An Insider's View of Philip Morris' Anti-Smoking Campaign
Authors of a study just published by the American Journal of Public Health (available online now and in the Dec. issue of AJPH) say that youth anti-smoking television ads funded by tobacco companies are ineffective, and that the spots intended for parents may even have harmful effects. Among 10th and 12th graders, they say, higher exposure to the parent-targeted ads was associated with lower perceived harm of smoking, stronger approval of smoking, stronger intentions to smoke in the future, and a greater likelihood of having smoked in the past 30 days.
"Of course," I can hear you saying to yourself, "we all know that Philip Morris is intentionally sabotaging the ad campaign so that it ends up bringing in more future smokers, or at least is just burnishing its reputation with this campaign as window-dressing." I would have thought so myself. Except that in looking into the campaign, I found out that an old friend and colleague, Cheryl Olson, is on the advisory board for Philip Morris USA's Youth Smoking Prevention initiative.
Cheryl and I met in grad school, and we have since worked on various projects together, including evaluating tobacco prevention programs. She, along with her husband, psychologist Larry Kutner (who is also the chair of the advisory board), founded and co-direct the Center for Mental Health and Media at the Harvard Medical School. I know that Cheryl is no tobacco industry patsy, and that she would not compromise her integrity if she suspected there were any nefarious strategies behind this campaign.
I got in touch with Cheryl and asked her for her take on the research results that were just published. She, not surprisingly, had a lot to say about why this study is flawed and may just be showing what the researchers wanted to find. I invited her to send me her thoughts to post on the blog, which I've reprinted here:
Cheryl raises several important points. As much as many of us would like to pillory the tobacco industry, we can't let that cloud our desire for the truth (as best we can find it statistically). When you see (or do) research that confirms your preconceptions, you still need to look at it critically and make sure that you are not letting your assumptions guide your conclusions.Thanks to Cheryl for taking the time to share her valuable perspective. I would love to see research on whether parents who have seen the ads and read PMUSA's materials have spoken with their children about not smoking and whether their kids are less likely to smoke as a result. But even if that part of the campaign were found to be effective, I have a feeling there are many who would not believe it in any case.
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