State to Launch Anti-Smoking Ad Campaign

State health officials today will unveil the first phase of a bold anti-smoking advertising campaign built on the theme that smokers are being duped by cigarette companies.

The $28.6-million ad campaign, part of a $220-million project funded by the Proposition 99 cigarette tax, is expected to infuriate the tobacco industry and provoke a counterattack.

The winner in the war of words could dictate U.S. smoking trends, said Dr. Kenneth Kizer, director of the state Department of Health Services.

Several of the statewide television, radio, print and billboard ads will address the advertising practices of the tobacco industry, which health officials charge is targeting susceptible groups, such as youths, minorities and women. The state’s anti-smoking campaign will focus on the same groups.

One anti-smoking advertisement addressing young blacks will feature a song about tobacco by the rap musician Deezer D with the lyrics: We used to pick it / and now they want us to smoke it. The ad will appear on radio and television, including MTV.

Another television spot will depict a smoke-filled office where tobacco industry executives are discussing tactics to lure individuals to smoke, despite the known health risks of smoking. “We’re not in business for our health,” a fictitious tobacco executive says.

Kizer said his office is braced for a backlash from the tobacco industry. And Monday, an industry spokesman labeled the state’s campaign a “political” first step in an attempt to ban cigarette advertising altogether.

Said Kizer: “There is some stuff people will be quite bothered by. I anticipate controversy. It’s the most competitive, aggressive and largest advertising campaign both to discourage people from smoking and prevent them from getting habituated. If the campaign is successful, it’s going to hurt (cigarette sales). And the tobacco industry is going to translate that hurt into something.”

The advertising and marketing segment of the two-year, anti-smoking campaign is considered the key element in achieving the state’s goal of a 75% decline in smoking by 1999. According to Kizer, smoking is the state’s leading preventable cause of death and disease, costing Californians $7.1 billion each year in health care and lost productivity.

Proposition 99, which increased the cigarette tax by 25 cents a pack on Jan. 1, 1989, also includes funding for anti-smoking education in public schools and health departments, which would focus on health risks.

The central theme of the advertising campaign, however, is to reverse the seductive image of smoking created through decades of cigarette-company advertising, Kizer said. The campaign was created by the Los Angeles advertising firm of keye/donna/pearlstein. “The objective is to change the image that the tobacco industry has created for smokers--that it’s sexy, glamorous, youthful--to it’s dumb, dirty, dangerous,” Kizer said. “A lot of young people may not realize how much they’re being duped. They’ve been sold a bill of goods. Some of the ads are going to let them know that 1,000 people give up smoking each day by being buried. They (youths) are being recruited to take their place.”

But, according to a tobacco industry spokesman, anti-smoking advertisements that address the marketing techniques of cigarette companies would violate the intent of Proposition 99.

“They pitched Prop. 99 as: ‘We want to reach underaged children. We want to educate children to the purported health effects of smoking,’ ” said Thomas Lauria, a spokesman for the Tobacco Institute, a Washington-based industry group. “Anything beyond that is not educational, it’s political.”

Lauria said cigarette advertisements are designed to persuade smokers to switch brands, not to attract new smokers. He said he had not seen the state’s anti-smoking ads and that industry leaders would view the ads before deciding whether to respond further.

But, he said: “These ads sound like they are trying to educate adults in terms of a political agenda. Those attacks are trying to lay the groundwork for a next phase of a political agenda, which is to ban advertising from cigarette companies. These people are on a long march toward prohibition of tobacco.”

Although most people are aware of the health risks of smoking, the tobacco industry has been successful in selling an illusion that smoking is harmless, said Paul Keye, who directed the campaign for keye/donna/pearlstein.

The anti-smoking advertisements will attempt to shatter that illusion, he said. A full-page ad scheduled to appear Wednesday in newspapers statewide contains the message: “First the smoke. Now the mirrors.”

“What we really want to do is show the connection between the tobacco industry and its advertising and promotional practices,” Keye said. “This campaign goes right at tobacco companies’ predatory marketing.”

While smoking rates have fallen 20% among adults in the last two decades, a similar decrease has not been seen among minorities, youths or women, Kizer said. Smoking is associated with an increased risk of heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, emphysema and several types of cancer.

In blacks, the rate of lung cancer, which is highly correlated to cigarette smoking, is 58% higher than whites. Lung cancer has surpassed breast cancer as the leading cause of death among women.

The failure of anti-smoking campaigns to influence minority groups is due to both the lack of effective education designed for those groups and a shift in cigarette-company advertising, he said.

“It wasn’t just de facto that the message wasn’t reaching these folks. They were targeted to think that smoking is a good thing,” Kizer said.

To counter that advertising, anti-smoking messages must deliver images and emotions instead of information, he said. The campaign will rely heavily on television spots, most of which will be paid for by the state, although it is expected that stations will donate some time for public service spots. Some ads will be in Spanish and, possibly, an Asian language.

“It’s clear that respectable people--teachers or doctors--standing in a room reciting facts about the dangers of smoking has a modest to minimal effect,” Kizer said. “That’s why I think we have to appeal to the visceral response. The message is, ‘What is cool? Who do I look up to?’ ”

The campaign will also address the dangers of smokeless tobacco and secondhand smoking. In one television ad, a smoker seated next to a nonsmoker inhales on a cigarette. The nonsmoker then coughs and exhales the smoke.

In another ad, a baby observes his parents smoking and raises his spoon to his lips to imitate them.

Kizer said the campaign will be monitored for its effectiveness. While anti-smoking television spots in the late 1960s appeared successful in reducing smoking rates, little evidence exists to prove that such ads work, he conceded.