They're still after our kids: Tobacco industry use of “youth smoking prevention” programs emphasizing personal responsibility to shift blame for addiction and disease to children and parents

The tobacco industry's “youth smoking prevention” (“YSP”) programs focus largely on assigning blame to parents and children for youth smoking by using personal responsibility rhetoric. This frames the issue around improving parental communication and youth self-esteem instead of focusing on tobacco industry marketing and targeting of youth. Moreover, by sponsoring YSP programs, the tobacco companies attempt to claim credit for being better corporate citizens than in the past, even though the industry is still conducting business as usual when it comes to marketing its products in a way that makes them attractive to youth. While various tobacco companies sponsored YSPs in the late 1990s and subsequently dropped them after activists pointed out their cynical purpose of promoting tobacco company image and subliminally marketing their products to youth, our latest study shows that R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. has persevered and expanded its own YSP, a middle school curriculum called Right Decisions Right Now. According to its corporate website, the curriculum is available now in 22,500 U.S. middle schools. We found that the curriculum was originally developed by a company that has sold its products to clients as “a marketing tool.” The curriculum discusses how kids and their parents should take personal responsibility for youth smoking, underplays the addictive properties of cigarettes and makes no mention of the industry's relentless youth marketing. This presentation will bring advocates up-to-date on the cigarette industry's YSP efforts and will describe how to combat these types of corporation social responsibility tactics through de-normalization and counter-marketing.