Young Smokers Targeted Campaigns Aim To Stem Tide Of Teenage Users

“Who likes bad breath?” asks J.D., the disc jockey.

“Who likes stinky clothes?” he continues. “C’mon, raise your hands.” Giggles and guffaws explode from the 12- and 13-year-olds gathered at California Middle School in Land Park. But no hands go up.

“OK, who wants to play sports? Who wants to play in the NBA?”

Suddenly, dozens of hands shoot up from the gymnasium bleachers as the kids blurt out their ambitions: “I do, I do!”

“Well,” he says, strutting down the hardwood, playing the cool, wise older brother. “If you smoke, you may not be able to do that.”

J.D. is asking questions that need to be asked of teenagers and preteens, too. Young people are taking up smoking at a rate that has parents and health care professionals worried.

Concerns are so acute that Sacramento County has started a $60,000 campaign to urge kids to quit. The persuasion is taking the form of humorous posters that will be distributed at schools and malls.

The campaign comes as tobacco companies are coming up with ever more subtle ways to market their brands. One approach, inspired by the popularity of microbreweries in the beer market, is cigarettes designed to appeal to “image-conscious” younger smokers.

The question some critics ask is, exactly how young?

Younger smokers are important because adults’ use of cigarettes is declining. Public education, health concerns and changing attitudes toward smoking are getting more people to kick the habit before they quit the way nearly half a million American smokers do every year: by dying.

In contrast, cigarette use by teenagers is growing. According to the Sacramento County Department of Health and Human Services, while the adult smoking rate in California dropped from 22.2 percent to 17.3 percent from 1990 to 1994, the rate among children ages 12 to 17 rose from 9.1 percent to 10.9 percent.)

Doug Robins is tobacco education program coordinator for the Sacramento County Department of Health and Human Services. He says that those huge drops in adult use can be attributed to education efforts, and that education now needs to be aimed at younger people.

“Most people believe that it’s mostly peer pressure,” Robbins says, “But we’ve found that the greatest pressure is cigarette advertising. They do a lot of promotional things, backpacks, T-shirts, key chains, things that kids like.

“Peer pressure does play a role, but where do those peer ideas come from? They come from advertising. And we found that there’s a tremendous amount of (cigarette) advertising near candy racks. We did a study (and) found a tremendous amount of advertisements, 26.28 ads per store. And stores near schools had more ads … (which) were more likely to be near the candy racks.”

So, says Robins, “What we’re doing is gearing up for an effort to help educate the public to go after these ads that are aimed at kids. If we can keep them tobacco-free in their teenage years, we’ve won the battle.”

Statistics back up Robins’ approach. According to the Washington, D.C.-based American Heart Association, eight out of 10 smokers start before they reach 18.

Congress is considering new restrictions on tobacco advertising, and President Clinton weighed in on the issue during his State of the Union message last week, speaking directly to cigarette manufacturers when he said, “Market your products if you wish, but draw the line on children.”

Some say that cigarette manufacturers are instead drawing a bead on children, aiming at the market that will provide them with future customers.

But the cigarette manufacturers consistently deny that they target young people, or even non-smokers, saying instead that they are merely trying to gain market share from one another.

Sheldon Bogaz, a regional vice president for sales for Star, says that the company is not pursuing teenagers with its trendy new line of “all-natural” cigarettes with the hip name, Buz.”Our target market is the post-college, Generation X group, who can afford an expensive, upper-end cigarette ($1.75 per pack),” he says. “A lot of teens don’t have deep pockets.” Scott Ballin, spokesman for the American Heart Association, takes issue with the notion that cigarette advertising can be targeted.

“You can’t draw a line and say if you’re over 21, the ad does this, and if you’re under, it does this,” he contends. “The industry will never acknowledge that kids want to be sophisticated, sexually attractive, healthy individuals, that they are presenting the images that kids want to emulate. Kids see those commercials and say, ‘I want to be like that person.’ To say that at 21 it will affect you and under 21 it won’t affect you is ridiculous.”