number of signs promoting their cigarettes (92-93).
The effectiveness of the tobacco industry s
psychologically designed promotions has been remarkable.
Coinciding with the 1967 ad campaigns which targeted young
girls, there was a sudden rise in teenage, female smokers:
110 percent in 12-year-olds, 55 percent in 13-year-olds, 70
percent 14-year-olds, 75 percent in 15-year-olds, 55
percent in 16-year-olds, and 35 percent in 17-year olds
(Hilts 69). Within three years after Camels were introduced
to children in 1988, the brand jumped from 3 percent to
more than 13 percent of the cigarette market; the jump was
even larger among the youngest groups (70). An R.J.
Reynolds executive was asked exactly who the young people
are that are being targeted, junior high school kids, or
even younger? His reply made RJR s objective clear: They
got lips? We Want em. If this is truly who the tobacco
industry is aiming for, their achievements are
considerable. More than 100,000 American children ages 12
and under are habitual smokers (Mixon 3). Every day, 3,000
to 5,000 American kids light a cigarette for the first
time. Children spend a billion dollars a year on
cigarettes. Tobacco companies must make sure that they
recruit enough new smokers every day, taking into account
that they loose one of their life-long customers to disease
every 13 seconds (Starr and Taggart 706).
Tobacco products have claimed the lives of more people than
those who died in World War Two (Jaffa 85). The sum of its
victims exceeds the number of deaths resulting from alcohol
abuse, illegal drug abuse, AIDS, traffic accidents,
homicides, and suicides combined (Glantz xvii). There are
thousands of documents from tobacco companies which reveal
that the industry has been remarkably successful in
protecting its ability to market an addictive product that
not only kills its customers by the millions, but also
shrinks the economy by 22 billion dollars annually (Starr
and Taggart 706). The industry has uniquely been able to
market its lethal products by tactfully instilling
completely irrational desires in the vulnerable minds of
children. Although tobacco products have been proven to be
seriously hazardous to health, some 50 million Americans
continue to smoke regularly; this is not necessarily a
matter of personal choice as the companies claim. Rather,
after seducing young people s minds (by explaining smoking
as glamorous rather than deadly), the whole business trusts
that these youths will continue to smoke because they will
develop addictions to the nicotine in tobacco. Along with
some help from the government, the industry fights
regulation of their product through the skilled legal,
political, and public relations tactics that helped them
create an imaginary controversy on the effects of smoking.
This situation, however, is slowly changing. The deception
of the tobacco industry has recently become better
publicized through the revelation of internal documents
which previously have been suppressed by the companies.
(Among these documents, those of Brown & Willamson and have
been greatly exposed.) Every day, organizations such as the
FDA (Food and Drug Administration) are taking steps to
control the virtually unregulated sale of cigarettes and
other tobacco products. Until something effective is done,
however, the best way to fight the merchants of death is to
influence their prey – the impressionable minds of children
- before they do.