The Tobacco Reference Guide by David Moyer

UICC GLOBALink Presents...

by David Moyer, MD.

Chapter 16 Youth access to tobacco

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Two programs introduced by tobacco companies in 1995, "Action Against Access,"

and "We Card," have not had any apparent impact on underage tobacco sales.

Minnesota attorney general Hubert Humphrey says that if the tobacco companies

were serious about keeping cigarettes away from minors, they would work with local

officials instead of lobbying against them and trying to pass weak state preemption

laws to take away local authority. "If they want something real, let's sit down and talk.

Instead, we get full page ads...and excuses."

USA Today, May 30, 1996, p. 221

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Philip Morris ran an ad noting, "No one should be allowed to sell cigarettes to minors.

Minors should not smoke. Period. That is why Philip Morris developed a

comprehensive program to prevent sales of cigarettes to minors." The protestations

are too vehement, somehow. One newspaper series, in the Louisville Courier-Journal,

looking into the gap between the companies' public statements and their day-to-day

behavior, noted that in the places where strict licensing and strict enforcement have

been used against store owners, they have been very effective. But the industry has

fought fiercely against giving state health departments the power to carry out effective

enforcement... The companies are on record as against most methods of

enforcement, including inspections, sting operations, surveys, and holding merchants

responsible for illegal sales. Instead they suggest punitive measures which would be

certain not only to backfire, but to cast the enforcers in the worst possible light. They

suggest targeting for arrest children who buy cigarettes rather than retailers who sell

them. They also suggest arresting or fining the clerks in stores, not the managers or

owners. What the industry is against is quite logical-anything that has been shown to

be effective in any studies or in any actual town or state enforcement actions. The

situation is similar to that of the CTR (Council for Tobacco Research) - maintain a

public posture that appears honorable and in line with public opinion, and in practice

prevent anything that would reduce sales in any way. It would be difficult to believe an

industry could be so dishonest as to carry out such a two-faced program, but having

seen the documents from 1954 to the present, and looking at one example after

another when the companies' intentions have been tested, it is impossible to escape

the conclusion that the industry is doing just that again.

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Thursday, July 06, 2000

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