Up in Smoke: Tobacco Advertising – NBC January 9, 2009In 1998, Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Company was one of many that agreed to a settlement, essentially removing its creative marketing arm. The idea was to stop companies from distributing promotional materials often aimed at kids. But Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said Santa Fe has been violating that agreement. At issue - tin signs the company has been giving out featuring its “Natural American Spirit” cigarette brand. ?These promotional signs are both a symbol and a symptom of slick pitches that show the tobacco industry unrepentant, still relying on marketing tactics to sell death and addiction,? Blumenthal said. ?This legal action demonstrates our undiminished determination to fight tobacco — hopefully now a battle joined by a new president committed to public health.? As a result, Connecticut is one of 41 states to reach a settlement with the company. Santa Fe will stop handing out the signs and has also agreed to pay a $250 fine for each future violation. The 1998 settlement prohibits tobacco companies from dispensing certain types of promotional materials, including decorative signs. Since that agreement was signed, Americans have smoked more than 100 billion fewer cigarettes, according on data from the American Lung Association. Under the agreement, which was announced Wednesday, Santa Fe Natural Tobacco has agreed not to hand out such signs or other promotional materials including: toys, games, fashion accessories, CDs, DVDS, video games, clothing, athletic equipment, outdoor gear, luggage, stationery items, housewares and paintings and plaques intended for the home. “This historic agreement bans slick signs and other pernicious promotions intended to make cigarettes seem cool,” he said.  “These merchants of death and disease depend on marketing to hook a new generation, enticing children and young adults with hip merchandise. Blocking distribution of signs, CDs, DVDS, clothing and other items hyping cigarettes is vital to reducing the appeal and incidence of smoking, especially among youth.

Source: NBC

As the westernization of India accelerates, tobacco advertising and marketing have been linked to increased tobacco use by urban Indian children as young as 11, according to a study by researchers at The University of Texas School of Public Health. The study, “Associations Between Tobacco Marketing and Use Among Urban Youth In India,” is published in the May/June issue of the American Journal of Health Behavior.

Findings from an earlier published study by the researchers revealed that in 2004, Indian sixth graders were using three times the amount of tobacco as eighth graders, which the authors found might indicate a new wave of increased tobacco use. The second study sought to discover the reason for the jump.

“As India becomes more westernized, more teens will use tobacco,” said the study’s principal investigator Cheryl Perry, Ph.D., professor and regional dean of The University of Texas School of Public Health Austin Regional Campus. “The sixth graders as a group are already thinking that smoking is cool while the eighth graders haven’t been as exposed to the Western message.”

After the major tobacco company settlements of 1998 that included more stringent laws banning pro-smoking advertising, smoking has dropped among American youth. According to The Monitoring the Future study, daily smoking among eighth graders dropped from 8.8 percent in 1998 to 3 percent in 2007.

“The current study is the first in India to demonstrate a strong, dose-response relationship between exposure and receptivity to tobacco advertising and promotions and tobacco use among Indian youth. These associations clearly suggest a need to strengthen policy and program-based interventions to reduce tobacco use among youth in India,” said Melissa Stigler, Ph.D., assistant professor at the UT School of Public Health and study co-author, who did much of the ground work in India.

Chewing tobacco and aromatic cigarettes called “bidis” account for the majority of tobacco use in India with cigarettes taking 20 percent of the market.

While tobacco advertising was banned in India in 2004, the year the study began, cigarette companies are coming up with new ways to reach a relatively untapped audience, Stigler said. Event sponsorship and lifestyle stores centered on tobacco products are slipping through the cracks of the law.

As part of the 2004 law, smoking is also banned in public areas such as indoor malls, but tobacco companies have responded with air-conditioned mobile smoking lounges.

“On a visit there shortly after the 2004 law was enacted, I witnessed a long line of college age students lined up for one of the mobile lounges, which was parked outside an upscale shopping mall.” Stigler said.

The government is still working through the courts to determine the extent of the ban. For example, Stigler said, actors have started to stop smoking cigarettes in Bollywood movies but they now sing and dance about it instead.

The researchers found the link between advertising and tobacco use among the Indian youth to be alarming.

“I was surprised that they were so strongly influenced,” Perry said. “The more exposed the youth were to tobacco advertising, the more likely they were to have ever used or be currently using tobacco.”

The study, which included 11,642 sixth and eighth graders, was produced in collaboration with Indian organizations Health Related Information Dissemination Amongst Youth in Delhi and Tamil Nadu Voluntary Health Association in Chennai.

The researchers found that 37 percent of youth in the study had seen tobacco advertising in more than four places while 50 percent had seen advertising in one to four places.

Tobacco use rose with measures of receptivity, including having a favorite tobacco advertisement, believing misleading imagery created by tobacco advertisements and being willing to use a tobacco promotional item (such as wearing a T-shirt that advertises tobacco).

