WASHINGTON, Oct 17 (Reuter) - Tobacco advertising is a central factor in encouraging teenagers to start smoking, perhaps twice as strong an influence as peer pressure, researchers said.
The researchers say their finding contradicts the tobacco industry's assertion that advertising and marketing are aimed at gaining brand loyalty and market share among kids who already smoke, not at encouraging non-smoking teens to start.
"Marketing is actually stronger than peer pressure in having children take the first step toward becoming an addicted smoker," John Pierce, a cancer prevention expert at the University of California at San Diego, told reporters.
Pierce released the research, published in the Oct. 18 edition of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, at a news conference that coincided with a campaign by anti-smoking and medical groups to support federal efforts to curb youth smoking and restrict advertising and marketing aimed at kids.
Research suggests most smokers begin as teens and about 3,000 kids start smoking each day.
Thomas Lauria, a spokesman from the Tobacco Institute trade group, attacked Pierce's research, which included complicated mathematical formulas for "susceptibility" indexes.
"These erroneous conclusions fly in the face of international evidence to the contrary," Lauria said in a telephone interview. "The primary reason (youths start smoking) is peer pressure.
"It is appalling that anti-smoking groups would do anything to downplay the reason why young people start smoking. It's almost as if they don't want to solve the problem," he said.
The industry is fighting additional federal regulation in court and urges voluntary efforts by the tobacco industry to discourage young smokers.
Pierce, a former anti-tobacco official under then-Surgeon General Everett Koop, also released a second study, to be published in Health Psychology next month, tracking a century of cigarette marketing.
Pierce and his colleagues found, for instance, that a campaign featuring what in the 1890s were risque pictures of bare-bellied women tucked in cigarette packs led to a notable rise in young male smokers. A 1920s campaign linking smoking and thinness corresponded with a surge in women smokers.
The Cancer journal study looked at the influence marketing had on teen-agers, and compared it to other influences, such as academic performance, or exposure to good friends or relatives who smoke. It found that advertising enhanced that susceptibility considerably, Pierce said.
He and his colleagues drew on prior research to determine which youths were "susceptible" to starting smoking, and calculated additional risk from exposure to the marketing.
The survey used data on 3,536 teens from the 1993 California Tobacco Survey.
It found that teens thought cigarette ads give out at least one positive message, such as that smoking helps people feel comfortable in social situations or makes it easier to stay thin. Reut19:56 10-17-95
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