Adolescents Aged 12-17 Years in a Nationally Representative Sample.”
American Journal of Public Health. Nov 1996; 86(11):1590-1593.
15Biener, Lois, and Siegal, Michael. “Tobacco Marketing and Adolescent Smoking:
More support for a casual inference.” American Journal of Public Health. March
2000; 90(3):407-11.
16Feighery, Ellen, et al. “Seeing, wanting, owning: the relationship between receptivity
to tobacco marketing and smoking susceptibility in young people.” Tobacco Control.
1998; 7:123-128. Available at http://tc.bmjjournals.com/cgi/reprint/7/2/123
1717“Why One Smokes.” 1969 Draft Report to the Philip Morris Board of Directors.
Document Bates NO.1003287836.
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