US: Anti-tobacco Advertisements Must Go Digital

For decades, the tobacco industry infamously targeted young people in its advertising to create new generations of smokers. Now, as it finally complies with a 1999 federal court order to advertise the dangers of tobacco use, it has managed to avoid targeting that audience.
 

The Justice Department sued the biggest tobacco companies in 1999, seeking to reclaim some of the billions of dollars that the federal government had spent on care for people with smoking-caused illnesses.
 

In 2006 a federal judge found that Big Tobacco had “lied, misrepresented and deceived the American public” for more than 50 years about the health effects of cigarette smoking. She ordered the industry to produce “corrective” advertising advising consumers of the health dangers of smoking.
 

The industry appealed relentlessly and lost at every turn, but that doesn’t mean that it did not win.
 

Required ads began appearing this weekend on CBS, NBC, ABC prime-time programming, where 260 total spots will appear sporadically for a year. Ads also will begin today in the Sunday editions of 50 newspapers.
 

By delaying its compliance for more than a decade, the industry has managed to evade advertising directly to teens — the group that most needs the anti-tobacco message. Research shows that people who do not begin smoking by 18 rarely get hooked later.
 

When the lawsuit was filed in 1999 — a decade after the industry agreed to pay $426 billion in damages under a separate lawsuit filed by 49 state governments — network television and newspapers still had large young audiences. Today, however, most young media consumers have drifted to other forms of media that are not included in the anti-tobacco ad program.
 

The Department of Justice should seek a revised order requiring the tobacco industry to educate young consumers about the dangers of its deadly products not only in conventional media such as network TV and newspapers, but through social media and other digital platforms that draw teenagers’ eyes.