A Stanford School of Medicine study says tobacco companies cut prices of menthol cigarettes and boosted advertisements for them near California high schools with lots of black students.
The report calls the marketing “predatory.” It is “geared to luring young African Americans into becoming smokers.”
“The tobacco companies went out of their way to argue to the Food & Drug Administration that they don’t use racial targeting. The evidence is not consistent with those claims,” said Lisa Henriksen, the lead author of the study.
Researchers randomly chose convenience stores and other small shops within walking distance of 91 schools. They used data from 2006 and studied how cigarettes were marketed in those stores.
For every 10-percentage-point increase in the proportion of black students at a school, the proportion of menthol cigarette ads grew 5.9 percentage points, they found.
The price for a pack of Newports, the leading brand of menthol smokes, fell 12 cents for every 10-percentage-point increase in the proportion of black students at a nearby school, too. Discounts for Marlboro, a non-menthol brand, were unrelated to demographics or proximity to a school.
Authors looked only at California, but believe the results would likely be similar across the United States.
The study appears Friday in the journal Nicotine & Tobacco Research.
The report calls the marketing “predatory.” It is “geared to luring young African Americans into becoming smokers.”
“The tobacco companies went out of their way to argue to the Food & Drug Administration that they don’t use racial targeting. The evidence is not consistent with those claims,” said Lisa Henriksen, the lead author of the study.
Researchers randomly chose convenience stores and other small shops within walking distance of 91 schools. They used data from 2006 and studied how cigarettes were marketed in those stores.
For every 10-percentage-point increase in the proportion of black students at a school, the proportion of menthol cigarette ads grew 5.9 percentage points, they found.
The price for a pack of Newports, the leading brand of menthol smokes, fell 12 cents for every 10-percentage-point increase in the proportion of black students at a nearby school, too. Discounts for Marlboro, a non-menthol brand, were unrelated to demographics or proximity to a school.
Authors looked only at California, but believe the results would likely be similar across the United States.
The study appears Friday in the journal Nicotine & Tobacco Research.
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