New national figures, showing that declines in youth tobacco use have slowed, indicate that Big Tobacco's relentless marketing is trumping widespread prevention efforts, experts told the Herald yesterday.
A new report from the U.S. surgeon general, coming on the 50th anniversary of the landmark report that linked smoking to lung cancer, shows the number of young people who started smoking in 2012, 2.3 million, is actually up from 2002, when 1.9 million picked up their first cigarettes. Though, due to population growth, the rate of teen smokers is down, it is leveling off and not showing the kind of decline that advocates would want to see over the course of a decade.
"There's a lot of guerrilla marketing going on," said Margaret Reid, a division director at the Boston Public Health Commission.
While cigarettes aren't as popular as they used to be, tobacco companies are increasingly trying to push other products such as flavored cigars and cigarillos. Boston health officials are tracking a rise in the use of these products, which are often targeted at minority youth, according to Nikysha Harding, director of tobacco prevention and control at the city's health commission. "And they're being marketed at a very, very low price point," Harding said.
Harding said to attract the college crowd, tobacco companies hire "attractive people" to scout for potential smokers in bars, then send them coupons.
Tobacco companies have said they don't market to teens. Efforts to reach tobacco company officials for comment yesterday were unsuccessful.
Boston University public health professor and smoking prevention expert Dr. Michael Siegel said the numbers should compel government officials to revamp their anti-smoking campaign to compete with tobacco companies' evolving marketing strategies.
"We can't expect to continue progress if we can't continue investment," Siegel said. "There is a public perception that we've taken care of the smoking problem. That's dangerous. It's just not true."
Massachusetts' anti-smoking budget has been slashed from $53 million to about $4.5 million over the past decade, Siegel said.
Harvard School of Public Health research scientist Hillel Alpert said non-conventional tobacco products can be a gateway to traditional cigarettes. "The different forms of tobacco products that are on the market only serve to promote addiction," he said.
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