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The Role of the Media in Promoting and Reducing Tobacco Use: Executive Summary (PDF) 

The influence of the media and their role in product marketing represent one of the key developments of modern society. Effective advertising and promotion through media channels have created entire categories of human product and service needs beyond basic survival, which, in turn, have fueled the economic growth of communication media that include newspapers, magazines, radio, and television. Today, these media have evolved to become part of a global virtual society linked by channels such as the Internet, text messaging, and interactive gaming. As mass communications have bridged societies around the world, they have also magnified the impact of media on global public health. Over 80% of the more than 1 billion smokers worldwide live in developing countries, and the impact of globalization has led to an increase of more than 250% in cigarette exports from the United States alone in the decade preceding 2002.1,11 Moreover, smoking prevalence in the developing world is rising as prevalence among developed nations continues to decline, with the United Nations projecting a 1.7% net global annual increase between 1998 and 2010. If current trends continue, more than one-half billion of the world’s current inhabitants are predicted to lose their lives to tobacco use,12,13 underscoring the urgency of examining the media’s role in global tobacco marketing.

At the same time, the media have an equally powerful role in infl uencing individuals and policymakers and have made critical contributions to the cause of tobacco control. Media channels hold the power to frame conceptual models, infl uence the evolution of these models in the public’s perceptions, and ultimately guide these perceptions toward the implementation of policy.14 Tobacco control interventions have been inherently intertwined with the media, ranging from the antitobacco public service announcements broadcast on television under the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC’s) Fairness Doctrine in the late 1960s15,16 to the advertising restrictions of the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement and the advertising restrictions contained in the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.17 Annual adult per capita cigarette consumption in the United States has declined from its peak level of 4,345 cigarettes in 1963 to a preliminary estimate of 1,654 in 2006,18,19 a process that started with the media publicity surrounding the 1964 Surgeon General’s report and continues through today’s media advocacy efforts on behalf of tobacco control.

Despite these successes, tobacco use still accounts for nearly one-third of cancer deaths worldwide. As a result of growing international tobacco use, WHO predicts that deaths caused by tobacco will increase to 6.4 million per year by 2015, representing 10% of all deaths worldwide.10,20 These trends, combined with the interrelationships between tobacco and media, mean that it is critical to understand how exposure to media influences tobacco use and to explore ways to effectively leverage the media to improve the overall state of public health.

This Executive Summary provides a framework for understanding the relationship between tobacco and the media, methodological issues in researching media- related issues in tobacco, and an overview and summary of the specific areas addressed in the monograph. Subsequent sections present the conclusions of individual chapters, followed by the major conclusions of the volume.

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