Anti-smoking ads sponsored by tobacco companies not only fail to deter young people from smoking but in fact encourage them to take up the habit, suggests a new study published in the December issue of the American Journal of Public Health.

"We suspected this the minute we saw the kind of ads the tobacco companies were creating," said author Brian Flay, a professor in the department of public health at Oregon State University. "Their objective is to get customers, not to stop customers from finding them."

A new study says anti-smoking ads sponsored by tobacco companies fail to establish an anti-smoking stance.
(Francois Mori/Associated Press)

In Canada, Ottawa passed the Tobacco Act which prohibited tobacco companies from advertising. Ads sponsored by tobacco companies are sometimes seen in Canada on U.S. networks.  

The study, sponsored by the U.S. National Cancer Institute, the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, surveyed 100,000 students in the U.S. in Grades 8, 10 and 12.

Researchers noted that ads geared toward youth generally did not discourage students from smoking. They also noted that on average, students were exposed to more than four youth-targeted ads per month and that there was a 12 per cent increase in the probability of Grade 10 and 12 students becoming smokers if they watched prevention ads aimed at their parents.

"Among students in Grade 8, tobacco company parent-targeted advertising was related to stronger beliefs that the harms associated with smoking have been exaggerated, and among students in Grades 10 and 12, was associated with lower perceived harm of smoking, stronger approval of smoking, and a higher likelihood of having smoked in the past 30 days," the study said.

The study suggests anti-smoking ads that encourage parents to talk to their children do not clearly establish an anti-smoking stance.

"The overt message of the parent-targeted campaign is that parents should talk to their children about smoking, but no reason beyond simply being a teenager is offered as to why youths should not smoke," Flay said in the study.