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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Stacey J. Anderson, PhD, Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, University of California, San Francisco, 530 Parnassus Avenue, Box 1390, San Francisco, CA 94143-1390, 415-502-4181, stacey.anderson@ucsf.edu

OBJECTIVE: To use a Protection Motivation Theory (PMT) framework to analyse tobacco industry advertising of low-tar and ostensibly harm-reduced cigarettes to health-concerned smokers.

BACKGROUND: PMT describes adaptive and maladaptive coping with a health threat as a result of two appraisal processes: threat appraisal and coping appraisal. Low-tar cigarettes, and more recently Potential Reduced Exposure Products (PREPs), were introduced in an environment of concern about the health risks of smoking and of secondhand smoking.

METHODS: Analysis of previously secret tobacco industry documents and cigarette advertising collections.

RESULTS: Low-tar cigarette advertising was designed to 1) distract smokers from concerns about the health risks of smoking, 2) allay smokers' fears about health risks, and 3) convince smokers that low-tar cigarettes were a technological breakthrough that represented a proactive measure to take for one's health. PREPs are currently being marketed in a parallel fashion, with the additonal component that PREPs are a proactive measure to take for those concerned about the risks of secondhand smoke.

CONCLUSIONS: Health-concerned smokers gravitate toward “reduced-harm” cigarettes through a motivation to protect themselves from health risks. “Reduced-harm” cigarette advertising provides misleading information to consumers attempting to make threat appraisals, downplays the severity of risks, and falsely promotes the efficacy of smoking these products as a mechanism for coping with the health threats of smoking. Providing misleading information with the goal of encouraging maladaptive coping in people motivated to protect themselves from health threats constitutes a violation of the human right to pursue health.

Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of the session, the participant will be able to

• identify misleading health assurance messages in low-tar cigarette and Potential Reduced Exposure Products (PREPs) advertising;
• contrast the health-motivated consumer information gathering process with the provision of misleading information in “reduced-harm” cigarette advertising;
• discuss “reduced-harm” cigarette advertising as a violation of the human right to pursue good health from a Protection Motivation Theory (PMT) perspective.

Keywords: Risk Communication, Tobacco Industry

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Not Answered