Tobacco Pins a Bull’s-Eye on Black Kids
“Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.” That’s usually said with a wink and a nod, but sometimes it’s a valid observation.
For the past three decades, black activists and health practitioners have been arguing that their demographic has been targeted disproportionately by cigarette and alcohol manufacturers. For all these years, those corporations have denied it, even as billboards loomed over black neighborhoods extolling those very products.
Last week, newspapers across the country announced something interesting. Seems proof has come to light that the cigarette companies had indeed spent a significant portion of their advertising dollars in minority communities. Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) presented documents that confirmed what some of us already knew. Tobacco companies, presaging a waning mainstream consumer market as the perils of smoking became better known, were betting heavily on a specific slice of the market: inner-city residents, most of whom happened to be black. By liberally splashing the inducements to smoke on billboards and buses, by plastering subways and lacing black publications with advertisements about their products, the hook was baited.
“These documents make clear that the tobacco industry was targeting blacks, including black teenagers, at the same time the industry knew that tobacco was addictive and caused lung cancer and other smoking-related diseases,” Conyers noted. And he has reason for alarm: Black men develop lung cancer at a much higher rate than the mainstream population (according to Conyers, 25% to the mainstream’s 14%). Neither do black women escape unscathed, since we suffer higher rates of breast cancer than our sisters of other races--again, a cancer that has been shown to be affected by smoking.
Perhaps most alarming is the companies’ targeting urban youth. Brown & Williamson, the makers of Kools, pointed out in a 1973 document Conyers released that “smokers in the 16-to-25 year age group will soon be as important to Kool as a prospect in any other broad age group.” Five years later, their competitors at Lorillard, which manufactures Newports, exulted that the sales of the mentholated cigarette had been “fantastic” and admitted that “the base of our business is the high school student.” High school, remember, starts around age 14.
I did some drive-by research of my own, and via a casual eyeballing, compared billboards between my own Crenshaw neighborhood and the area around Pico west of La Cienega. On the Westside, the billboards advertise cell phones, trendy sportswear, milk, soft drinks and occasionally, cigarettes or the discreet bottle of tequila or premium vodka. On my side of town, the cigarette ads blossom like mushrooms after a hard rain. In one block alone, there are three. There also are boards advertising shows from UPN and Warner Bros. and even--on a side street--a smaller board discouraging smoking. And plenty of alcohol ads. But proportionately, the tobacco companies rule. There’s in-your-face, label-only advertising (Winston). The beautiful-people-smoke approach (Newport). Urban edge (Kool). And finally, just--cigarettes: swinging in a hammock, lounging in a chaise, chillin’ in beach chairs (this last silly campaign is courtesy of Benson & Hedges).
A cynic would ask if all this is really the responsibility of the tobacco companies. After all, the Marlboro man is not standing behind each smoker with his gun aimed at his or her temple, drawling “smoke or I’ll shoot.” We do have independent will. And a lot of us, realizing the devastating consequences in lung cancer, heart disease and emphysema, are beginning to butt out. But those are usually adult decisions. Kids in junior high (and don’t fool yourself--they’re being targeted too, it’s just stealthier) and high school think they’re going to be healthy forever. It doesn’t occur to them to worry about things like lung cancer; that’s something older people get, right?
Maybe. But watch for the median age for some cancers to lower as the fruits of this particular poison tree continue to ripen. That’s not a cigarette box in your shirt pocket, kid--it’s a bull’s-eye. Sometimes a little paranoia is a healthy thing.
