Vietnamese Celebrities Star in New Anti-Tobacco Spots

Vietnamese celebrities will appear in a new statewide advertising campaign that seeks to tarnish the glamorous image cigarette smoking has in the Vietnamese American community, where smoking rates are especially high.

Health educators announced the campaign Wednesday in Orange County, home to the nation’s largest population of Vietnamese Americans. It will be funded by state tobacco tax revenue.

The campaign, spearheaded by a UC San Francisco tobacco research group, uses Vietnamese-language television and print ads featuring popular entertainers to counter broad acceptance of smoking, especially for men, in the immigrant community. In Vietnam, nearly three-quarters of men are smokers, experts say.

“We chose entertainers to deliver the message because they exert tremendous influence on the community in terms of what is current and up to date,” said Chris Jenkins, director of the Vietnamese Community Health Promotion Project. “With the help and support of these trendsetters, we hope to get the Vietnamese community to think about how tobacco negatively affects them.”

In California, 35% of Vietnamese men smoke--a rate half again as high as the rate for all men. Unless they quit, half of those smokers--a population estimated at 46,000--are expected to die from smoking-related diseases, while another fourth would die prematurely, Jenkins said.

Though recent studies have confirmed that Asian Americans, and Vietnamese Americans in particular, have higher-than-average smoking rates, there has never been such a high-profile campaign to address what is a major public health threat to the Vietnamese American community, Jenkins said.

The ads feature five well-known performers: singer and rap artist Henry Chuc; singer Dalena, an American who performs in Vietnamese; radio announcer and singer Viet Dzung; and singer Duc Huy and his wife, Thao My.

They will be shown on Vietnamese-language TV stations and Vietnamese-language newspapers in the San Francisco Bay area as well as Los Angeles and Orange County through 2001. In the ads, the entertainers--in some cases playing roles of ordinary Vietnamese Americans--stress the health effects not only for smokers but for their families.

“Entertainers have wide exposure in the community. They establish and reinforce social norms. They determine what’s cool,” Jenkins said.

Cultural acceptance of smoking is traced back to life in Vietnam, where the percentage of Vietnamese men who smoke is 73%, the highest in the world, Jenkins said. Vietnamese smokers there, on average, spend more for cigarettes than education or health care.

“For the Asian community in general, and specifically for Vietnamese adults, smoking is a way of life,” said Mai Cong, CEO and president of the Vietnamese Community of Orange County, a social service organization that has had an anti-smoking campaign targeting youth for the last three years.

Immigrants who come to the United States bring those ideas with them, so combating those cultural norms about smoking will be a long battle, she predicts.

“It will take time, but these efforts will attract their attention and make them aware of the devastating impact on their health,” Cong said.

Anti-smoking advocates say that Asian culture and relentless advertising by tobacco companies contribute to the problem.

According to the Asian and Pacific Islander Tobacco Education Network, a San Francisco-based group, a 1992 study found that Asian neighborhoods had 17 times as many cigarette billboards as white neighborhoods.

The campaign, funded by Proposition 99, the California Tobacco Tax Initiative, was meant to be a preemptive strike against tobacco companies that use well-known Asian figures to promote their products, Jenkins said. For instance, R.J. Reynolds uses tennis star Michael Chang to market its tobacco products.

As part of the effort, other Vietnamese entertainers will be asked to sign a pledge that they will not promote or advertise tobacco products.

“Particularly with men, it’s cool to smoke. That’s the thing that needs to be changed,” Chuc said. “I do rap, so young people see me as being tough and a role model. But I don’t smoke or drink, and, hopefully, I can get the word out to younger people.”