Tobacco ads still on pages kids read

Under a 1998 settlement, makers of cigarettes were to avoid many magazines. But ads for three of the four big companies are still there.

©New York Times

© St. Petersburg Times,
published August 15, 2001

As part of a settlement with the states in 1998, the biggest tobacco companies said they would stop advertising in magazines with significant numbers of young readers. Three years later, that promise is largely unfulfilled.

Ads from three of the four major tobacco companies continue to appear in magazines like Rolling Stone, People, Entertainment Weekly, Sports Illustrated and TV Guide.

Rolling Stone's latest issue features the young female stars of American Pie 2 on the cover, as well as articles about martial arts movies and rap music. It also contains advertisements for Winston and Camel cigarettes. The Winston ad is a two-page spread near the front of the magazine.

Three of the four biggest tobacco companies -- R.J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson and Lorillard -- say they continue such advertising because the limits they agreed to in 1998 were only guidelines, not laws.

By contrast, Philip Morris, the largest tobacco company, has followed the guidelines. A year ago, it stopped advertising in 50 magazines with young readers.

Bill Lockyer, the attorney general of California who participated in the settlement three years ago, disputed the tobacco companies' version.

In the 1998 settlement, the tobacco companies signed on to follow guidelines agreed upon by most of the 46 attorneys general involved in the suit: that cigarette advertisements not appear in magazines if more than 15 percent of the readers are under 18, or if more than 2-million of the readers are under 18.

Lockyer said the tobacco companies were violating what they had pledged in writing, which according to the settlement was to never "take any action directly or indirectly to target youth" in the "advertising, promotion or marketing of tobacco products." And he is suing R.J. Reynolds over it.

"R.J. Reynolds and other companies agreed not to market to kids, and based on our surveys, they still are," he said.

Lockyer said that based on his research, Americans aged 12 to 17 would be exposed to at least 50 cigarette ads in magazines each year. He added that the tobacco companies had a compelling reason to violate the settlement.

"They kill their customers every year," he said, "and they need to recruit new ones."

Two new forms of research that became available for the first time only last spring make it clearer how many young magazine readers there are. Spurred in part by the issue of tobacco advertising, Mediamark Research and the Simmons Market Research Bureau in recent months have begun to release specific data on readers 12 to 18.

For example, People magazine would fall under the settlement terms because it has 2.7-million readers under 18, according to numbers from Simmons. But the latest issue of People carries a two-page ad for Newports, a product of Lorillard.

Sports Illustrated has 4.9-million readers under 18, according to data from Mediamark. But the magazine still carries ads for Camel cigarettes made by R.J. Reynolds and other brands.

The magazine reaped close to $40-million in ad revenue from tobacco ads last year, according to Competitive Media Reporting, a organization that monitors magazine advertising.

And 23 percent of Rolling Stone's readers are under 18, according to both the Simmons Teen Survey and the Simmons National Consumer Survey. But Rolling Stone still carries ads for R.J. Reynolds brands in practically every issue. And a Rolling Stone executive expects to double the number of Reynolds ads next year. Rolling Stone also carries Brown & Williamson ads.

A study to be released by the New England Journal of Medicine today reports that the settlement appears to have had little effect on cigarette advertising in magazines and on the exposure of young people to those advertisements.

Of the four tobacco companies, R.J. Reynolds has the broadest view of what constitutes an adult magazine. It is so broad that in March, Lockyer, the attorney general of California, sued the company, accusing it of having "continuously and systematically targeted youth" by placing large numbers of cigarette ads in magazines with a substantial teenage readership. The attorneys general of Oregon, New York, Ohio and Washington joined the lawsuit. A date for the trial is expected to be set on Friday.

Jan Smith, a spokeswoman for R.J. Reynolds, said it had chosen to follow a standard different from that promoted by the attorneys general.

"We do not advertise in magazines that target minors," she said.

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