No tobacco company campaign has EVER produced any evidence that it prevents kids from smoking or helps smokers quit. In fact, evidence from several recent studies confirms that these programs are ineffective at best and even work to ENCOURAGE kids to smoke.

The goals of the industry campaigns are not to reduce smoking, and the targets of the campaigns are not kids or smokers. The tobacco companies’ own documents reveal that these campaigns are merely part of their ongoing efforts to convince policy makers NOT to enact those policies and programs that actually reduce tobacco use.

While foisting these fake prevention campaigns on the public, the tobacco companies have dramatically increased their marketing expenditures that promote smoking, much of it in ways that influence youth to smoke. They spend additional untold millions to oppose tobacco taxes, smoke-free laws, and funding for tobacco prevention programs, all of which are proven to reduce smoking among youth and adults and/or protect everyone from the harms of secondhand smoke.

 

A 2006 study published in the American Journal of Public Health found that the industry’s "prevention" ads targeted at youth are ineffective and do not change smoking outcomes, while industry ads targeted at parents increase the likelihood that kids will smoke. Among 10^th and 12^th graders, higher exposure to the parent-targeted ads was associated with lower perceived harm of smoking, stronger approval of smoking, stronger intentions to smoke in the future, and a greater likelihood of having smoked in the past 30 days.

Researchers found that youth exposed to Philip Morris’ "Think. Don’t Smoke" advertisements had more favorable feelings toward the tobacco industry compared to youth who were not exposed to the ads. This finding supports the assertion that the purpose of this campaign was not to prevent youth smoking, but rather to buy respectability and favor among youth.

Industry youth prevention media campaigns that position smoking as an adult habit or as a "choice" and ignore the consequences of smoking are not effective, and in fact may undermine the effects of aggressive media campaigns. Industry ads that use a "choice" theme and focus on refusal messages appear to have no effect on preventing smoking initiation, do not resonate with teens, and do not appear to offer any compelling reason not to smoke.

Lorillard heavily promoted its "youth smoking prevention" campaign, "Tobacco is Whacko…If You’re A Teen," despite lack of evidence that it has ever had any impact whatsoever on teens. The "Tobacco is Whacko…If You’re A Teen," slogan framed smoking as an adult activity, which, as tobacco industry documents recognize, is an effective way to appeal to kids and can tempt teens to try smoking.

Experts expressed serious concerns that the manner in which the "Tobacco is Whacko" campaign was framed encouraged young people to smoke as an act of rebellion rather than discouraging tobacco use.

A 2000 study by the California Department of Health Services showed that the much publicized "We Card" program, promoted by the tobacco industry as a voluntary means to keep underage kids from purchasing tobacco products, had little or no effect on underage tobacco sales. The California data for 1998 and 1999 demonstrated that the rate of illegal underage sales for stores with "We Card" and other tobacco industry signs was much higher than stores with government signs prohibiting illegal sales to minors; compliance increased only when the tobacco industry signs were coupled with government signs.

"Defendants never recommend that parents inform their children that smoking kills more than 400,000 people each year, involves an addiction that most smokers desire to end, and will harm those around the smoker. Nor do Defendants ever suggest that parents, as role models for their children, stop smoking."

"Defendants’ ‘youth programs’ and youth smoking prevention efforts are not only minimally funded -- given the vast sums they spend on marketing and promotion to youth -- and understaffed both qualitatively and quantitatively, but no efforts have been made to validate their effectiveness amongst the total population."

"[B]oth Lorillard’s and Philip Morris's media campaigns promote the message that smoking is an adult decision. Emphasizing that smoking is an adult activity underscores the desirability of engaging in adult behavior for adolescents who are particularly motivated to appear mature."

ADWEEK columnist Barbara Lippert wrote: "[T]hese ads are too tepid and generic — they could sell anything from orange juice to toothpaste. . . PM has chosen to create a mellow, sensitive, ‘rely on your good sense, son’ picture. Are they serious? This is advertising covering a life-and-death issue! So where is the big stick? The scare tactics? The hit ’em over your head with destroying life stuff?"

