Teens Drawn by Cigarette Ads

Researchers have found in a new study that cigarette ads are extremely fine-tuned to capture the attention of teens. A direct correlation was established between the number of tobacco-related ads teens see, and the chances of them actually taking a puff from a cigarette. Experts say that the main reason why these advertisements are so effective is the fact that they promote a wide array of vivid images, which resonate with teens. In fact, cigarette ads are very well designed to capture all ages, genders and ethnicities, scientists say. Each subgroup of the population is targeted by one or more brands of type of cigarettes, PhysOrg reports.

“Cigarettes have created a brand for every personality trait. If you are looking to project independence and masculinity, think of the lonely cowboy in the Marlboro ads. On the other hand, if you’re looking to project a desire for romantic relationships, and friendships are playing a role, then you will choose Lucky Strike if you are a man and Virginia Slims if you are a woman,” says the director of the Kiel, Germany-based Institute for Therapy and Health Research, Reiner Hanewinkel, PhD. The expert, who is also the lead author of the new study, collaborated with colleagues from the Dartmouth Medical Center for this investigation.

In a paper already available online, and also scheduled for publication in the April issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, the experts explain that children who were determined to be watching many cigarette ads were twice more likely than their peers to be interested in these products. Additionally, they were also found to be about three times more likely to have smoked in the past month than kids their age who did not watch these ads. But the worrying conclusion of the study is that children who get a lot of exposure to cigarette ads say that they will pick up smoking more often than others. This means that they form an opinion on the habit even before they pick it up, experts say.

“We were amazed at how often they had seen the images and could correctly recall the cigarette brand. For example, 55 percent had seen the Lucky Strike image and almost one quarter correctly decoded the brand,” says Dartmouth pediatrics professor James Sargent, MD, a collaborator on the research. “This is a well-done study. They controlled for all the things they needed to control for. It’s a nice contribution to the literature showing that cigarette advertising is very powerful,” says of the new work the director of the University of California in San Francisco (UCSF) Center for Tobacco Control Research & Education, Stanton Glantz, PhD.