No More Winking At Teen Smoking
Imagine kids on a playground watching a shower of cigarettes raining down from the sky.
“We have to sell cigarettes to your kids,” says a voice. It’s a television ad in California’s new campaign to prevent teen smoking. “We need half a million new smokers a year just to stay in business. So we advertise near schools, at candy counters. We lower our prices.”
This week the head of one of the country’s major cigarette makers finally broke his industry’s shameful wall of silence. The ad is true. American tobacco companies do market death to children.
This admission is a major break in the lawsuits filed by Washington and 21 other states against the country’s tobacco companies.
“This is a little like busting a street dealer to get at the Colombian drug cartel,” says Minnesota Attorney General Hubert H. Humphrey III.
Congratulations to the states’ attorneys general. Now it’s time for the rest of us to quit winking at teen smoking.
Liggett confessed what we’ve already figured out. It’s not a 40-year-old dad who finds it cool to collect Joe Camel T-shirts; it’s his 12-year-old son.
Between 1989 and 1993, when the new Joe Camel campaign budget rose from $27 million to $43 million, Camel’s market share among kids rose more than 50 percent. Its adult share didn’t change at all.
When a parent drops her new ninth-grader off for his first day at Lewis and Clark High School in downtown Spokane, she glimpses a daunting sight. Dozens of teens hang out daily under the freeway in a dank blue haze.
According to a new Stanford University study, teen smoking rose by 30 percent from 1991 to 1995. More than 1 million teens a year become regular smokers, replacing the 400,000 Americans who die annually from cigarettes.
Most of the federal government’s new prohibitions on kid-directed cigarette advertising begin to take effect Aug. 28, but so far only Liggett has agreed to comply.
Given Liggett’s admission, it’s time for local schools, health districts and governments to set firm limits. By banning teen smoking and launching local campaigns, the community can counteract the tobacco industry’s ghastly market strategy.
This generation of parents, already hip to safety issues, has shelled out plenty of cash for car safety seats and bike helmets for their kids. With the community’s help, they’ll eagerly protect their children.
When the world rains cigarettes on kids, we can’t wink.
, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Jamie Tobias Neely/For the editorial board