Cutting Teen Smoking Isn't Easy [01/21-4]

Excerpts from CUTTING TEEN SMOKING ISN'T EASY

by Cara Tanamachi, Austin American-Statesman [01/17/98]

Texas may have won a $15.3 billion settlement from the tobacco industry, but the battle is far from over.

The issue of how to combat teen smoking is more complex and elusive. With $200 million of the settlement earmarked for an anti-smoking campaign and smoking prevention programs for minors, Texas legislators will be facing difficult decisions about how to tackle the teen smoking problem.

The majority of smokers -- nine out of 10 -- start smoking before they're 18,'' said LuAnn Pierce, associate director for the American Cancer Society's Texas division. This is a grand start to prevention, but it's going to take years to accomplish what we need to.''

Experts say the only proven way to reduce smoking among both teens and adults is to abruptly raise the price of cigarettes, through increased sales taxes, for example.

Price is a significant factor in all products -- as price rises, demand goes down,'' said Kenneth Warner, a professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health who has studied tobacco policy for 20 years.

But once you get beyond the cost of cigarettes, it's a murky world that we know very little about.''

In recent weeks, much has been made about tobacco advertising and teens, especially in light of papers that reveal a deliberate effort by R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. to target youth in its ads.

The Texas settlement bans tobacco billboard advertising. But experts say limiting advertising by itself is not enough to make a real difference.

Even if you ban all advertising, as many European countries have done, it will not cause everybody to quit,'' said John Banzhaf, executive director of Action on Smoking and Health, an anti-smoking lobbying group. In Norway, for example, where there's long been a ban on tobacco advertising, companies have worked around the law by advertising other products, such as Marlboro jackets or lighters.''

Banzhaf said the most effective campaign a state can wage against teen smoking will combine a well-planned anti-smoking campaign and tougher enforcement of laws prohibiting tobacco sales to minors.

Banzhaf and other experts point to California as a model for using a successful approach to reducing smoking. With money from a voter-approved 25-cent tobacco sales tax in 1989, California fostered an effective anti-smoking campaign, resulting in holding the percentage of teen-aged smokers at 11 percent, compared with a 19 percent smoking rate among Texas teens.

Some teen-targeted ads in California include a series that hint that tobacco companies manipulate adolescents.

You can't tell young people they're going to get sick, because they think they're invulnerable,'' said Ken August, spokesperson for the California Department of Health. But when you start telling them they're being used by adults -- that really gets through.''

California also bolstered penalties for vendors who sell tobacco products to minors and passed laws that banned smoking in restaurants and bars. In California, smoking rates among adults declined almost 8 percent from 1988 to 1996.

click here to return to ASH's Home Web Page: http://ash.org
click here for more information about Action on Smoking and Health (ASH)
click here to learn the many benefits of joining ASH on-line, over the Internet