Anti-Smoking Groups Fired Up Over Camel Ads : Tobacco: Campaign featuring female characters called reckless for targeting women.

Joe Camel, the dashing dromedary under fire from anti-smoking groups for appealing to youths, has some new lady friends. And his critics aren’t pleased.

Ads featuring the cartoon camels began running this week in magazines including Redbook, Glamour, People, Us and Sports Illustrated.

The full-color spreads show female camels holding lit Camels around the bar, pool table and dance floor at Joe’s Place, a watering hole for the fictional R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. character.

Critics charge that the sole purpose of the new ad campaign is to attract women smokers to Camel, a brand normally associated with male smokers.

“It’s a reckless and dangerous campaign to lure more young female smokers into the fatal confines of Joe’s Place,” said Sidney Wolfe, director of health research for the advocacy group Public Citizen in Washington, D.C.

“We’re very concerned that by making a female Joe Camel, it’s going to have an effect on girls smoking,” said Michael Eriksen, director of the office on smoking and health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

RJR spokeswoman Maura Ellis seemed surprised by the attention the new ads are getting.

“The ad was not targeted to female smokers; it was intended for all smokers of competitive brands,” she said from RJR’s headquarters in Winston-Salem, N.C. “It seems illogical to use a nightclub and not have a mix of male and female camels.”

Eriksen said he was intrigued by the timing of the new ad campaign.

“It’s surprising that they’ve done this because the Federal Trade Commission is looking at the Joe Camel advertisements now to see whether they should be regulated,” he said.

Studies have shown boys are about 50% more likely than girls to smoke Camels. Before Joe Camel, in the mid-1970s and late 1980s, girls were smoking more than boys, Eriksen said.

Now its reversed, he said, because of Joe.

Wolfe said the ads are an affront to efforts by anti-smoking groups to persuade the FTC to ban the Joe Camel character. The FTC staff recommended a ban last summer, but the commissioners have not yet issued a ruling.

“The sooner the camels are put to rest, the sooner more Americans, especially young men and women, will live instead of die,” Wolfe said.

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Ellis said female camels have been featured at least once before with Joe Camel, who has been in trouble with anti-smoking advocates almost since he was introduced as the “smooth character” in ads for Camel cigarettes in the late 1980s.

Studies published by the Journal of the American Medical Assn. have found the camel’s image was as familiar to 6-year-olds as Mickey Mouse. Meanwhile, Joe Camel has become the brand of choice for about one-third of smokers under age 18, the journal said.

The tobacco industry continues to insist that there is no proof the ads influence young people to smoke Camels.

“Every study will show the overwhelming influence on kids who start smoking is peer pressure and family influences,” Ellis said. “Children from homes where their parents are smokers tend to have a higher (smoking) rate. And since these ads have been in place, the number of kids who smoke has continued to decline.”

Ellis said the real intent of the ads was to lure Marlboro smokers over to Camel. Marlboro, made by RJR rival Philip Morris, owns a dominant 26.6% share of the U.S. cigarette market.

Meanwhile, Camels are the choice of about 4% of the nation’s smokers.

“We believe Joe Camel has been a disproportionate lightning rod,” Ellis said. “After all, we’re talking about a brand with 4% of the market. That means 96% of smokers in the country smoke other brands. We think Camel has been unfairly singled out.”