I found this News Release about cigarette marketing campaign targeting teen girls from UC San Diego Medical Center, and thought it needed to be sent through to my audience.  After reading this I realized that it is really important to talk to your kids about smoking, not just one conversation, but many.  If you aren’t opening up the communication to discuss issues like this, your teens will be left to their own means to make decisions.  The media is very powerful, don’t under estimate it. Our teen listen to the TV, magazines, radio, and internet and it is influencing them to a large degree.

Self-Esteem is critical to teens doing what is good for them, not what others think they should be doing, including the media.

I am actually in the process of another blog about fashion and what a hold it has on our teens. It’s important to talk to our teens about issues and empower them to be able to make good decisions for themselves.  Let me know what you think…I’m pretty sure you don’t want your teenagers smoking.

Date: March 15, 2010 News Release from UC San Diego Medical Center

Recent Cigarette Marketing Campaign Targeted Teen Girls, Study Reveals

The 1998 Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) prohibits tobacco industry advertising practices that encourage underage teenagers to smoke, yet new research out of the Moores Cancer Center at the University of California, San Diego has found that a 2007 marketing campaign for Camel brand cigarettes was effective in encouraging young girls to start smoking.

The study, led by John P. Pierce, PhD, professor of Family and Preventive Medicine and director of the Cancer Center’s Cancer Prevention and Control Program, will be published March 15 in an early online edition of the scientific journal Pediatrics.

The research, part of a national study on parenting practices, involved 1,036 males and females who were 10 to 13 years old when enrolled onto the study. Between 2003 and 2008, scientists conducted five telephone interviews, which included questions about smoking. The fifth interview was conducted after the start of RJ Reynolds’ “Camel No. 9″ advertising campaign in 2007.

Consistent with earlier research, the new study showed that youth who had never smoked but who reported having a “favorite” cigarette ad at the beginning were 50 percent more likely to initiate smoking. The number of boys with a favorite ad was stable across all five surveys. For girls, however, it was stable across the first four surveys, but by the fifth survey, which took place after the start of the Camel No. 9 campaign, the proportion of girls who reported a favorite ad jumped by 10 percentage points, to 44 percent. The Camel brand accounted almost entirely for this increase.

“In 1998, the Tobacco Industry signed an agreement with State Attorneys General which included a commitment not to target adolescents with advertising.  Congressional leaders and others have complained to RJ Reynolds that the Camel #9 campaign violated that agreement,” said Pierce. “This national study demonstrated that the Camel No. 9 campaign had a huge impact on young adolescent girls across the country, effectively encouraging them to smoke.”

The Camel No. 9 marketing campaign included ads resembling fashion spreads that were placed in five of the top 10 U.S. teen readership magazines, such as Glamour and Vogue. The campaign also featured promotional giveaways such as berry lip balm, cell phone jewelry, purses and wristbands.

Co-authors on the paper are Karen Messer, PhD, Lisa E. James, Martha M. White, MS and Sheila Kealey, MPH, all of the Moores UCSD Cancer Center; and Donna M. Vallone, PhD, MPH, and Cheryl G. Healton, DrPH, both of the American Legacy Foundation, Washington, D.C. This study was funded by the National Cancer Institute, the American Legacy Foundation, and the Tobacco Related Disease Research Program of the University of California.

We need to educate our teens on the dangers of smoking and have open discussions with them about the appeal of smoking.

This is another great article from Sue Scheff: Flavored Cigarette Ban and Teens

source Connect with Kids

“They’re marketing towards us, and there’s not much we can do about it but just not buy it.”

– Forrest, 18

The Food and Drug Administration has now banned flavored cigarettes in American in an attempt to lower the teen smoking rate.  Clove and mint and chocolate flavored cigarettes will no longer be sold in the U.S.  But already tobacco companies are finding loop-holes in the new FDA rules.

The packaging was sleek with the promise of a sweet smell and taste.

“I saw two of them,” says Adina, 15. “One of them was, like, Kahlua flavored, and one was, like, lime.

Another teen, who doesn’t want us to use his name, says he tried them once. “I guess ‘cause it had a flavor to it.”

Flavored cigarettes are now banned under new FDA legislation, but tobacco companies have found a way to keep their hands in the primarily under-30 market: flavored cigars.

Still, experts say, parents have the power to keep their kids from picking up the habit.  “Sitting down and talking about how advertising works, how companies — regardless of what they’re advertising — what hooks they use in trying to manipulate you into buying products,” says Linda Lee, anti-smoking advocate.

Forrest, 18, says teens can take matters a step further. “They’re marketing towards us, and there’s not much we can do about it but just not buy it.”

Tips for Parents

Patrick Reynolds was the first tobacco industry executive to turn his back on the cigarette makers. His grandfather founded tobacco company R.J. Reynolds, but the family’s cigarette brands, Camel and Winston, killed his father and eldest brother. He has devoted his life to the goal of a smoke-free society and motivates young people to stay tobacco free. Patrick Reynolds first spoke against tobacco to Congress in 1986. Over the years he has reached over a million youngsters through his talks to school groups.

• One study shows that 25 percent of 12- to 13-year-olds who smoke as few as two or three cigarettes a day become addicted in just two weeks.
• It takes the average smoker 17 years to quit.
• Tobacco products cause mental and physical addiction in users.
• It’s very hard to quit: 95 percent who quit without an aid go back to smoking within a year, 85 percent of those who use a patch, gum or other program to quit are unsuccessful for more than one year.
• The average smoker spends $1,200 on the addiction each year.
• Most smokers started smoking as teens, and 40 percent of smokers will die from a disease resulting from their addiction.
• In the United States, smoking causes one of every five deaths. Cigarettes kill 1,200 Americans every day, or 420,000 Americans each year. Globally, deaths total 5 million annually.

Every day in the United States, 3,000 teens become newly addicted to smoking. Smoking ads are designed to manipulate minds. Teens represent any business’ future. Tobacco companies are extremely sensitive to this fact and look to find new users in young demographics.

• Today 75 percent of Americans do not smoke, and this percentage is even lower among teens. Remind children that being a non-smoker is normal and widely accepted.
• Eighty-six percent of teens say they don’t want to date someone who smokes.
• Movie characters are more likely to smoke than people in real life. Films mislead many teens into thinking that smoking is more popular than it really is.
• Stores are paid up to $100 a month for each countertop display of tobacco products in the store. Plus, they make a lot of money from the cigarettes their customers buy.
• In many places it is illegal to smoke indoors. Tell your child that he or she will be smoking outside of his or her future workplace and college and will be doing so in the heat, cold, rain, snow, etc.