Reuters: Cigarette makers sought out women, study finds

Reuters ^

[ThePretender]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Tobacco companies designed cigarettes to appeal to women's desires to be thin and healthy in ways that went "far beyond marketing and advertising," health researchers said on Monday.

They said internal documents released by tobacco companies under a 1998 court settlement show the companies created cigarettes, including "slim" and so-called "light" brands, in part to attract women.

"These internal documents reveal that the tobacco industry's targeting of women goes far beyond marketing and advertising," said Carrie Murray Carpenter of the Harvard School of Public Health, who led the study.

Writing in the June issue of the journal Addiction, Carpenter and colleagues said their study of tobacco company documents show a clear effort to find out what might make women want to smoke.

The firms also considered putting appetite suppressants into cigarettes so they could promote them as weight control products, they said.

"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,"

[international american]

SNORE......

[writer33]

Tobacco companies designed cigarettes to appeal to women's desires to be thin and healthy in ways that went "far beyond marketing and advertising," health researchers said on Monday.

Those SOBs. Hang 'em. Hang 'em high. I can't believe they were allowed to prey on our women folk. :) HA!

[international american]

"Carrie Murray Carpenter of the Harvard School of Public Health"

Well, Carrie Murray Carpenter of Harvard's School of Public Health. Whatever happened to your 4 year study from 1980-84 which proved second hand smoke is harmless.........

Maybe you should have gone to Yale, or Brown, or Dartmouth...: )

[1FASTGLOCK45]

you beat me to it!
**YAWN!!!**
what else is new? A big company going for the mega bucks, they'd sell their kids if they could.

[international american]

I am 51, and they have been printing "Cigarettes will ruin your life, spoil your wife, and kill your bay-bee" since I was in high school. Lawsuit shakedown on isle 4!!

[international american]

No, they would sell OUR kids.....



R O T F L M A O

[TFine80]

You've come a long way, baby....

[1FASTGLOCK45]

LMAO! TRue!

[Lijahsbubbe]

Using marketing? Those evildoers!

[writer33]

I am 51, and they have been printing "Cigarettes will ruin your life, spoil your wife, and kill your bay-bee" since I was in high school. Lawsuit shakedown on isle 4!!

You mean they won't? I can't believe I bought into the hype. I feel so dirty now! :)

On a serious note, I completely agree with you.

[arizonaconservative]

Reuters: Businesses seek out markets in order to sell products, high school economics textbook finds.

[Tarpon]

I see al-Rueters is trying out their new economics editor. I assume when they print articles like this they are looking at the Florida FCAT results and playing to that audience.

[VeniVidiVici]

I drive through black neighborhoods and see Colt45 billboards.

[clee1]

Once again class, cigarettes are a LEGAL product when sold to adults. There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with using any marketing means to sell to adults.

If smoking is so bad, just ban the things and quit pi$$ing and moaning about those evil tobacco companies.

[RandallFlagg]

Ping!

[KingNo155]

How unfortunate that the political industry used these findings to exploit women and not help them.

[RandallFlagg]

All the women I know roll their own cigs. No additives and they taste better.

[Nachoman]

Now you know this would cut off the litigation gravy train. We couldn't have that, could we?

[SAJ]

Not any recently published high-school ''economics'' text, I'd wager; they're all of them Marxist or crypto-Marxist through and through. Must be one of those 'blasts from the past'.

:^)