Tobacco compaines targeting teens? Thoughts?

311>WEDNESDAY, Nov. 1 (HealthDay News) -- Anti-smoking ads on television produced by tobacco companies and aimed at parents may actually be encouraging children to start smoking, Australian researchers report.





%26quot;The tobacco companies are up to their old tricks,%26quot; said Danny McGoldrick, director of research at the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. %26quot;Anyone who thinks that the tobacco companies have reformed are kidding themselves.%26quot;





McGoldrick was not involved in the study, which was led by researchers at The Cancer Council Victoria in Melbourne.





They looked at television ratings data from 75 media markets in the United States. The team specifically looked at average exposure to tobacco company-sponsored anti-smoking ads, both those targeted to youths and others targeted to parents. Some of these ads featured titles such as %26quot;Think. Don%26#039;t Smoke%26quot; and %26quot;Tobacco Is Whacko If You%26#039;re a Teen.%26quot;





The researchers also looked over data from a U.S. national school-based survey from more than 100,000 children from 1999 to 2002.





The report was published in the Oct. 31 online edition of the American Journal of Public Health.





The researchers found that, among young children, there weren%26#039;t many links between exposure to tobacco company ads and smoking attitudes and behavior.





However, among high school students, seeing parent-targeted ads was associated with kids expressing a lowered sense of smoking as harmful, a stronger approval of smoking, stronger intentions to smoke in the future and a greater likelihood of having smoked in the past 30 days, the researchers found.
Reply:Smoking should be encouraged. It causes stupid people to die sooner and therefore use up less of my socialist security.
Reply:Kids don%26#039;t smoke because of advertising. They do it for the same reasons adults do. Because it relieves tension and stress. People are going to smoke, its a free country, get over it.