Stoking the Fire

A Senate Committee is voting this month on a bill that would put regulatory authority to restrict tobacco advertising and sales in the hands of the Food and Drug Administration.

The vote is just one action of late squarely aimed at hobbling tobacco marketers, who critics say are still targeting young people.

In May, Congress heard a report from the Institute of Medicine, which made 42 recommendations to reduce smoking. Among them: FDA oversight. The Institute urged Congress to prohibit tobacco companies from targeting kids even with youth prevention campaigns. Those funds should shift instead to independent public health groups like the American Legacy Foundation, which asked the Institute to conduct the analysis.

Consumer advocacy groups, state Attorneys General and the Motion Picture Association of America are also increasing the pressure.

So far, AGs have been the force behind setting and enforcing marketing restrictions on the state level. Right now, there’s no federal body controlling tobacco marketing. The issue of FDA control has been simmering for nearly 10 years, since the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement between tobacco companies and 46 states.

Flavored Cigarettes Ban?

The Senate bill is one of two proposed under the same title — the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (Senate bill S.625.IS and House bill H.R. 1108.IH).

The bills would give the FDA authority to restrict tobacco advertising, ban vending machines and self-service displays and put stronger health warnings on packages and ads, among other things. The primary goal is to prevent marketing that attracts kids and misleads adults about health risks. Both bills were submitted on Feb. 17.

The Senate’s Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions will vote on its bill this month. If approved, it will go to the full Senate for a vote.

The House bill is now before the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and not yet slated for a vote. Experts say the bills have a better chance of passing than past efforts now that the Democrats control Congress.

Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids took R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. to task for launching flavored cigarettes called Camel Signature Blends. Four flavors (Robust, Mellow, Frost and Infused) are advertised in Cosmopolitan magazine and via store displays that, the group argues, will attract kids.

The AGs, meanwhile, charged that alcohol-flavored Camel cigarettes with brand names like Kauai Kolada, Twista Lime and Warm Winter Toffee were designed to appeal to teenagers.

“This legislation would ban flavored cigarettes once and for all and impose other specific steps to restrict marketing to children and grant the FDA the comprehensive and flexible authority it needs to take action against new forms of tobacco marketing that appeal to kids or mislead the public,” says Matthew Myers, the president of the non-profit Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.

Myers called flavored cigarettes “the latest in a long line of tobacco industry efforts to circumvent specific restrictions on their behavior and continue to engage in marketing that appeals to children.”

R.J. Reynolds says Camel Signature is in full compliance with its 2006 agreement with 40 state AGs that permits the marketing of specialty blends but restricts the use of fruit, candy and alcohol descriptors in brand names or in marketing through venues that aren’t age-restricted.

“The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids seizes every opportunity to criticize tobacco manufacturers as part of their effort to advocate FDA regulatory authority over tobacco products,” says Tommy Payne, a spokesperson for R.J. Reynolds parent Reynolds American. “We support their right to do so but believe it requires full and fair disclosure of the facts so that people can draw their own objective conclusions.”

R.J. Reynolds agrees with some points in the current legislation bills, including the elimination of sampling; all ads not at point of sale, including magazine ads; and tobacco brand sponsorships. The company disagrees with provisions to prohibit marketing via mail and e-mail, on age-restricted Web sites and in adult-only venues.

Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids also slammed R.J. Reynolds for using feminine colors and images this spring to launch Camel No. 9 to target women — and, critics charge, girls.

The brand was dubbed “Barbie Camel” in an editorial in The Oregonian newspaper that bashed R.J. Reynolds for hosting Camel No. 9 Pleasure Lounges in nightclubs and giving away premiums more attractive to teens than to older women.

“R.J. Reynolds’ strategy is so remarkably clever it could backfire,” The Oregonian opined. “Congressional proponents of federal regulation of tobacco hardly could have asked for a more egregious example of the need for such laws.”

The publishers of magazines placing tobacco ads are also under fire. Last month, 40 members of Congress sent letters to the publishers of Vogue, Elle and other women’s magazines asking them to stop accepting ads for Camel No. 9 because they court young women. That prompted Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids to repeat its call for R.J. Reynolds to take Camel No. 9 off the market.

R.J. Reynolds only places print ads in magazines with at least 85% adult readership, whose content and other ads are geared to adults, says R.J. Reynolds spokesperson Craig Fischel.

Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids also argues that price discounts make it easier for kids to smoke and harder for states to rely on tobacco taxes to fund youth-prevention campaigns.

Movies & Smoking

Sensitive to movies’ influence on behavior, Hollywood in May chimed in with an anti-tobacco action. The Motion Picture Association of America’s rating system now considers smoking (along with sex, violence and strong language) when rating films.

Its panels pose three questions: Is the smoking pervasive? Does the film glamorize smoking? And is there a historic or other mitigating context?

The association stops short of issuing an automatic R rating for films that depict any smoking. Chairman Dan Glickman notes that 75% of all films with smoking scenes rated from July 2004 to July 2006 earned an R rating for other reasons.

“So, three out of every four films that contained any smoking at all over the past few years are already rated R,” Glickman says.

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For more articles on marketing at retail, go to www.promomagazine.com/retail/

An FDA report released in April found that the top five tobacco companies spent $13.11 billion on cigarette marketing in 2005, down from the peak of $15.15 billion in 2003, but nearly double the amount spent in 1998.

Marketers gave away 3 billion cigarettes in 2005, through coupons, buy-one-get-one offers, and sampling. That’s up nearly 43% from 2.1 billion in 2004, but down dramatically from 7 billion in 2003.

Cigarette sales fell nearly 3% and consumption fell 6% in 2005, according to reports from the FDA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, respectively.