A study, based on internal documents furnished by tobacco companies after a 1998 court settlement, has found that cigarette companies were designing products to exploit the general desire of women to be healthy but above all else, thin.
“These internal documents reveal that the tobacco industry’s targeting of women goes far beyond marketing and advertising,” said Carrie Murray Carpenter, research analyst at the Harvard School of Public Health, and lead author of the study.
The study, published in
Addiction showed that tobacco companies, in their desire to include women in their customer base, had also considered the possibility of adding appetite depressants to cigarettes to market them as weight loss products.
“These studies demonstrate that marketing strategies, especially for female brands, have contributed to the association of smoking with appealing attributes including female liberation, glamour, success and thinness,” the study said.
One such effort was the conception of ‘slim’ cigarettes in the 1970s and another, the creation of ‘light’ cigarette brands, which claimed to have lower levels of tar and nicotine.
For over 20 years, tobacco companies carried out studies to understand the difference between men and women as far as motivational factors, smoking patterns, and product preferences were concerned.
“How unfortunate that the industry used these findings to exploit women and not help them. Cigarette designs and ingredients were manipulated in an effort to make cigarettes more palatable to women and to complement advertising allusions of smooth, healthy, weight-controlling, stress-reducing smoke,” said Jack Henningfield of Johns Hopkins University, in a commentary along side the study.
Carpenter and his team studied more than 7 million internal documents, made accessible after the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement between state attorneys general and major US tobacco companies, including the likes of Reynolds American Inc, Philip Morris, and British American Tobacco (BAT).
The study added that tobacco companies also propagated wrong health notions about the safety of the so-called ‘light’ cigarettes. In addition, they used flavored and mild-tasting cigarettes to cater to female taste buds. The study quoted a 1993 Philip Morris report as saying, “Most smokers have little notion of their brand’s tar and nicotine levels. Perception is more important than reality, and in this case (slim cigarettes) the perception is of reduced tobacco consumption.”
A 1982 BAT document observed, “We can safely conclude that the strength of cigarettes that are purchased by women is related to their degree of neuroticism. Women buy cigarettes in order to help them cope with neuroticism.”
Another 1985 Philip Morris document said, “(Women) do not want to stop smoking, yet they are guilt-ridden with concerns for their families if smoking should badly damage their own health. Thus, they compromise by smoking low-tar cigarettes.”
