ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 10, 1995 TAG: 9512080040
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ROBERT BUFORD IV
A RECENT mailing from the National Smokers Alliance urged me to contact President Clinton and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to oppose any change in the laws controlling the sale of cigarettes to minors. The timing of this communication was unfortunate in my case. In early August, I was diagnosed with inoperable cancer of the lung and given, optimistically, six months to a year to live. I am 46.
The mailing did, indeed, prompt a letter to the White House, but it was not the kind envisioned by the Smokers Alliance. The proposed FDA regulations, contrary to what the industry claims, are a common-sense set of proposals that would address one of our nation's greatest health problems.
I was born and have lived almost all my life in Richmond, traditionally hailed as the Cigarette Capital of the World. I was 12 when, like many of my peers, I began playing with tobacco. By the time I was 15, when we all know we are immortal, I was a full-blown nicotine addict and openly smoking. For the past 30 years, I have smoked one to two packs a day. I know that cigarettes contributed heavily to my fatal illness.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, smoking kills more than 400,000 Americans each year. This costs our nation billions of dollars in health care and lost productivity. In human terms, the toll is incalculable. The truly anguishing thing is that this is a totally preventable public-health tragedy.
Few people begin to use tobacco after age 20. If we could discourage adolescents from beginning, we could save hundreds of thousands of lives and billions of dollars each year.
Yet, even as adults are giving up smoking, our young are increasingly becoming addicted. Smoking among eighth-graders increased by 30 percent between 1991 and 1994. Each day, more than 3,000 children start using tobacco products. A thousand of these will die of tobacco-related illnesses. In all, one out of three adolescents in the United States is smoking by age 18.
What induces young people to start on the road that ends for so many in that sorrowful and relentless slide into premature death? The answer is suggested in facts recently provided by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a nonprofit organization based in Washington.
Eighty-five percent of underage smokers purchase the three most heavily advertised brands: Marlboro, Newport or Camel, according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control. After the Joe Camel cartoon campaign was introduced, Camel's market share among underage smokers jumped from .5 percent to 32.8 percent. This was reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Thirty percent of youths 12 to 17 years old, both smokers and nonsmokers, own at least one tobacco promotional item such as a T-shirt, baseball cap or gym bag.
Tobacco companies spend more than $6 billion a year to advertise and promote their products. They claim that they don't market to kids. In reality, the young are strategically the most critical segment of their market. A recently released study suggests that adolescents are the only responsive nonsmoking audience to tobacco marketing.
Young people are exposed to cigarette messages through newspapers, magazines and other print media (including outdoor billboards near schools). They are also exposed through promotional displays, distribution of specialty items, and sponsorship of sporting events and public entertainment.
The tobacco manufacturers use human models and cartoon characters to create images that resonate with young people - images of independence, adventure, attractiveness to members of the opposite sex and, yes, even healthfulness.
A report of the U.S. Surgeon General suggests that the most vulnerable of our young are the most susceptible to this cynical strategy. The greater the discrepancy between a young person's self-image and the image portrayed in the advertising, the more likely he or she will respond to the ads. Advertising also creates in young people a false notion of how many of their peers are smoking.
A civilized society must make every effort to protect its young. What can we do to eliminate this tragic manipulation of adolescents making the perilous passage through the most psychologically vulnerable stage of life? The American Medical Association has issued specific recommendations that would go a long way toward discouraging adolescent smoking:
A minimum federal excise tax of $2 per pack should be imposed. (The tax is currently 24 cents.) The evidence shows this will discourage use of cigarettes by young people (as well as adults). Virginia, which has the nation's lowest state excise tax on cigarettes (2.5 cents per pack), should raise it to at least the national average (32.5 cents).
The federal government should fund an aggressive counter-advertising campaign to strongly discourage tobacco use by young people.
Federal policy should establish, or provide incentives for states to adopt, age 21 as the minimum age for purchase of tobacco products.
State and local governments should ban the sale of tobacco products through vending machines.
The nation's schools should adopt and enforce nonsmoking regulations and implement tobacco-prevention programs.
Such measures would drastically reduce the incidence of smoking among our young and among adults in the future, saving countless lives.
It is too late for me. I may be dead by the time you read this. But it is not too late for your children and grandchildren. We must protect them.
Robert Buford IV, a former journalist and public relations executive, has been receiving radiation and chemotherapy following his lung-cancer diagnosis in August. He lives in Richmond.
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