Phillip Morris’ Anti-Smoking Campaign Found to Increase Smoking Among Minors

Well you don’t say…

The New York Times has an editorial out today talking about Phillip Morris’ ad campaign against smoking. This campaign was recently found ineffective, and in some cases, encouraged smoking in the very audiences it was aimed at.

New research shows that the ads aimed at youths had no discernible effect in discouraging smoking and that the ads currently aimed at parents may be counterproductive.

That disturbing insight comes from a study just published in The American Journal of Public Health by respected academic researchers who were supported by the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Using sophisticated analytical techniques, the researchers concluded that the ads aimed directly at young people had no beneficial effect, while those aimed at parents were actually harmful to young people apt to see them, especially older teenagers. The greater the teenagers’ potential exposure to the ads, the stronger their intention to smoke and the greater their likelihood of having smoked in the past 30 days.

Just why the costly advertising campaigns produce no health benefits is a rich subject for exploration. The ads are fuzzy-warm, which could actually generate favorable feelings for the tobacco industry and, by extension, its products. And their theme — that adults should tell young people not to smoke mostly because they are young people — is exactly the sort of message that would make many teenagers feel like lighting up. (Trial testimony has made it clear that the goal of Philip Morris’s youth smoking prevention programs is to delay smoking until adulthood, not to discourage it for a lifetime.)

Is anyone REALLY surprised that one of the largest corporations in the world isn’t effectively spending millions to keep customers from using its most addictive product? I, for one, am not.

Hell, if I were them, I would be adding personal bathrooms with solid gold toilets to the office of every person in my smoking “prevention” department just so I could inflate my spendings statement in my I’m-really-a-good-guy press release.

Oh, please. These companies aren’t going to kill themselves. The only time anyone commits suicide is when they’re terribly depressed or perhaps dishonored. These companies are fat-cats with no honor. They have no reason to go away. We’ll have to kill them ourselves before they kill us.

And they will, as long as we’ll pay them to do it.

When Don’t Smoke Means Do – NY Times

Effect of Televised, Tobacco Company–Funded Smoking Prevention Advertising on Youth Smoking-Related Beliefs, Intentions, and Behavior – American Journal of Public Health

[tags] smoking, Phillip-Morris, ad, campaign, prevention, bullshit [/tags]