Reduced cigarette smoking and more favorable anti-smoking attitudes were found among youth exposed to state-sponsored anti-tobacco advertising, according to a study in the July issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
The U.S. population has been exposed to an increasing number and variety of televised anti-tobacco advertisements since the early 1990s, according to background information in the article. However, given recent state budget crises and other political influences, many states have severely cut their anti-tobacco campaigns. Despite early evidence suggesting that state-sponsored anti-tobacco media campaigns may reduce adult smoking, few studies have explored their effect on youth.
Sherry Emery, Ph.D., from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and colleagues examined the association between exposure to state anti-tobacco advertising and youth smoking-related beliefs and behaviors. The researchers used targeted ratings point (TRPs) to assess the ratings of an advertisement among U.S. teen audiences. An ad with 80 TRPs per month is estimated to have been seen an average of one time by 80 percent of this age group. This information was combined with survey data from school-based samples of 51,085 students in the contiguous 48 states.