Tobacco companies need to replace the customers they lose. Once you start, you are likely to remain a customer for the rest of your life, so the companies find the billions of dollars they spend recruiting users to be a worthwhile investment. Society is becoming less tolerant of second-hand smoke. Many stores and restaurants now do not allow smoking. And many workplaces, including most in Maryland, do not allow smoking.
Teens are overwhelmingly the biggest new-customer base for tobacco companies.
With 3,000 teens a day beginning a habit many never can kick, ads and merchandise promoting cigarettes are garnering big results. And while laws ban the sale of tobacco products to minors, teens do not appear to have trouble purchasing cigarettes or smokeless tobacco. U.S. News and World Reports recently interviewed 20 Baltimore-area teens about smoking. The teens told the magazine they know they are targets of ad campaigns and that the ads do attract them, that they smoke to rebel against authority and that they smoke to be like their peers. Most were not seriously concerned about the health risks and most believed they would be able to stop smoking when they chose to.