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Prevention Action Alliance
E-Cigarettes: What Big Tobacco Wants to Be
E-cigarettes were supposedly created to give adult smokers an
alternative to cigarettes, but they’re increasingly addicting teens to
nicotine in larger and larger numbers. Last month, the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention reported that 27.5 percent, or more than
1 in 4, high school students have used an e-cigarette in the past 30
days. And increasingly, Big Tobacco companies like Altria, which owns
Philip Morris and now owns 35 percent of Juul, are buying their way
into the market.
They do this because e-cigarettes are exactly the product that Big
Tobacco wanted to make. In fact, former FDA Commissioner David Kessler
wrote in the New York Times that the tobacco industry has been trying
to develop a more attractive, less harsh cigarette for 50 years.
And it isn’t just the ideas for better products that e-cigarette makers
took from Big Tobacco. They also took their marketing strategies.
Recently, a professor of marketing and a tobacco researcher were
interviewed by WPTV in West Palm Beach, Florida, on the similarities
between e-cigarette ads today and the ads that made Big Tobacco
infamous decades ago.
For instance, they drew connections between the colors of the products,
the fonts that were chosen, and the advertising as features that
attracted young people. “They’re doing a lot of what early tobacco
companies did, which is glamorize the use of the product,” professor
Darrin Duber-Smith of Metropolitan State University of Denver said.
“And they are starting to see the youth addiction and that sort of
thing.”
Another researcher, Dr. Robert Jackler from the Stanford Research into
the Impact of Tobacco Advertising research group testified to the U.S.
House Committee on Oversight and Reform’s Subcommittee on Economic and
Consumer Policy. He showed evidence that Juul specifically advertised
to young people using the ads and tactics of Big Tobacco. His testimony
includes dozens of images of social media posts and images comparing
Juul and ads for other tobacco products, including this one below.
Even in the beginning, Juul targeted young people, even students, with
its products. The Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy
concluded that “Juul deliberately targeted children to become the
nation’s largest seller of e-cigarettes.” That committee found efforts
by Juul to use schools, out-of-school programming, and online
influencers to reach young people. In the classroom initiative, Juul
told children that their products were “totally safe.” Additionally,
Juul worked hard to create a social media following that continues even
today after the company ceased direct involvement.
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