Joe Camel May Be Gone, But Legacy Lives On
Aug. 15, 2001 -- The dark-haired woman in the cartoon advertisement stares seductively. Her emerald eyes match her skimpy sequined dress, and she holds a silver tray displaying the product's latest "exotic" flavors, including mandarin mint and creamy mellow mint.
The imaginary temptress isn't selling frozen desserts or herbal teas. She is hawking a new line of flavored cigarettes marketed by tobacco giant RJ Reynolds in an ad running in the latest Rolling Stone magazine.
Although cigarette manufacturers promised to stop targeting teens as part of the landmark $205 billion tobacco settlement agreed to three years ago, a study in the Aug. 16 New England Journal of Medicine contends that they have not done so. The settlement, researchers say, has had little effect on cigarette advertising in magazines and on the number of tobacco ads seen by kids.
"There is a public perception that the tobacco settlement represented a major change in policy for the tobacco companies, in that they were going to stop marketing to kids," study author and public health researcher Michael Siegel, MD, of Boston University School of Public Health, tells WebMD. "Based on this research, we find no evidence that there has been any substantial change. Kids are still being targeted in magazine ads and they are still being heavily exposed to these ads."
Tobacco companies spend more than $8.2 billion each year, or $22.5 million every day, to promote their products, according to figures from the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. The study found that advertising expenditures for Marlboro, Camel, and Newport cigarettes, the three most popular brands among teens, actually increased in magazines heavily read by young people in the year following the settlement. Tobacco companies spent $58.5 million to advertise the three brands in youth-oriented magazines in 1998 and $67.4 million in 1999.
Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids president Matthew L. Myers tells WebMD that instead of changing their policy regarding marketing to young people, the tobacco companies merely changed their tactics in the years following the tobacco settlement.
"Before the settlement, there were thousands of billboards around the country and the tobacco companies also distributed ... gear with cigarette brand logos on it," Myers says. "After the settlement, the billboards came down and the gear disappeared, but tobacco marketing actually increased."
Joe Camel May Be Gone, But Legacy Lives On
Aug. 15, 2001 -- The dark-haired woman in the cartoon advertisement stares seductively. Her emerald eyes match her skimpy sequined dress, and she holds a silver tray displaying the product's latest "exotic" flavors, including mandarin mint and creamy mellow mint.
The imaginary temptress isn't selling frozen desserts or herbal teas. She is hawking a new line of flavored cigarettes marketed by tobacco giant RJ Reynolds in an ad running in the latest Rolling Stone magazine.
Although cigarette manufacturers promised to stop targeting teens as part of the landmark $205 billion tobacco settlement agreed to three years ago, a study in the Aug. 16 New England Journal of Medicine contends that they have not done so. The settlement, researchers say, has had little effect on cigarette advertising in magazines and on the number of tobacco ads seen by kids.
"There is a public perception that the tobacco settlement represented a major change in policy for the tobacco companies, in that they were going to stop marketing to kids," study author and public health researcher Michael Siegel, MD, of Boston University School of Public Health, tells WebMD. "Based on this research, we find no evidence that there has been any substantial change. Kids are still being targeted in magazine ads and they are still being heavily exposed to these ads."
Tobacco companies spend more than $8.2 billion each year, or $22.5 million every day, to promote their products, according to figures from the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. The study found that advertising expenditures for Marlboro, Camel, and Newport cigarettes, the three most popular brands among teens, actually increased in magazines heavily read by young people in the year following the settlement. Tobacco companies spent $58.5 million to advertise the three brands in youth-oriented magazines in 1998 and $67.4 million in 1999.
Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids president Matthew L. Myers tells WebMD that instead of changing their policy regarding marketing to young people, the tobacco companies merely changed their tactics in the years following the tobacco settlement.
"Before the settlement, there were thousands of billboards around the country and the tobacco companies also distributed ... gear with cigarette brand logos on it," Myers says. "After the settlement, the billboards came down and the gear disappeared, but tobacco marketing actually increased."