Study: 1960S Ads Enticed Teenage Girls To Take Up Habit

WASHINGTON - For years, the tobacco industry has maintained that its ads don't cause children to start smoking.

Now, amid controversy over youngsters' ability to recognize cartoon character Joe Camel, an extensive new study suggests that Virginia Slims' "You've Come a Long Way, Baby" advertising campaign in the late 1960s enticed teenage girls to take up the habit.

The study, in today's Journal of the American Medical Association, says there was a sharp increase in the rate at which girls ages 11-17 started to smoke from 1967 through the mid-1970s. This increase coincided with an unprecedented cigarette advertising blitz in women's magazines that involved Virginia Slims and other female-oriented brands, the study found.

Anti-smoking forces are already using publication of the study, which comes a day before the annual Surgeon General's Report on Smoking and Health, as ammunition. It will become part of a battle over what, if any, new restrictions should be placed on tobacco advertising.

The Coalition on Smoking or Health filed a petition with the Federal Trade Commission yesterday saying the study should prompt a ban on cigarette advertising that targets children, including R.J. Reynolds' Joe Camel campaign.

Walker Merryman, vice president of the Tobacco Institute, said the study's evidence was thin. He said it flies in the face of studies from Scandinavia, which show that even a ban on advertising hasn't led to reductions in smoking among young people there.

The lead author of the new study, John Pierce, head of cancer prevention at the University of California-San Diego's Cancer Center, is also studying the effect of the Joe Camel campaign.

Pierce said that in research for a study to be published next month, he has found that the cartoon character ads have caused boys in California to start smoking at higher rates.

But Pierce said the study of teenage girls provides stronger evidence, because it relies on national data and covers a longer period. The study was based on more than 100,000 survey responses taken from 1970 to 1988 by the National Institutes of Health.

Pierce acknowledged that "we don't have absolute proof" that tobacco advertising causes children to start smoking. But he said the two studies together raise enough serious questions that tobacco advertising should be banned until cigarette companies can show that it is not harming impressionable youngsters.

Pierce and his colleagues looked at the rates at which girls and young women started smoking from 1944 to 1988. The steepest increase for girls younger than 18 came from 1967 through about 1975.

Until the mid-1960s, the cigarette industry had little interest in targeting women, the study said. Beginning around 1967, that changed, with three major women's brands entering the market - Virginia Slims, Silva Slims and Eve.

Merryman of the Tobacco Institute said the increase in girls' smoking rates could be explained by major cultural changes that were going on in the late 1960s. He said feminism and a general culture of rebelliousness may have prompted more girls to try cigarettes.

But Pierce said there was no increase during this time for boys or for women older than 17. Elizabeth Gilpin, a co-author of the study, said boys were not targeted by the ads and thus were not so enticed.