Children's advertisement-awareness related to their views on smoking

IN a Cancer Research Campaign-funded survey of 849 children aged nine and ten years, and 1132 chil dren aged 12 and 13 years in Cumbria and Tyne and Wear in November 1984, 67 per cent of the younger group and 84 per cent of the older group could name at least one cigarette brand. Seventeen per cent of the younger and 23 per cent of the older group named a favourite cigarette advertisement, although one per cent and two per cent respectively named cigar or tobacco advertisements on television, or anti- smoking posters. Those children who named a favourite advertisement showed significantly greater support for supposed positive values of smoking such as looking tough, looking grown-up, calming nerves, giving confidence and controlling weight. This difference in opinion applied equally to smokers and 'never-smokers' in both age groups. Comparatively few children - 20 per cent of smokers of the younger group and 12 per cent of the older group - smoked the brand they named as their favourite advertisement. Three-quarters of the sample expressed no brand loyalty, but of those who did, taste of the cigarette was the main reason they gave for choosing it, although some made the choice because they considered that cigarette to be less harmful. It is suggested that children are receiving the posi tive messages from cigarette advertisements even as young as the impressionable age of nine years when they are most likely to try their first cigarette, although the advertisements are supposedly not intended for them. They may see these messages as generic to smoking and the positive impressions they gain from them could be one of the important influences in their decision to smoke.