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Excerpts from Anti-Smoking Campaign Shows Dramatic Results; Tobacco Use in Fla. Middle Schools Drops 54%

By Marc Kaufman, The Washington Post [03/01/00]

While teenage smoking has been on the rise nationwide, Florida's aggressive anti-smoking campaign has produced an unprecedented 54 percent decline in middle school tobacco use over the past two years, and a 24 percent drop among high school students.

The statistics, which will officially be released today by the Florida Youth Tobacco Survey, outstrip even the most optimistic estimates of what a forceful anti-smoking campaign can do. They also show the decrease in smoking was significantly larger in the program's second year than in its first, despite a controversial drop in the campaign's funding.

The Florida effort is a pilot program funded by $ 200 million from the state's settlement with tobacco companies of a lawsuit it filed to recover the costs of treating the health problems of sick smokers, which preceded a larger national settlement of similar lawsuits in other states.

The program has included a major media campaign called "the truth," with television ads that attack the tobacco companies as manipulative and deceitful. One ad features an Academy Award-like ceremony hosted by a satanic figure who hands out the "demon award" to tobacco as the year's greatest killer of young people.

With many state legislatures still deciding whether to spend their tobacco settlement money on anti-smoking efforts, the Florida results will surely be used by public health advocates to press their case. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recommended that states use 25 percent of their tobacco settlement money for anti-smoking campaigns, but estimates that states are now spending an average of 7 percent.

Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, called the Florida results "the strongest evidence yet that aggressive comprehensive programs can make a dramatic difference in the number of our children who smoke."

The results were also hailed as "enormous" by Cheryl Healton, president of the American Legacy Foundation, which has begun a national anti-tobacco campaign based on the Florida program.

But the foundation, funded by the tobacco industry under the 1998 national settlement, has run into controversy over its similarly aggressive ads.

It was forced to pull two of them last month after tobacco companies and some state attorneys general complained that they "vilified" the industry, which they said was prohibited by the agreement. The foundation's decision was widely criticized by public health advocates.

"It's important to point out that some of the constraints we currently live with were put in place before this phenomenal data was available," she said. The Florida settlement has no anti-vilification clause.

Both Massachusetts and California have also recently reported positive results from their anti-smoking campaigns, which are state-funded and free of any anti-vilification restrictions. A study in the American Journal of Public Health released yesterday found that young Massachusetts adolescents were significantly less likely to smoke if they were exposed to an anti-smoking campaign, although older teenagers were not.