Is Secondhand Smoke Setting Future Consumers Up For the Kill?
Posted by
Armand RossettiFebruary 07, 2007 7:34 AMCurrently, smoke-free laws are in place in several states and thousands of U.S. communities. Smoke-free statutes and ordinances now protect over 50% of the U.S. population. But what about millions of children who are exposed to secondhand smoke on a daily basis? After decades of court battles against tobacco companies, the first battle occurring in 1954, are they still capitalizing on these secondhand smoke-exposed kids?
First let's take a look at second hand smoke as it affects adults. Leslie Stayner, a University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) epidemiologist, recently reviewed 22 studies concerned with second hand smoke exposure in the workplace. The UIC study found that individuals exposed to passive smoke in the workplace had a 24% increase in lung cancer risk. Highly exposed workers had a 100% increased risk of lung cancer.
However, this important UIC study is not a breakthrough. A substantial list of well-known organizations have already agreed, long ago, that secondhand smoke causes cancer in people. Prominent organizations on that list are: the American Cancer Society, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the Surgeon General, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer. The cancer risk stemming from indirect exposure to tobacco smoke is only one concern, because secondhand smoke also has an effect on the circulatory system and it causes coronary heart disease.
The truth is that until the late 1990's, tobacco companies had a history of prevailing in court (1954 through 1996). After being forced into the multi-state tobacco settlement in 1998, however, major tobacco companies agreed to stop marketing to kids. Yet an International Communications Research poll, a Teen Excel Study taken in 2002, found that 64% of youth aged 12 to 17 claimed to have seen tobacco ads in a two-week period. That statistic compared to only 27% of adults who saw the same ads during the same period. Reportedly, the worst offender in youth advertizing is Philip Morris, the Marlboro manufacturer, and parent to such entities as Kraft Foods and Nabisco. Since 1998, Philip Morris has spent hundreds of millions of PR dollars to convince the public that its tobacco-advertising goals and profit-making corporate models have changed. Yet, the evidence is clear that the Marlboro youth smoking phenomenon has not lost pace.
In fact, because of activity happening behind the scenes, that pace has actually quickened. For instance, while Philip Morris keeps telling the public that it doesn't want kids to smoke, the company puts the pressure on Florida's anti-smoking groups to stop some of the most effective anti-tobacco ads in the nation. According to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, Philip Morris has secretly helped, or funded groups in Florida and Washington that have been fighting against measures to promote smoke-free workplaces, and to raise cigarette taxes.
And what it can no longer do in the US, Philip Morris, now called Altria, has kept doing abroad. Philip Morris has hired under aged "Marlboro girls" to pass out free cigarettes to their under aged peers. Furthermore, Philip Morris has sponsored foreign concerts where cigarettes were handed to minors. This continued assault on youth, worldwide, shows that attitudes in the Philip Morris boardroom toward cultivating young smokers has not changed one bit. It is no surprise that the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse indicates that 55% of youth smokers prefer Marlboro. That is more youth preference for Marlboro than for all other brands combined.
It is clear that strict regulation and effective, hard-hitting litigation remain the methods of choice for stemming the tide against tobacco's continued and relentless onslaught. However, even stricter regulations seem ineffective at times. For example, despite new laws requiring age-related purchase identification, seventy percent of the youth surveyed who were under the age of 18 found no problem buying tobacco products, and 63% found it easy to make Internet purchases.
Whether adults are inhaling other people's smoke in the workplace, or infants and children are inhaling their parent's smoke at home, secondhand smoke serves the less noticeable goal of introducing adults and kids to a tobacco high. What a spinoff for the tobacco companies! The bottom line is that secondhand smoke makes it all that much easier for tobacco companies like Philip Morris to set innocent children up for the slow tobacco kill.
There ought to be a penalty.