(U-WIRE) PITTSBURGH — In the 1980s, David Goerlitz posed as a rugged cowboy, known as the Winston Man, to market cigarettes for RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company. At the age of 38, he quit smoking — and his job.
At one of his final meetings, he asked RJ Reynolds’ Chief Executive Dale Zane if he and other employees of the company smoked. Zane responded with a resounding no, saying they reserved the right to market smoking to “the young, the poor, the black and the stupid.”
More than 20 years later, a University of Pittsburgh research study found that this attitude still holds true among tobacco companies.
A new Pitt School of Medicine study, published in this month’s Public Health Reports, found that the tobacco industry’s advertising specifically targets blacks more than Caucasian markets.
The study was a meta-analysis, or a quantitative pooling of published reports from around the country that compared the amount of tobacco advertisements in black neighborhoods with Caucasian neighborhoods.
Brian Primack, an assistant professor of medicine and pediatrics at Pitt’s School of Medicine, was the senior author of the study and was assisted by three colleagues who served as co-authors.
According to Primack, the study concluded that black neighborhoods contained 2.6 times more tobacco advertisements than white neighborhoods and that those neighborhoods also had a 70 percent higher concentration of tobacco ads.
“In other words, that concentration number means that if 10 out of 100 advertisements in a white neighborhood were tobacco ads, then 17 out of 100 advertisements in a black neighborhood would be pro-tobacco,” said Primack.
The study does not prove that advertising causes cigarette-related health problems in blacks, diagnosed with lung cancer 40 percent more often than whites. But that doesn’t shift the blame from tobacco companies and their advertisements.
“It’s well known that tobacco-related illness is much more common in African Americans, one explanation for a higher burden of the cancer and coronary disease is that there is a greater advertising force for tobacco in these neighborhoods,” said Michael Fine, co-author of the study and also a professor at the School of Medicine.
“One possibility has to do with the behavioral lifestyle aspect and the other has to do with cigarette smoking,” Fine said. “We know ads work. So that may lead to an increase in smoking and then an increase in health disease.”
Primack said the published report will expose the preference for advertising in these neighborhoods and hopefully bring more attention to them in terms of counter-tobacco advertising and media literacy programs.
Cindy Thomas, the executive director of Tobacco Free Allegheny, said her program already has preventive programs in Mon Valley elementary schools and high schools that educate children about the perils of cigarette smoking and advertising.
“The components of the programs help students recognize that the ads from tobacco companies are sucking them in to buy the product,” she said. “We’re always trying, too, to have easily accessible programs to help people quit smoking in those communities.”
Primack hopes the study increases anti-tobacco programs in black communities around the country.