Recall of favorite pro- and anti-tobacco advertisements and the association with adolescent smoking in a national sample of adolescents

Background: Historically, the tobacco industry has marketed to youth to increase receptivity to tobacco. Having favorite pro-tobacco advertisements may be associated with smoking. Mass media tobacco control may combat the influence of pro-tobacco media. Methods: The national Parenting Project enrolled 1036 parent and adolescent dyads in a computer assisted telephone intervention supporting best parenting practices. Self-reported data was obtained from dyads on demographics, family, peers, and tobacco-risk topics in six rounds of survey. Adolescent reported favorite tobacco advertisements were categorized: none, pro-tobacco only, tobacco control only, or both. SAS 9.1 generated frequencies, chi-square tests and logistic regression to explore for associations between categories of advertisements and smoking experimentation, adjusting for covariates. Results: Overall, 25.1% of adolescents reported no favorite, 31.5% reported only tobacco control, 31.1% reported only pro-tobacco and 12.2% reported both types of advertisements. There were no significant differences in these percentages based on household smoking. However, adjusted regression revealed differences in predictive value when stratified by household smoking. Having only a favorite pro-tobacco advertisement was associated with 2.7 increased odds of experimentation compared to those with no favorite ad (95%CI=1.115-6.636, p=0.0278) in homes without smokers. In this group, having a favorite tobacco control advertisement in addition to favorite pro-tobacco advertisement took away this effect. There was no effect by advertisement category in homes with smokers.Conclusions: In homes without smokers, having a favorite pro-tobacco advertisement increases odds of smoking. However, having a favorite tobacco control advertisement may combat the impact of favorite pro-tobacco advertisements and prevent future smoking.