A National Disgrace

I was coincidentally looking through the TTAC newsletter when Katherine Donald shared the link w her Coalition for a Tobacco Free Arkansas mailing list.  What I happened to fall upon in the table of contents was the link to the FDA Tobacco Products page and 8 Tips for talking to youth about tobacco. I get the FDA updates but don’t always follow up.  This is one reason why.

The CDC 2007 Best Practices for  Comprehensive Tobacco Control Health Communications Interventions makes the statement:

“Adolescents and young adults are very sensitive to perceived social norms and media presentations of smoking behavior. Nonsmoking adolescents exposed to tobacco advertising and promotional campaigns are significantly more likely to become young adult smokers. Because adolescents and young adults have been and continue to be so heavily exposed to images of smoking in the media, tobacco advertising, and promotional campaigns, public health counter-marketing campaigns are needed to focus on preventing initiation and promoting cessation.”

Nowhere in the FDA ‘tips’ for talking to youth is there any mention of tobacco advertising, tobacco promotion, marketing, or even the words “tobacco industry.” Instead, it focuses on how the young individual must decide, regardless if they are 11 years old or not, if they will become a nicotine addict.  This is just another example of how and why the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act is a national disgrace.

How is it that the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association, and a wealth of popular public health groups, not including the National African American Tobacco Control Network and Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights, could support such a terribly flawed bill?

That is a huge question. How, or will, these groups rectify and apologize for their misspent support?  The greater issue is: how will the rest of us redeem a federal law that institutionalizes tobacco unlike never before?

Tobacco industry camouflaged marketing

This was a pretty good summary of what needs to be discussed, so copy and paste, right?

“Who could have seen it coming?!  That's sarcastic of course.  Dr. Ginzel forwarded this NY Times article with the admonition that supporters are getting their due.  

http://tinyurl.com/mvctnl

The synopsis is that first amendment challenges to advertising restrictions are expected.  And here's the rub.  Speech restrictions are allowed only when the government has a specific reasonable interest at stake. "In the case of the new tobacco law, Congress specifically defined the government interest as a reduction in youth smoking."  'Adults only' language is peppered throughout the bill yet that is exactly what the tobacco industry wants us to believe; that tobacco use is appropriate and acceptable at some level.  This is the same argument that fills our clean air laws with exemptions for venues that restrict youth.  Neither instance is correct.  Tobacco is never safe.  This was the opinion of the Supreme Court a decade ago that sent congress on a quest to limit the FDA's authority enough to oversee tobacco here.  But by specifying the interest of reducing youth smoking it slipped right in line with the industry's best marketing tool for youth, adults only.”

And the point now is that if the courts get around to simple black and white signage with the exception of adults only situations how then will the industry market?  

One of the most heinous marketing devices the industry uses now are the ostensible anti- smoking campaigns that not only are ineffective but have been shown to increase youth initiation.

 

    “Furthermore, youth- and parent-focused anti-tobacco advertising campaigns sponsored by the tobacco industry have been shown to actually increase youth tobacco use. Youth exposed to these ads are more likely to report greater intention to smoke in the future and more positive feelings toward the tobacco industry than those who were not exposed.”  p. 32 Health Communication Interventions        - 2007 CDC Best Practices

This is the sort of sophisticated marketing the industry already camouflages.

The tobacco industry would market the perspective that tobacco use is a behavior for adults only.  This emphasizes and includes the inference that only a mature choice would elect to use their product, and couches that in all manner of rhetoric about rights, etc. Never mind nicotine and addiction or that 90% are addicted before the age of consent.

Minors only signs are another fine example of camouflaged marketing. The courts have held that the FCLAA  allowed states to regulate advertising at tobacco retailers only to the extent with which it informed the population about laws regarding minor sales.  This led to the profusion of industry sponsored signage, We Card etc.  

There’s an awful lot to discuss here.  And for the sincere tobacco free advocate much to  anticipate given the new FDA legislation.