[ OUR OPINION ]
Antismoking campaign
faces big challenge
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The $1.2 million "Clear the Smoke" campaign in Hawaii, planned to run for the rest of this year, is financed by the trust fund created by the 1998 national settlement of a lawsuit brought by states against the industry. The cost of the campaign pales next to the $41.5 million spent by the tobacco industry in marketing its product in Hawaii.
In addition to warning children about smoking, the campaign seeks to spread information to everybody about the harm of secondhand smoke. County ordinances have helped create smoke-free zones, but smoking is allowed in 41 percent of workplaces.
While the number of adult smokers has been reduced in recent years to 20.6 percent, compared with 22.8 percent nationally, nearly 25 percent of all Hawaii high school students smoke, down from 29.2 percent in 1997. Those percentage still are too high, and they are kept at those unacceptable levels because of clever marketing by Big Tobacco.
The most recent tactic has been the marketing of candy-flavored cigarettes told in "limited editions" in fancy tin packages, with exotic product names. Governor Lingle asked R.J. Reynolds to stop marketing pineapple- and coconut-flavored Kauai Kolada. Advertisements for the deadly product feature a girl in a grass skirt holding a cocktail in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other. Other flavored cigarettes being promoted are called Caribbean Chill, Midnight Berry, Mocha Taboo and Twista Lime.
The company is not likely to withdraw the product, but legislation before Congress would give the Food and Drug Administration regulatory authority over tobacco's manufacture, distribution, sale and advertising. The measure has been passed by the Senate in a corporate tax bill set for approval by a House-Senate committee this week. The House version does not include FDA approval.
"The proliferation of candy-flavored cigarettes shows that the tobacco industry, if it had any left, has lost all moral authority," Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., said at a recent news conference in Chicago. "These names and the flavors contained in them are aimed directly at attracting child smokers."
The flavored cigarettes can be found at trendy spots where young people frequent, not at supermarkets and convenience stores where the more traditional cigarettes are sold. At those places, the tobacco companies have provided promotional signs 31/2 feet off the ground -- eye level for children but not for adults.
Another influence on children to begin the habit is the use of cigarettes in movies. A study last year by researchers from Dartmouth Medical School in New Hampshire found that 52 percent of smoking initiation among adolescents can be attributed to smoking that is shown in movies.
