New Ad Calls Out Big Tobacco For Targeting Kids in New York

Source from:  NY1 (Time Warner Cable) 12/11/2014

Anti-smoking activists say tobacco companies are targeting children so they are fighting back with a new ad campaign, and comes as smoking rates steadily increase in the city. NY1's Cheryl Wills filed the following report.

They're graphic, but are they effective? The latest figures from the Health Department show 16.1 percent of New Yorkers smoke, which amounts to more than one million people, and that number has been climbing steadily for three years.

In December, Action on Smoking and Health or ASH released a new video to highlight how Big Tobacco continues to target young people, which activists say is their prime target.

"One of the biggest things the tobacco industry tries to do is market toward youth and that's our biggest concern," says Shana Narula of Action on Smoking and Health.

The year 2014 marks the 50th anniversary of the Surgeon General's landmark report linking smoking with heart disease and lung cancer. But in the years since, activists say the tobacco industry has been relentless in their pursuit to get young people to light up.

"The tobacco industry itself they spend about $1 million dollars per hour on marketing in the US," Narula notes.

And they say studies show 95 percent of all smokers start by the time they're in their early 20s.

"The younger they are and the more influenced they are when they're kids, the more likely they're gonna pick up the bad habit," Narula says.

New York City's 16.1 smoking rate is well below the national smoking rate of 18 percent. ASH is one of the oldest tobacco control organizations in the country, and although the not for profit has limited resources, they say they will fight the billion dollar tobacco industry tooth and and nail when it comes to targeting children. Enditem