Joe Camel May Be Gone, But Legacy Lives On

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Aug. 15, 2001 -- The dark-haired woman in the cartoon advertisement stares seductively. Her emerald eyes match her skimpy sequined dress, and she holds a silver tray displaying the product's latest "exotic" flavors, including mandarin mint and creamy mellow mint.

The imaginary temptress isn't selling frozen desserts or herbal teas. She is hawking a new line of flavored cigarettes marketed by tobacco giant RJ Reynolds in an ad running in the latest Rolling Stone magazine.

Although cigarette manufacturers promised to stop targeting teens as part of the landmark $205 billion tobacco settlement agreed to three years ago, a study in the Aug. 16 New England Journal of Medicine contends that they have not done so. The settlement, researchers say, has had little effect on cigarette advertising in magazines and on the number of tobacco ads seen by kids.

"There is a public perception that the tobacco settlement represented a major change in policy for the tobacco companies, in that they were going to stop marketing to kids," study author and public health researcher Michael Siegel, MD, of Boston University School of Public Health, tells WebMD. "Based on this research, we find no evidence that there has been any substantial change. Kids are still being targeted in magazine ads and they are still being heavily exposed to these ads."

Tobacco companies spend more than $8.2 billion each year, or $22.5 million every day, to promote their products, according to figures from the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. The study found that advertising expenditures for Marlboro, Camel, and Newport cigarettes, the three most popular brands among teens, actually increased in magazines heavily read by young people in the year following the settlement. Tobacco companies spent $58.5 million to advertise the three brands in youth-oriented magazines in 1998 and $67.4 million in 1999.

Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids president Matthew L. Myers tells WebMD that instead of changing their policy regarding marketing to young people, the tobacco companies merely changed their tactics in the years following the tobacco settlement.

"Before the settlement, there were thousands of billboards around the country and the tobacco companies also distributed ... gear with cigarette brand logos on it," Myers says. "After the settlement, the billboards came down and the gear disappeared, but tobacco marketing actually increased."

Much of the new emphasis, Myers says, is on so-called point of sale advertising and give-away promotions linked to cigarette purchases. He says RJ Reynolds' new line of flavored cigarettes is just the company's latest attempt to take some of the youth market away from Phillip Morris' Marlboro, which is the most popular cigarette among teens.

"I don't know many 40-year-olds that would be interested in an orange-flavored cigarette," he says. "Obviously these niche products appeal to young people, and this demonstrates how important the youth market is to RJ Reynolds. But we can't lose sight of the fact that the advertising campaign that has had the greatest impact is still the sophisticated cowboy portrayed in ads for Marlboro."

The experts say it is no coincidence that Marlboro, Camel, and Newport are the three most heavily advertised cigarette brands, and the three brands most popular among teens. More than 80% of teen smokers regularly chose one of the three, according to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.

Late last year, Phillip Morris decided to voluntarily banish the Marlboro Man and its other cigarette ads from magazines heavily read by young people. But even if all other tobacco companies follow suit, young people will still be exposed to tobacco ads in adult-oriented magazines. The study found that 57% of kids were exposed to Marlboro ads an average of eight times a year in publications that were considered adult-oriented.

"If more than half of the nation's youth are exposed to cigarette ads when they are no longer being run in youth-oriented magazines, that is a problem," Siegel says. "From a public health perspective, we don't view that as progress. There are far too many kids who are being exposed."

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