USA Today advertising columnist Bruce Horovitz placed Philip Morris’ new campaign on his "Worst Ads of 1998" list. He wrote: "This is Philip Morris’ jaded attempt at PR. Three spots with kids who say smoking isn’t cool. . . . Philip Morris says it wants kids to stop smoking. Right. Just like Bill Gates wants kids to stop staring at computer screens."

Fred Goldberg, chairman-CEO of Goldberg Moser O’Neill, an advertising agency in San Francisco, wrote in Advertising Age: "I call it unmitigated gall and hypocrisy; incredible and disheartening. It is another reflection of the distorted values and warped standards that exist today more than ever."

From Judge Kessler’s Final Opinion: "Internal documents suggest that Defendants designed their YSP [youth smoking prevention] programs for public relations rather than efficacy in youth smoking prevention."

From a 1991 Tobacco Institute discussion paper: "The youth [anti-smoking] program and its individual parts support the Institute's objective of discouraging unfair and counterproductive federal, state, and local restrictions on cigarette advertising, by: (a) providing on-going and persuasive evidence that the industry is actively discouraging youth smoking and independent verification that the industry's efforts are valid; (b) Reinforcing the belief that peer pressure -- not advertising -- is the cause of youth smoking [and] (c) Seizing the political center and forcing the antismokers to an extreme."

In a 1995 draft speech, Philip Morris present and CEO Joseph J. Morgan stated, "The bottom line to all this is, I repeat, if we don't do something fast to project that sense of industry responsibility regarding the youth access issue, we are going to be looking at severe marketing restrictions in a very short time. Those restrictions will pave the way for equally severe legislation or regulation on where adults are allowed to smoke. We need to do something to demonstrate industry agreement, concern and action on the youth-access issue...."

From a 1992 Philip Morris document: "[If Philip Morris took] a more progressive position on tobacco, it would enable the company to move onto a higher moral playing field, to neutralize the tobacco issue and to focus attention on other, more appealing products."

Judge Kessler stated, "Philip Morris continues to increase its marketing expenditures in grossly disproportionate amounts to its spending on youth smoking prevention. Philip Morris’s 2003 Financial Forecast Budget includes a budget of $110 million for youth smoking prevention, $8.9 million greater than its 2002 spending, ‘primarily due to increased spending for adult cessation programs.’ In contrast, in that year, Philip Morris spent more than $7.1 billion on sales incentives and product promotions."

According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), in 2003, cigarette companies increased their product marketing and promotional spending to $15.15 billion, while lowering their spending on youth smoking prevention programs to $72.9 million. In other words, tobacco companies spent more than 200 times on product marketing than on prevention.

According to state campaign contribution reports, in 2006, Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds and other tobacco interests spent at least $70.1 million in California and Missouri to oppose state ballot initiatives that would use revenues from a tobacco tax increase to fund proven-effective state youth prevention programs. The industry's money bought a barrage of deceptive television ads that misled voters about the impact of these initiatives, going so far as to claim that the initiatives did not provide enough money for tobacco prevention when in fact they would have given California and Missouri two of the best-funded tobacco prevention programs in the country.

In 2006, tobacco companies launched a major effort to thwart a proposed $1-a-pack increase on the state cigarette tax in Texas. Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds conducted an anti-tax campaign that consisted of radio commercials, newspaper ads and computer-generated phone calls to lawmakers. In addition, according to Texans for Public Justice, which monitors lobby influence in Austin, tobacco companies spent at least $1.4 million lobbying the state legislature against the tax increase.

In 2006, R.J. Reynolds spent $7.1 million in Arizona to deter voters from supporting a ballot initiative that would make bars smoke-free and another $5.4 million towards defeating a similar ballot initiative in Ohio. Voters rejected these multi-million dollar campaigns by the tobacco industry and sent a loud and clear message to elected officials at all levels: Reject the special interests of the tobacco industry and protect the public interest by supporting proven measures to reduce tobacco use and exposure to secondhand smoke.

Related Campaign Fact Sheets (available at www.tobaccofreekids.org)