Tobacco Foes Attack Ads That Target Women, Minorities, Teens, and the Poor

FROM GHETTOS to ski slopes, tobacco advertisements are coming down. Advocates for minors, minorities, women, and the poor are on the offensive, scoffing at tobacco company claims that cigarette promotions are not aimed at the groups most at risk for acquiring nicotine addiction. Antismoking activists are adopting what they see as the industry's own tactics, moving away from wide-angle warnings about the long-term health threats and focusing instead on specific brands, the smoker's self-image, and the short-term social consequences, in messages tailored to specific groups. "We've done a good job of reaching middle-class white America, but not the groups most at risk," says American Cancer Society (ACS) spokesman Steve Dickinson. So new ACS ads twist the tobacco industry's images of success and sophistication. As a beautiful, dark-skinned woman smoking a cigarette becomes covered with a gloppy substance, the ad asks, "If what happened on your insides happened on your outsides,