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The ads in this theme target young people by featuring high school or university students hawking cigarettes. Graduates in cap and gown, holding cigarettes (as in an ad for Chesterfield from 1940), were used none too subtly to portray smoking as a proud badge of adulthood. All of the leading cigarette brands, including Old Gold, Chesterfield, Cavalier, Winston, Camel, and Lucky Strike, took part in advertising to students. To this day, tobacco companies place point-of-sale advertisements in and around corner stores near high schools, where 3/4 of students reportedly stop by every day.

Ads for Old Gold from the 1920s claim that Yale and Princeton students found Old Golds to be the best of four leading cigarette brands in a blind taste test and that Harvard students liked Old Golds second-best. Decades later, in 1953, Cavalier ran a similar campaign, claiming that “87% of college women” and “83% of Princeton Seniors who were interviewed said ‘Cavaliers are Milder than the brand I had been smoking!’”

Some Chesterfield ads in the 1940s printed college football schedules, one included a smiling young college man with two books tucked under his arm and a caption reading, “the largest selling cigarette in America’s colleges,” and another Chesterfield ad from the period featured a young female model wearing “Chesterfield’s own graduation cap.” Old Gold continued targeting college students in the 1940s with its “Something New Has Been Added” campaign; one of these ads depicted a college man whistling as he walks by a group of co-eds, a shining “G” for Gold on his letterman’s sweater. Winston jumped on the bandwagon in the ’40s, too – an ad depicts two college students sitting on school steps amidst stacks of books as their professor walks by to correct their English, but not their smoking habits. Camel was by no means exempt, featuring a model holding up a college pennant which reads “CAMELS” instead of the name of the alma mater in 1942. In 1959, Lucky Strike was sponsoring and advertising “Campus Jazz Festivals.”

Tobacco companies, which continue to target vulnerable young people today, have a long-standing investment in hooking the teen market. As one R.J. Reynolds internal industry document from 1984 explains, “younger adult smokers have been the critical factor in the growth and decline of every major brand and company over the last 50 years. They will continue to be just as important to brands/companies in the future…” (1). Young smokers are crucial for tobacco industry success for two reasons: First, the vast majority of smokers begin smoking between the ages of 13 and 21, and almost nobody picks up the habit over the age of 24, thus, as another RJR document explains, “younger adults are the only source of replacement smokers” once older adult smokers pass away (2).

Even after harsh criticism from activists and policy makers, tobacco companies continue to advertise to the youth market. While they claim they target only “informed adults” of at least 21 years of age, recent ad campaigns tell a different story. Take a look at some of our other themes, including “Flavored Tobacco,” “Joe Camel,” “Newport Teases Teens,” and “Recent Menthol” to discover Big Tobacco’s ongoing teen marketing campaigns.

1. Teague, Claude E. “Research Planning Memorandum on Some Thoughts About New Brands of Cigarettes for the Youth Market.” R.J. Reynolds. 2 Feb 1973. http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/mqu46b00/pdf

2. Burrows, D.S. “Younger Adult Smokers: Strategies and Opportunities.” R.J. Reynolds. 29 February 1984. http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/tqq46b00/pdf