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By Laura McCallum
October 6, 1999
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RealAudio 3.0 |
When Minnesota lawmakers created anti-smoking endowments with money from the state's tobacco settlement, they gave the health department an ambitious goal: Cut teen smoking rates by 30 percent in the next five years. Because the endowments won't generate interest until January, so far all officials have been able to do is plan. Health officials are hoping to learn from states that have successfully reduced youth smoking, and plan to involve teens every step of the way.
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Sheehan: We know from state-of-the-art research that's recently been conducted that some of the messages that we've used in the past that were preachy, where we relied on "don't smoke" messages, or even appealing to vanity, hasn't worked.Mary Sheehan, who's in charge of the tobacco endowments for the state health department, says Minnesota will borrow heavily from ad campaigns in two states that did convince kids not to smoke.
The Massachusetts Department of Public Health ran a series of television ads featuring a 29-year-old woman named Pam Laffin. She started smoking at age 10, now has emphysema, and had a lung transplant that failed. Laffin's face is puffy from all the medication she takes, and in the commercial, she's shown hooked up to tubes in a hospital.
Laffin: Sometimes the only thing that keeps me going is a belief that maybe I can do some good in this world. In the end, though, you're gonna decide if all this suffering has been for nothing. I just hope you can learn from my life before you have to pay with your own.
Connolly: And it was that reality that young people looked at and said, that could be me.The director of Massachusetts Tobacco Control Program, Greg Connolly, says after the "Pam" series ran, the state saw a dramatic shift in teens' attitudes about smoking. But more than that, Massachusetts has seen concrete results from its anti-smoking campaign, which spends $36 million a year on ads, curriculum for schools, nicotine patches and other services.
Connolly: Over the past five years, cigarette sales in Massachusetts have fallen 35 percent. That's an historic decline, that's four times the national average. Adult smoking is down 10 percent. We have 100,000 fewer adults smoking. Among kids, our rates are down 20 percent.The state of Florida achieved similar results in one year. Florida spent $70 million from the state's tobacco settlement on anti-smoking efforts last year, and more than a third of the money went for a provocative ad campaign laced with dark humor. One commercial shows tobacco company executives testifying before Congress in 1994, with a laugh track in the background.
Panella: They are edgy and they are in your face, and we had a lot of criticism from adults, but this program wasn't aimed at adults; this program was aimed toward the youth of Florida - and it worked.Frank Panella, marketing director for Florida's Office of Tobacco Control, says in less than a year, teen smoking rates plummeted 18 to 21 percent. The reason the campaign worked, he says, boils down to youth involvement; kids helped create the commercials, and more than 8,000 Florida teens banded together to form a group called SWAT - Students Working Against Tobacco. Since tobacco companies have used brands to sell cigarettes, the students created a brand called "Truth" with a message for the tobacco industry.
PSA: We're younger than you, we're faster than you, we may even be smarter than you. We know you've been targeting us, getting us to replace the 1,000 smokers that quit every day. You know, cause they died.Florida's campaign was not without skeptics, however. It became embroiled in politics and funding was cut nearly in half. Two teens who serve on Minnesota's tobacco-endowment advisory group say they think Minnesota should model its effort after Florida. Katie Tilley, a senior at Eagan High School, says the "Truth" ads hit home with kids because they didn't use actors, they used Florida teens.
Tilley: I talked to one of them, and he says that he would go around Florida, and you know, he'd just be walking down the street and these kids would come up to him and say, "Hey, I saw you on there." And it's just - they used real kids and real situations.Once Minnesota health officials get the first tobacco interest payment in January, they're planning to roll out a $7 to $8 million public-education campaign. They don't have as much money as Florida or Massachusetts, but they hope a well-planned campaign will have the same results.
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