Court-ordered anti-smoking ads sponsored by the tobacco industry reached only around 40per cent of adults and about half of all smokers in the U.S., a recent study suggests.
To assess the reach of these ads, researchers led by Sanjay Shete of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston surveyed a nationally-representative sample of 3,484 adults between January and May 2018, during which time the ads were running. Just 37per cent of people aged 18-34, about 35per cent of those with no more than a high school diploma, and 38per cent of those with household income under US$35,000 a year reported having seen any of the ads.
"Anti-smoking campaigns run by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or other government organizations in the past seem to have had a much greater reach," Shete noted in a phone interview. "The tobacco industry has been several steps ahead of regulation since the first Surgeon General's report showing that smoking is responsible for large-scale death of its users," said Picciotto, who is former president of Yale's Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco.