Anne Landman's Collection
Report for: Imperial Tobacco Limited - Subject Project Plus/minus
Abstract
At 74 pages in length, this 1982 marketing research document written for Imperial Tobacco is the most overt and comprehensive examination of the smoking habits of children that I have come across. With alarming alacrity, it examines why children start to smoke, why they persist, and why they quit (if they can). It discusses their fears of health consequences (and their ignoring of same), beliefs about acceptance and rejection by their peers, their attempts to quit smoking, and the power the addiction has over them.
Among other things, the paper hypothesizes that since children start smoking due to peer pressure, that peer pressure could conversely give rise to a wave of youth quitting, saying:
"The more smokers who quit, the more pressure there is on those still smoking to do so, too. No smoker can put up with the anxiety that they might end up as the only person left smoking."
A chilling passage notes the power that the addiction has over children, saying, "The smoker, even the young one with very limited means, always finds money to buy cigarettes. Some willingly trade smoking for other expenditures including lunch; if they have just enough money for cigarettes or food, smoking wins every time..."
The paper also paints a clear picture of the child psychology of why we play into the tobacco industry's hands when we portray smoking as "an adult custom" and an "adult behavior":
"The child, though, is told not to smoke, not even to think about it. What better way, then, to feel grown up than by flying in the face of such an apparent contradiction and trying it to learn firsthand?...Rebelliousness and boldness, beyond curiosity, accounted for many early trials..."
The paper extensively covers a multitude of youth smoking issues.
If legislators, parents and youngsters alike could see how the tobacco companies have examined and drooled over children as prospective customers, the world might be a very different place for this industry today. But such documents have been hidden away from society, until now.
User-Contributed Notes
Fields
- Notes
This document is very worth reading in its entirety, especially for people who work in teen smoking cessation.
- Quotes
STUDY HIGHLIGHTS
1) Juvenile dabblings with smoking take place mostly for reasons of seeking to sample forbidden fruit, plus an element of rebelliousness.
2) Serious smoking mainly starts in the 14-18 age range. It is entirely social in nature, and is heavily dependent on actual or perceived peer group pressure...
...5) Starters no longer disbelieve the dangers of smoking, but they almost universally assume these risks will not apply to themselves because they will not become addicted.
6) Once addiction does take place, it becomes necessary for the smoker to make peace with the accepted hazards...
...9) The desire to quit seems to come earlier now than before, even prior to the end of high school. In fact, it often seems to take hold as soon as the recent starter admits to himself that he is hooked on smoking. However, the desire to quit, and actually carrying it out, are two quite different things, as the would-be quitter soon learns...
Background
Project Sixteen was conducted in the autumn of 1977, some 4 1/2 years ago. The purpose of that rather singular and memorable project made it essentially a pure behavioural study -- why do young people start smoking, and how do they feel about being smokers? Most of the time spent in those four groups of 15 and 17 year olds was devoted to starting. The results were in depth, revealing, at times even fraught with drama in glimpses of the baring of that much-investigated but still mysterious adolescent psyche. Project Plus/Minus did not attempt to duplicate this aspect of Project Sixteen, but rather to build upon it...
...An important area covered next was why the adverse publicity about cigarettes had been ignored, as it obviously had been for them to have become smokers...
1) Juvenile attempts
It is the case that most of those who become smokers do so in their teens, but this is by no means to say that the teen years are when young people first try cigarettes. In fact, many, the males in particular, dabble at smoking well before adolescence. That very first smoke, in a number of cases, took place between the ages of 9 and 12 or 13. However, this is rarely when a youngster starts as a regular smoker, for actually becoming a smoker is not their goal at that point (nor is it economically feasible).
All the young person wishes to do then...is to experiment with smoking, to see what this forbidden fruit is all about, to find out for himself instead of listening to what others say....
...At an even younger age...the respondents usually disliked smoking and seeing others doing it. These very same smoking teens, as children, had often nagged their parents of siblings to quit. Some felt it strange and unsettling to see smoke coming out of someone. They also disliked the smell, dirty ashtrays, etc. Yet, approaching adolescence, they changed their minds. Why?
One reason was that they had seen older people apparently enjoying smoking and they presumed smokers were deriving some benefit from smoking...children from non-smoking households can still easily become smokers by interactions with peers, or by simply observing smoking behaviour in the world around them.
The child, though, is told not to smoke, not even to think about it. What better way, then, to feel grown up than by flying in the face of such an apparent contradiction and trying it to learn firsthand?...
Rebelliousness and boldness, beyond curiosity, accounted for many early trials...Of course at eleven or twelve, one's ability to be scrupulously secretive about such an adventure is not always reliable. Kids sometimes get caught...
...The initial effect of early smoking was what one would expect: dissiness, queasiness, and a sense of being ill at ease. Such physical effects no doubt turn some of these young dabblers off for good...For those who would one day return to smoking and persist, the heady preview of independence and breaking from authority was more memorable than any side effects from smoking itself...
2) Mid-Teens Smoking
There is no question that once regular smoking begins, say between the ages of fourteen and seventeen most typically, the rebellious aspect of the adoption of cigarettes has diminished... It isn't just smoking itself. It's also the ritual of smoking, the passing around of cigarettes, the doing of something in common...all of these things are part of it.
...While starters no longer reject the health issue, what nearly all still reject is that smoking is addictive. Most starters intend to smoke just a few, just for a lark. With such an intention in mind, and given that the hazards of smoking are perceived as coming about because of long term heavy use, it's small wonder that the risk is ignored. Health problems couldn't happen to them, only to those who get hooked....
...Once there is acceptance that addiction has taken place, thoughts of quitting most often follow, and that's apparently now as true at sixteen as it is at 20 or 25...The would-be quitter quickly discovers that the smoking habit doesn't go away as easily as it comes...Indeed, some say they don't even try, resigned to the feeling that they would not succeed. ...There is a special additional reason for wanting to quit that involves only females. They often said that they would stop smoking when they get pregnant. There was real concern among them that smoking can adversely affect a developing fetus, and that it is simply unthinkable to let ones addictive weakness impair an innocent new life...
...Among the smokers, price was very seldom felt to be one of the motivations to quit. The smoker, even the young one with very limited means, always finds money to buy cigarettes. Some willingly trade smoking for other expenditures including lunch; if they have just enough money for cigarettes or food, smoking wins every time...
...Finally, while cost was not cited as more than an annoyance to smokers several quitters...had ranked it as a significant or even prime motivation. Smoking's costs were indeed felt by some quitters to be monetary as well as physical and environmental.
- Company
- Imperial Tobacco Ltd.
- Imperial Tobacco Limited
- Author
- Kwechansky Marketing Research Inc.
- Recipient
- Imperial Tobacco Limited
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