Daily HealthBeat Tip - June 19, 2007

Buying what they see

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

Price and promotion. The sales techniques work. And a researcher says they seem to work all too well in encouraging kids to smoke.

Sandy Slater of the University of Illinois at Chicago analyzed surveys of students in the 8^th,, 10^th and 12^th grades, and looked at cigarette marketing in close to 1,000 communities.

Slater found retail ads and the price of cigarettes had impacts.

``Advertising really only affects kids trying smoking, and it was more influential with the younger kids. Price had an effect on almost all levels of smoking uptake.’’ (10 seconds)

And she says promotions, such as coupons, increased the odds that kids would move from experimenting with cigarettes to using them regularly.

The study in Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine was supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Learn more at hhs.gov.

Last revised: June, 19 2007