Advertising
Promotes Teen Smoking
New research suggests
that teens who spend a lot of time hanging around convenience
stores are more likely to smoke, even if they are not the
type of kids considered to be delinquents, according to a report
in the American Journal of Public Health.
While the findings
do not point to anything other than a possible link between
the stores and smoking, they are raising a red flag among
researchers who fear the glut of tobacco advertising in convenience
stores is having a major impact on young customers.
"It's the only unregulated
frontier for this kind of marketing," explains study co-author
Dr. Lisa Henriksen, a senior research scientist at Stanford
University's Prevention Research Center.
According to the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a national
survey found that about 86 percent of adolescent smokers
who bought their own cigarettes preferred Marlboro, Camel, or
Newport cigarettes - the most heavily advertised brands. In
contrast, only 35 percent of adults chose these brands.
And studies show that about
57 percent of students in grades nine through
12 who currently smoke usually buy their cigarettes from a retail
store, from a vending machine, or through another person who
purchased cigarettes for them.
Study
Results Point to Convenience Stores
In the spring of 2003,
Dr. Henriksen and her colleagues surveyed 2,125 middle-school
students in the Northern California city of Tracy. They asked
the children about their smoking habits and their visits to
small grocery, convenience, and liquor stores.
About a quarter of
the students visited the stores at least once a day; about two-thirds
visited at least once a week.
The researchers found
that those who were exposed to tobacco marketing in the stores
at least once a week were more likely to smoke.
The researchers then
tinkered with the numbers to test the theory that "kids who
are up to no good hang out at stores," Dr. Henriksen says.
They tried to remove
the influence of factors such as race, gender, age, exposure
to other tobacco advertising, and "propensity for risk-taking,"
a rough measurement of a kid's tolerance for getting into hot
water.
Even so, the study
still found that kids who visited the stores regularly were
50 percent more likely to smoke.
"That was a compelling
result," Dr. Henriksen notes, although she cautioned that the
study does not prove that visits to the stores make kids
smoke. It only shows a link between the two activities.
Tobacco
Advertising in Limited Places
According to the study,
the tobacco industry spends more on in-store advertising than
all other forms of advertising combined - $9.5 billion vs. $1.7
billion in 2001. Tobacco companies cannot advertise on television
or radio, and a 1998 settlement with the federal government
banned billboard advertising.
The study "shows that
the tobacco industry is still able to use the loopholes in the
settlement to very effectively market to kids," says Dr. Stanton
A. Glantz, director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research
at the University of California, San Francisco.
Advertising through
store displays "may be less efficient for them, but they have
enough money and cigarettes are profitable enough that they're
able to use a somewhat less-efficient advertising medium," he
says.
"The cigarette companies
wouldn't be spending billions of dollars doing this if it didn't
work," Dr. Glantz says.
Always consult your
child's physician for more information.
Online
Resources
(Our Organization
is not responsible for the content of Internet sites.)
American
Academy of Pediatrics
Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
National
Institute of Child Health & Human Development
National
Institutes of Health (NIH)
|
January
2005
Advertising
Promotes Teen Smoking
Study
Results Point to Convenience Stores
Tobacco
Advertising in Limited Places
Youth
Smoking Facts
Online
Resources
Youth
Smoking Facts
According to the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), every day
in the US, more than 3,000 young people become regular smokers
- that is more than one million new smokers each year.
After years of remaining
steady, teen smoking rates have increased each year since 1992.
In 1996, 22.2 percent of high school seniors smoked daily,
up from 17.2 percent in 1992. Between 1991 and 1996, past-month
smoking increased from 14.3 percent to 21 percent among
8th graders and from 20.8 percent to 30.4 percent among
10th graders.
More than 5 million
young people under the age of 18 who are currently alive will
die prematurely from a smoking-related disease.
In adults, cigarette
smoking causes heart disease and stroke. Studies have shown
that early signs of the blood vessel damage present in these
diseases can be found in adolescents who smoke.
Starting smoking at
an early age greatly increases the risk of lung cancer. A person's
risk for most other smoking-related cancers also rises with
the length of time that a person smokes.
Teenage smokers suffer
from shortness of breath almost three times as often as teens
who do not smoke and produce phlegm more than twice as
often as teens who don't smoke.
Smokeless tobacco
use among youth is a continuing problem. Data from recent school-based
surveys indicate that about one in every five male students
in 9th through 12th grades uses smokeless tobacco.
Smokeless tobacco
can cause gum disease and cancer of the mouth, pharynx, and
esophagus. It may also increase the risk of heart disease and
stroke.
In 1991, teenage cigarette
smokers consumed an average of 28.3 million cigarettes per day
(516 million packs per year). During this same period, an estimated
225 million packs of cigarettes were sold illegally to young
people under the age of 18. The tobacco industry generated approximately
$190 million in profit from the illegal sale of cigarettes to
minors in 1991.
Several studies have
found nicotine to be addictive in ways similar to those of heroin,
cocaine, and alcohol. Among young smokers, the transition
from experimentation to dependence occurs just as frequently
as it does among users of cocaine and heroin.
Young people who try
to quit smoking suffer the same withdrawal symptoms as adults
who try to quit.
Always consult your
child's physician for a diagnosis. |
