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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
Charles King III, JD, PhD, Graduate School of Business, Harvard University, Morgan 187, Soldiers Field Road, Boston, MA 02163, 617-495-1008, cking@hbs.edu
Monitoring youth exposure to tobacco advertising and promotion is an important task for those investigating youth smoking. Unlike adults, over 90% of youths smoke one of only 3 or 4 brands of cigarettes. These brands are among the most heavily advertised. Studies have shown that increasing exposure to tobacco advertising increases youth uptake. This presentation will discuss methods for measuring youth exposure to cigarette advertising in magazines and the private sources of this proprietary data. The tobacco settlement appears to have had little effect on cigarette advertising in magazines and on the exposure of young people to these advertisements. Although restricting cigarette advertising to magazines with less than 15% and fewer than two million youth readers, as Philip Morris has recently done, would reduce the extent of young people’s exposure to cigarette advertising, their exposure would still be substantial. Statistical methods for assessing the targeting of youths, while controlling for other factors, such as the targeting of young adults, in magazine advertisements by tobacco companies will also be described. These general methods may be applied to other areas of public health concern, such as the advertising of alcoholic beverages. Magazine advertising remains but one small part (4.6 percent) of the tobacco industry's total marketing expenditures ($8.2 billion in 1999). Other marketing tools, such as coupons, point-of-sale advertising, sponsorship of public entertainment and the distribution of specialty items, have great appeal for young people but are not monitored.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Tobacco Industry, Adolescent Health
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.