Source: University of Texas Health Science and Centre

Everyone knows that smoking is bad for your health, and tobacco prevention efforts are everywhere. So why do so many teens continue to do it? Tobacco advertising may impact that decision more than we realize. We know that kids feel peer pressure from other kids in their everyday lives. But the teens and adults in cigarette advertising may be one of the most influential peer groups of all.

Targeting Teens

As they move into their teens, kids often feel insecure about their appearance and their popularity. Cigarette ads use these insecurities to make empty promises. Ads give teens the message that smoking can help them become attractive, desirable, and independent when the reality is quite different. Smoking can cause bad breath and yellow teeth, isolate teens from largely non-smoking peers, and possibly lead to a deadly, lifelong habit.

Toughness and Masculinity

Images such as the Marlboro Man equate smoking with a macho ruggedness that is appealing to men and boys. This theme mirrors the pressures many boys face to be “tough”. Boys may believe that smoking will give them the aura of coolness they are searching for.

Body Image and Femininity

Tobacco companies have specifically targeted women and girls for many years by associating specific brands with slimness. In fact, cigarette advertising often depicts smoking as a weight management tool. This plays into the cultural pressures to be thin that many girls and women experience.

Tobacco Companies Need Kids

There are several reasons why tobacco companies target children and teenagers. In order to keep profits up, new customers need to be recruited to replace the thousands of smokers that die each day. Tobacco companies know that very few people begin smoking as adults; therefore, their best bets for these new customers are kids.

Ads are often geared specifically for teens. They use colorful graphics and images that catch their attention. They run in magazines that have a large teen readership. In stores, cigarettes are often placed close to candy displays and other products popular with kids. Promotional giveaways and tie-ins to sports and music events also increase young people’s exposure to tobacco products.

All of this advertising seems to work. According to The Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, most teenagers who smoke use one of the three most heavily advertised brands. Tobacco companies realize that once a teen smokes their brand, they are likely to remain loyal to that brand for the rest of their lives.

Check out the tobacco industry’s latest shameful attempt in New Cigarette Targets Girls, and check out ways that you can help in the blog Kick Butts Day is Coming. Also see Teens and Alcopops for information on promoting alcohol to kids.

India is the third largest consumer of tobacco in the world. Its not cigarettes that majority of Indians prefer but bidis, which constitute 70% of the tobacco smoked.

Bidis are more harmful then cigarettes, as they give more toxins like carbon monoxide, ammonia, phenol and hydrogen cyanide and contains more tar and nicotine than conventional cigarettes. So it causes more damage to the body then a cigarette.

Less tax on Bidis, more deaths

Smoking bidi is a growing menace in India with 100 million people smoking bidis, and 6 lakh deaths caused every year. The younger generation try bidi under the belief that its less harmful, since its cheap and has no warning label. Many a times, tobacco used in bidis may be mixed with flavors such as chocolate, vanilla, clove or pineapple to make them attractive to youth.

Bidis are smoked primarily by men, especially in rural areas, and are rolled by women, often in their homes. Since it provides large-scale employment, bidis are under-taxed compared to cigarettes.

A roller can make about 1,000 bidis a day and is paid Rs 40 to Rs 80 for the day’s work. But 10% of all female bidi workers and 5% of all male bidi workers are children under 14, and nearly 50% of these workers ultimately die of tuberculosis or asthma.

Tax on bidis are currently just one-twelfth of the tax levied on non-filter micro cigarettes (purchased by the poor) and just 2% of the tax on more expensive standard filters cigarettes.

But if the price of a pack of bidis was doubled from about Rs 4 to Rs 8, or if the excise duty was at par with other tobacco products it can reduce the consumption of tobacco.

With increasing number of people leading fast-paced and stressful lives, getting addicted to something that makes you feel good for a moment could be easy. But only later on do you realise the ill-effects of that addiction. We know that tobacco can make us more susceptible to diseases like cancer, but we still pick up the habit, perhaps due to cleverly marketed strategies?

The good feelings that result when an addictive drug is present, and the bad feelings when it’s absent, make breaking any addiction very difficult. Smoking is a common addiction, because it leads to changes in the brain that make people want to use it more and more.

Historically, nicotine addiction has been one of the hardest addictions to break. In fact nicotine is not only as addictive as alcohol, tea and coffee, but even more addictive then psychoactive drugs like heroin and cocaine.

As a result tobacco addiction is the second-leading cause of death in the world. Nicotine meets the criteria of a potent psychoactive drug, as you can see in the image below. Depending on nicotine at various levels, leads to addiction.

Nicotine induces euphoria, serves as a reinforcer of its use, and leads to nicotine withdrawal syndrome when it is absent. Nicotine acts a stimulant and also a depressant.

The association between depression and smoking is well-known, many times the decreased ability to quit smoking can lead the person into depression. Relapse rates of major depression are higher after smoking cessation.

What are the symptoms of nicotine withdrawal?

Irritability

Impatience

Hostility

Anxiety

Depressed mood

Difficulty concentrating

Restlessness

Decreased heart rate

Increased appetite or weight gain

Quitting an addiction might sound difficult, but if you want to lead a happy life without the intake, then the time is now, tomorrow may be too late!