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More awareness of and involvement with tobacco marketing encourages teenage smoking

Cross sectional study of young people's awareness of and involvement with tobacco marketing

Teenagers are aware of, and are participating in, many forms of tobacco marketing, and this phenomenon is consistently associated with being a smoker, finds a study in this week's BMJ. These findings confirm the need for statutory controls on tobacco marketing to protect young people.

A random sample of 629 young people aged 15 and 16 years completed a questionnaire about their awareness of and involvement with different types of tobacco marketing. Around 95% were aware of advertising and all had seen some form of advertising at point of sale. Awareness of and involvement with tobacco marketing were both significantly associated with being a smoker: for example, 30% of smokers had received free gifts through coupons in cigarette packs, compared with 11% of non-smokers.

When other factors known to be linked with teenage smoking were held constant, awareness of coupon schemes, brand stretching (the attachment of tobacco brands to non-tobacco products) and tobacco marketing in general were all independently associated with current smoking.

This suggests that the current voluntary regulations designed to protect young people from smoking are clearly not working. Comprehensive statutory regulations, which outlaw all forms of tobacco marketing, and are rigorously monitored and policed, are required, say the authors.

They conclude: "The findings of the study clearly show that the current (voluntary) codes are being easily circumvented; we need to ensure that the same thing doesn't happen when the Government's new Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Bill becomes law."

Contacts:

Lynn MacFadyen, Research Officer or Gerard Hastings, Director, Centre for Tobacco Control Research, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK Email: l.macfadyen@csm.market.strath.ac.uk

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