Unclear Link Between Cigarette Ads And Adolescent Smoking

Chung, Garfield, and colleagues conclude that "youth targeting" by tobacco companies has increased since the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) of 1998, even though their data show that the number of cigarette ads in magazines read by minors has declined. By their measure, youth targeting can increase even when youths are exposed to fewer cigarette ads—a puzzling result.
The question, however, is not so much whether the authors’ definition of "youth targeting" makes sense as why anyone should care whether youth targeting, however defined, goes up or down. The authors assert that "cigarette advertising has been shown both to attract adolescents to smoking and to establish smoking as a social norm." In fact, the evidence that advertising increases overall cigarette consumption—as opposed to consumption of particular brands—is highly equivocal. Every time a study purports to show that people smoke because of advertising, a close examination reveals that it actually shows something else.
The study that Chung, Garfield, and colleagues cite as "a representative example" illustrates that point. John Pierce and his colleagues did not show that advertising makes people more likely to smoke. Indeed, they did not even measure exposure to advertising. Rather, they found that adolescents who rated high on "receptivity to tobacco advertising and promotional activities" were more likely to start smoking or to consider it. All this suggests is that people with positive (or less negative) attitudes toward cigarettes are more inclined to smoke—not exactly a revelation.
Assuming that advertising does play an important role in the decision to smoke, that would not be the end of the matter, notwithstanding the authors’ casual call for an "absolute ban" on cigarette ads. Freedom of speech would have no meaning if it applied only to forms of persuasion universally recognized as harmless.