NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Cigarette advertising and promotional items do appear to play a role in an adolescent's or teenager's decision to begin smoking, two new reports suggest. A survey of adolescents, aged 12 to 17, who said they had no intention of trying a cigarette found that those who had a favorite cigarette advertisement at the time were nearly twice as likely as their peers to begin smoking over the next two years.
What's more, those youngsters who possessed or were willing to use a promotional item (such as a hat, T-shirt, or other item with a cigarette logo) were 2.89 times as likely to start smoking, according to a report in the February 18th issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association.
"From these data, we estimate that 34% of all experimentation in California between 1993 and 1996 can be attributed to tobacco promotional activities," concluded Dr. John Pierce and colleagues from the Cancer Prevention and Control Program at the University of California, San Diego. "Nationally, this would be over 700,000 adolescents each year."
The study included 1,752 adolescents who had never smoked. More than half had a favorite cigarette advertisement and though only 5% had a promotional item for cigarettes, another 10% were willing to use such an item.
The second report found that certain brands of cigarettes more likely to be used by young smokers -- Marlboro, Newport, Camel, Kool, and Winston -- were more likely to be advertised in youth-oriented magazines, according to the analysis of 12 cigarette brand advertising in 39 magazines.
"Youth brands" were considered those used by more than 2.5% of adolescents aged 10 to 15, and when that age group made up only 4% of a magazine's reading audience, such brand advertising was half as likely to be found as "adult brand" advertising.
When youth readership was 14%, the magazine had equal mixes of "adult" and "youth" advertising. But when the young readers increased to 34%, "young" brand advertising was five times more likely than "adult" brand advertising.
"Cigarette brands popular among young adolescents are more likely than adult brands to advertise in magazines with high youth readerships," reported the researchers from Harvard University, Boston University School of Public Health, and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.
However, the study could not demonstrate intent on the part of cigarette manufacturers to lure youngsters into smoking, and the advertising pattern may have been partly complicated by the reading habits of 18 to 24 year olds, a group that is clearly targeted by tobacco companies.
SOURCE: The Journal of the American Medical Association (1998;279:516-520, 511-515)
