Anti-Youth-Smoking Ads May Have Opposite Effect
Christopher Lee
Washington Post November 1, 2006

Since 1999, Philip Morris has sponsored a TV PSA campaign known as “Talk. They’ll listen.”

Now, a study of the ads surveying 75 media markets in the U.S. and a national sampling of 8th, 10th, and 12th graders demonstrates that those teenagers who saw the ads were less likely to rate smoking as dangerous and more likely to report an intention to smoke.

A Philip Morris spokesman retorted that the ads had been tested to make sure no unintended message was sent and that 61 percent of the parents who saw at least one ad talked to their children about not smoking.

The study is to be published in the December issue of the American Journal of Public Health.

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