Media increases cigars popularity

  Researchers Find Media Spotlight Increases Popularity of Cigars

It seemed to come at the height of public awareness about the dangers of cigarette smoking: cigars were making a comeback. Cigar bars sprang up across the country. Magazines showing movie stars smoking cigars began appearing on newsstands. In major newspapers, articles appeared daily portraying cigar smoking and the tobacco industry in a favorable light.

Ruth Malone, PhD, RN, and Lisa Bero, PhD, researchers at the Institute for Public Health at the University of California, San Francisco, found this a curious trend. With colleague Lynn Wenger, MSW, MPH, they decided to find out if the media image of cigars as glamorous was encouraging a revival of cigar smoking. Their findings appear in the February issue of American Journal of Public Health.

After analyzing the content of cigar-focused articles published in newspapers and magazines from 1987 to 1997, the researchers discovered that cigar sales and consumption increased by more than 50% nationwide while the media was portraying both cigar smoking and the tobacco industry positively.

Wenger, Malone, and Bero found few of these articles on cigar smoking centered on health effects. Often, any mention of the impact on health was minimal and was embedded in articles that portrayed cigars positively. In general, cigars were described as less harmful, more socially acceptable, and as containing fewer chemicals than cigarettes.

Cigar smokers and cigar manufacturers claim they are safer than cigarettes because you smoke less and don?t inhale. But even without inhaling, carcinogens (cancer-causing chemicals) are absorbed that can cause cancers of the lip, tongue, mouth, throat, larynx, and esophagus. And there is still the issue of other people inhaling secondhand cigar smoke. As Wenger says, "Tobacco is tobacco ? it may be sold in different packages, but it still poses a serious health risk."

Were journalists in the dark concerning the dangers of tobacco? The researchers don?t think so. In a letter published in Tobacco Control, Malone, Wenger, and Bero report on interviews with 21 journalists who had written articles on cigars.

When asked if they thought smoking one cigar a day posed a health risk, 84% of the reporters said they thought it was "a little risky" or "very risky." And yet these reporters wrote positive articles on cigar smoking. Sources for these articles mostly consisted of unsolicited press releases and coverage of events held by the cigar industry and cigar-related groups, including Cigar Aficionado magazine and the Cigar Association of America. The cigar industry was mentioned as a source five times more often than health-related sources.

"The public health community and tobacco control advocates need to get the message out quickly to the press so media will be able to report accurately [about] any tobacco trend," says Wenger. "The media not only reflect but shape social trends. When the tobacco industry captures journalists? attention, health advocates need to step in with accurate information."

The study is convincing evidence that the media has a big effect on people?s perceptions and behavior, says Ron Todd, director of tobacco control for the American Cancer Society. "It really shows the power of marketing when you can take something that smells so bad, tastes so bad, and causes cancer, like cigar smoking, and make it appear glamorous," he says. "But people are beginning to see through it. The latest figures show cigar smoking is declining. The facade is beginning to erode."

About the author:


http://www.cancer.org

More health information - More smoking information