Youth are Still Exposed and Influenced by Tobacco Advertising

Tobacco ads are still in plain sight of children in stores and they continue to be influenced by them, say U.S. researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. Shanta Dube, lead health scientist for surveillance in the Epidemiology Branch, Office on Smoking and Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and colleagues analyzed the amount of adolescents exposed to pro-tobacco advertising and evaluated the association between this exposure and susceptibility to smoking. The study was published in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

The researchers used data from the 2011 National Youth Tobacco Survey to calculate the proportion of susceptible middle-school and high-school students exposed to pro-tobacco advertisements via stores, magazines and the Internet. Susceptibility to smoking cigarettes was defined as "never smoked but open to trying cigarettes," Dube said.

The report said that 81.5 percent of middle-school students and 87 percent of high-school students were exposed to tobacco advertisements in stores in 2011, while 48 percent of middle-school students and 54 percent of high-school students were exposed to such advertising in magazines.

Exposure to tobacco advertisements on the Internet was similar at about 40 percent for both middle-school and high-school students.

According to the study, 22 percent of middle-school students and 24 percent of high-school students were susceptible to trying cigarettes.

Exposure to magazine advertising declined from 71.8 percent in 2000 to 46 percent in 2009 among susceptible middle-school students; but exposure increased to 55 percent in 2011. Tobacco advertising seen through the Internet among susceptible high-school students increased from 26 percent in 2000 to 45 percent in 2011.