Child Children and Cigarettes There is no explanation as to why children take up the smoking habit except advertising. Children are very receptive to cigarette promotions, they are good at recalling, recognizing, and identifying things exposed to them. Children tend to smoke the most heavenly advertised brands. Cigarette advertising should be targeted to adult smokers only, and intended to effect a change of brand preference. Australian and U.S. studies have shown that adolescent smokers choose heavily advertised brands up to double the rate of adult smokers.
Smoking is portrayed as a healthy, sexy, ordinary, fun-filled activity in advertisements.
This weakens and ridicules the message sent from teachers and parents that smoking is not glamorous and causes death and disease. The models used in tobacco advertising are carefully selected, presented and situated to evoke roles known to be appealing to child ren. Some argue that these ads are targeted at children. Even though R. J. Reynolds denies using Joe Camel to target children and teens it is inevitable. Professor Richard Pollay of the University of British Columbia found that teens who are smokers are three times more likely to base their cigarette purchases on advertising than adults.