Thursday, August 23, 2007
Big Tobacco Targeting Young Women With Latest Campaign
byFor ten years now, organizations like TheTruth.com and The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids have been warning young people about the perils of smoking cigarettes. 
The hard-hitting commercials, posters, and rallies are something most people have seen on the news, on MTV, or even on a street corner in their hometown. Even though “Big Tobacco” has been portrayed as the ultimate evil, they’re at it again, this time targeting what some consider to be a dangerously impressionable group—women and girls as young as 13.
Take for example R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company’s brand Camel No. 9. The cigarettes, packaged in a chic black box with fuchsia and teal embellishments, and sold with the slogan “light and luscious,” clearly speak to a certain age and gender. Women’s health organizations have claimed that this brand and its advertisements are “cynically aimed at getting young, fashion conscious women and girls to start smoking,” according to a Washington Post article.
One might wonder how cigarette ads like the ones for Camel No. 9 reach out to young women. For starters, they cover the pages of women’s magazines—something U.S. representative Lois Capps of California is fighting to change. Back in June, she and a group of 40 other lawmakers penned an open letter to 11 popular women’s magazines asking them to stop running ads for cigarettes. According to an AdAge piece from last week, the responses (a few of them) are in—and Ms. Capps is not happy. Only three of the publications even responded, and none seemed to indicate that they would be banning cigarette ads anytime soon.
The worst part is, a recent study shows that these ads appear to be working. A Fox News story highlighted a report from the 12th Annual World Conference on Tobacco indicating that more girls and women smoke now than ever before.
As a 19-year old young woman, these advertisements are targeting me and my peers. Thinking about the women’s magazines I buy, it’s not uncommon for me to read an article about eating healthy on one page and see an ad for cigarettes on the next. I know this is a free country, but young female buyers have the right to know that they are being directly targeted by tobacco companies with these dangerously convincing ads.
