PHA-Exchange> Cigarette advertising to youth

[FCA Secretariat]

Dear Colleagues:

Last month, Advertising Age reported that Philip Morris, BAT and Japan
Tobacco have been developing joint guidelines for how they will market their
products around the world. Our guess is that these proposals will mirror
past industry-designed “voluntary advertising codes” which many of you have
seen in your country in one form or another.

We understand that there may be an official unveiling of these guidelines
early this week, and we thought it might be useful to offer up some talking
points to rebut this initiative with both the media and policymakers. Feel
free to use these in any way you see fit:


·	These guidelines are a shameless sham. They are pathetically weak and
represent another cynical effort by the tobacco industry to forestall the
kind of tough, comprehensive advertising bans already in place in countries
as diverse as South Africa, Thailand, Norway and New Zealand.

·	The tobacco industry can always be counted upon to present ineffective
alternatives when faced with the threat of real change through government
regulation. The tobacco industry has long offered up voluntary advertising
codes that have no teeth and no impact.  This initiative is no different.
Like other industry-backed proposals, these standards are designed to create
the illusion of change, while allowing the industry to continue with
business as usual.

·	Industry-inspired voluntary marketing restrictions create the appearance
of concern and responsibility, but only include measures known to be
ineffective. Their overarching aim is to protect the tobacco business. They
are formulated without regard to established research on youth smoking and
without any intention to evaluate the results.

·	All advertising reaches children and teenagers – whether intended or not.
Tobacco advertising nominally aimed at 18-24 year olds is especially
attractive to younger teenagers aspiring to enter this age group. Studies in
the United States have shown that young people smoke the most heavily
advertised brands, demonstrating that there is no way to protect children
from the influence of tobacco advertising.

·	Tobacco advertising does not appeal to children by being childish.
Adolescents aspire to be adults, not teenagers. The art of advertising
tobacco is to make it an aspirational gateway to adult life, with tobacco
products positioned as symbols of independence, sophistication and
rebellion. Measures that attempt to deal with youth tobacco use separately
from adult tobacco use reinforce this positioning.

·	It is no coincidence that the industry’s latest public relations
initiative is being launched as the world’s nations negotiate the first
international tobacco treaty, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control,
and a growing number of countries around the world take action to regulate
the manufacture, marketing and sale of tobacco products.

·	Two themes emerge: first, the tobacco companies only propose what looks
good at first sight, but that they know will not work in practice.  Second,
they make great play of the superficial appeal of their approach with
legislators in an attempt to deflect measures that would work.  The Global
Initiative is not even neutral in its ineffectiveness because it will cause
harm by obstructing the measures that will work - especially if governments
are gullible, indifferent or cynical enough to allow these types of measures
to be written into the Framework Convention.

·	The tobacco industry can only survive if it can replace dead or quitting
smokers with new customers,  and a company can only succeed if gets young
people to smoke its brands.  They are acting like a thief trying to avoid
leaving fingerprints - their survival depends on doing things that society
finds universally unacceptable - marketing addictive harmful drugs to kids -
so they need some way to deny it and conceal what they are doing. That is
the main purpose of the Global Initiative.

·	The proposed marketing standards do not deserve to be taken seriously and
are especially inadequate in comparison to the total bans on tobacco
advertising and marketing being proposed by many nations in negotiations on
the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

·	The provisions governing television advertising represent a stunning
reversal of the long accepted prohibition of all television tobacco
advertising.  Furthermore, these standards would not affect some of the
largest categories of industry marketing, such as promotional allowances for
shelf space and product placement, discounts, giveaways and
point-of-purchase advertising.

·	History tells us that the tobacco industry cannot be trusted when it says
it will stop marketing to kids.  In November 1998, U.S. tobacco companies
promised not to “take any action, directly or indirectly, to target youth 

in the advertising, promotion or marketing of tobacco products.”  Yet one
year later, the companies spent a record $8.24 billion to market their
deadly products in the United States, an increase of 22.3%.  Studies have
shown that much of this increase was in venues effective at reaching kids,
including youth-oriented magazines and convenience stores frequented by
youth.

·	The focus on youth is favored by the tobacco companies and tends to
strengthen the definition of tobacco as an ‘adult product’ – this making it
more attractive to youth.

·	Bans on tobacco advertising, sponsorship and other promotional activities
have proven to be effective in reducing tobacco use and preventing new
smokers from starting.  Both the World Health Organization and the World
Bank recommend that countries prohibit all forms of tobacco advertisement
and promotion.  Such bans, if adopted globally, could reduce worldwide
demand by approximately 7 percent, preventing over 5 million tobacco-related
deaths. More limited or partial bans, such as those proposed by the tobacco
industry, have little or no effect.

·	How can anyone determine that a particular advertisement ‘targets people
under the age of 18’?  ‘Targeting’ requires that one demonstrates intent on
the part of the advertiser – an impossible task.

Resources:

“Trust Us: We’re The Tobacco Industry” has a series of quotes from internal
company documents on youth smoking and advertising. See:
http://www.ash.org.uk/html/conduct/html/trustus.html (html version)
http://tobaccofreekids.org/campaign/global/framework/docs/TrustUs.pdf (pdf
version)

For more background on industry-funded youth anti-smoking programs, please
see “Danger! PR in the Playground: Tobacco Industry Youth Anti-Smoking
Programs”
www.ash.org.uk/html/advspo/html/prmenu.html

Earlier press release on the Global Initiative:
http://tobaccofreekids.org/Script/DisplayPressRelease.php3?Display=386


P.S. If you receive a copy of the industry guidelines I’d appreciate it if
you could forward them on to me and I will make sure they are posted on the
web.

*********************************************
Ross Hammond, Consultant
242 Edna Street
San Francisco, CA 94112
USA
Tel.  1-415-695-7492
Fax. 1-801-729-6580
USA
http://tobaccofreekids.org/campaign/global/