State Anti-Tobacco Effort Runs Old Ads

The state’s $3.9-million anti-tobacco television campaign aimed at teenagers aired old ads this fall despite a memo from a top health official saying that the spots had run so many times they would have little impact.

Internal state documents also suggest that new ads were not approved because the scripts were too controversial. A Department of Health Services spokeswoman said that wasn’t true and that officials did not have time to develop new commercials.

The decision to broadcast the old ads came after previous decisions last year in which the state backed down from airing two sharp-edged spots aimed at the tobacco industry--moves that prompted anti-tobacco leaders to accuse the state of softening its tax-funded campaign against tobacco use.

“I haven’t seen anything new in over a year,” said Jennie Cook, chairwoman of the Tobacco Education Research Oversight Committee, which oversees California’s anti-tobacco program. “I am very upset about it.”

The state spent $3.9 million on a fall campaign to air ads that had been on television for as long as 21 months. That was $1 million more than had been spent on a single campaign in more than two years.

The money was used to buy air time on shows that attract young audiences, including the MTV Video Music Awards broadcast in September, and high-rated shows such as “Seinfeld.”

One of the widely aired spots features a gray-haired man saying his secondhand smoke caused his wife to die prematurely. Another shows a man in a business suit fishing as a narrator talks about how the tobacco industry tries to hook new smokers. The state also aired spots produced by other states.

“I don’t think we are in any way weakening our resolve to counter pro-tobacco influences,” Health Department spokeswoman Lynda Frost said Monday. “We remain committed. I’m hoping in March we’ll see the first new wave [of ads].”

Internal documents obtained by The Times under a state Public Records Act request show, however, that experts warned in May that airing the old ads would have little impact.

Dr. Donald O. Lyman, chief of the California Division of Chronic Disease and Injury Control, noted in a May 22 memo that “familiarity leads the audience to boredom and the message is, in effect, tuned out and loses its impact.”

“The current advertisements . . . could very well be reaching that state of ineffectiveness,” Lyman said in his memo to Michael Genest, assistant deputy director of the health department.

“Youth are more vulnerable to both the positive and negative impacts of advertising, so the wear-out factor is even stronger for them,” Lyman wrote. “The department needs to develop new captivating and thought-provoking ads to grab the attention and appeal to the jaded palates of our youth.”

In an interview Monday, Frost acknowledged that airing old ads was “not the ideal scenario.” But she said officials “had other things we had to address first.”

She said officials were focusing on awarding a new $49-million three-year contract to an outside advertising agency to work on the anti-smoking campaign. The firm that won the contract--Asher/Gould of Los Angeles--is the same firm that previously held the contract.

In early July, Asher/Gould representatives met with Frost and Genest to outline their ideas for a new round of commercials directed at young people and aimed at airing in the fall.

After the meeting, Robin Shimizu of the tobacco control section summarized the meeting in an e-mail message to Colleen Stevens, who works on anti-tobacco ads for the state, and characterized Genest as believing that Asher/Gould’s proposed scripts for new spots aimed at young people were “controversial.”

“Mike indicated that everything [Asher/Gould] produced on the youth strategy seem[s] controversial and that he would have to seek approval from several layers up the chain of command,” the e-mail said.

The department did not release copies of the proposed scripts.

As the summer wore on, and officials were busy looking for a new ad agency to develop new anti-tobacco spots, time simply ran out to produce new ads, Frost said, and officials decided to take old ads “off the shelf” and rebroadcast them starting in September.

The failure to produce and air new ads this fall follows a decision by the Wilson administration in early 1995 to stop airing an ad showing tobacco industry executives testifying before Congress that nicotine is not addictive, and concluding with the words: “Do they think we’re stupid?”

When R.J. Reynolds, the nation’s second-largest tobacco company, threatened to sue over the ad, state officials publicly accused the firm of “strong-arm” tactics.

However, documents previously released under the Public Records Act showed that state officials early last year quietly ordered that the ad no longer air.

Later in 1995, health officials refused to air a new commercial after authorizing that it be taped. The ad explained that, although the tobacco industry denies smoking is harmful, two tobacco conglomerates own insurance companies that give discounts to nonsmokers.

Experts in and out of the Department of Health Services believe that the best way to persuade teenagers not to start smoking is to air ads that attack the ways in which tobacco industry marketing manipulates people.

California’s Tobacco Education Research Oversight Committee, meanwhile, is set to meet in Sacramento today. Cook and other members expect to question health department officials about how the decisions get made to approve or disapprove ads.

“We’re not trying to micro-manage the program,” said committee member Dr. Lester Breslow, a professor at UCLA and a public health expert. “We’re concerned about the process--to be sure there is an adequate process for using the money earmarked for the ads.”