Want to know whether smoking is bad for you? Just ask Big Tobacco.
The “overwhelming medical consensus” shows that smoking causes lung cancer, heart disease and many other health conditions, said Bill Phelps of Richmond, Va.-based Philip Morris USA.
“The risks of smoking are well-known,” echoed David Howard, a spokesman for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. in Winston-Salem, N.C., adding that there’s no safe cigarette.
Since a landmark 1998 industry settlement involving 46 states, including Indiana, tobacco companies have amplified their warnings about the products they sell and provided information on how to quit. But smoking-cessation advocates think the billions of advertising dollars the industry spends send a decidedly different message to potential consumers, especially to low-income populations.
“This particular demographic is targeted very heavily by the tobacco industry with their marketing and promotions,” said Karla Sneegas, executive director of Indiana Tobacco Prevention and Cessation.
A 2004 report in the journal Tobacco Control cites Philip Morris documents that detail advertisements in the 1990s aimed at women making less than $30,000 a year. The same study documents R.J. Reynolds’ intention to similarly target working-class women. Case studies in St. Louis and Boston published in the journal show a higher concentration of tobacco advertising and greater concentration of stores in poorer districts.
Cessation officials like Sneegas say that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Tobacco companies counter that their present-day advertising targets adults who have already made the choice to smoke.
“Smokers tend to be of moderate to lower income … (But) we market our product to adult tobacco consumers regardless of what their income levels are,” Howard said.
Mailers are sent to current smokers who request promotional materials. Advertising targets the point of sale, cigarette counters and the like, he and Phelps said.
Marlboro Man billboards – all billboards for that matter – are a thing of the past, Phelps said. Philip Morris USA’s spending on cigarette promotions and brand advertising decreased 15 percent from 2003 to 2005, according to the company’s most recently published filing with the Federal Trade Commission. The company’s spending on traditional cigarette brand advertising, such as print advertising, events and sponsorships, dropped 43 percent from 1998 through 2005.
Phelps declined to disclose a dollar amount, but the latest industrywide figures show that even with such decreases tobacco companies aren’t skimping on advertising.
The industry spent about $36 million a day – or $13.1 billion total – on marketing in 2007, according to the American Lung Association’s State of Tobacco Control 2007 report released Thursday.Since the 1998 industry settlement, manufacturers have become more aggressive in targeting minorities and youth and other high-risk groups, including low-income women, according to findings presented by a Harvard professor to the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions in February of last year.
Though Philip Morris USA stopped advertising in magazines in 2003, others have more than made up the difference using disproportionate levels of magazine advertising to target these groups, testified Gregory N. Connolly of the Harvard School of Public Health. He named among other offenders, R.J. Reynolds and Greensboro, N.C.-based Lorillard Tobacco Co. – another major player in the multi-state settlement which declined to be interviewed for this story.
Howard of R.J. Reynolds insisted that the company’s target was solely adult smokers.
So what’s the financial incentive to advertise if a company isn’t targeting non-smokers? Howard said it’s simple; tobacco companies like R.J. Reynolds want to win over converts – that is, smokers lighting up with competitive brands.
mschroeder@jg.net
