• 11/19/2004
  • Anna Krejci
  • Green Bay News Chronicle

Governor joins the fight

Gov. Jim Doyle gave parents good news on Thursday – fewer of their children are smoking. Thirty-eight percent of Wisconsin high school students smoked in 1999 only 21 percent of high school students smoke today, Doyle announced at Bay Port High School in Howard.

The numbers come from the 2004 Wisconsin Youth Tobacco Survey which polled 1,443 high school students. According to the survey, 28 percent use any tobacco product and 52 percent have smoked cigarettes.

During the presentation, Doyle told students that no one has ever heard of a 25-year-old deciding to take up smoking because adults know it is a bad choice. He said more than 80 percent of smokers begin before they reach 18 years of age.

“The fact is, they’ve (tobacco companies) gotta get you early, and that’s what they’re trying to do,” he said.

Doyle’s announcement coincided with the launching of two anti-tobacco industry commercials that are the result of the state’s partnership with American Legacy Foundation. The foundation has matched the $1 million that Wisconsin has spent on smoking prevention.

The backdrops for both Crazyworld ads – part of a campaign Doyle began in Wisconsin in July – are a busy New York city sidewalk opposite an office building of a tobacco company.

One ad counters a Virginia Slims slogan, “Get your voice.” A female throat cancer survivor speaks into a microphone with the robotic tone of her artificial voice box, saying, “Is this the voice you wanted me to get?”

Claire Cortright, president of FACT Youth Empowerment Movement, said the ad is powerful. “They realize that that could be them someday if they take up smoking, and become sick because of it,” she said.

The other ad asks the companies why they do not manufacture fire-safe cigarettes in other states besides New York.

There are already three other ads in the campaign series that have been aired in Wisconsin. “Some of the information given in the ads is really shocking,” Cortright said, citing cigarette ingredients as an example.

Doyle was accompanied by students who are members of the Brown County FACT Youth Empowerment Movement and representatives of the Brown County Tobacco Free Coalition and the American Lung Association.

Maria Blohoweak, a Bay Port High School senior, said the ads will impact some students. “I’m really amazed at the high school, or the youth (smoking) rate dropping,” she said, but added there is still work to be done in persuading students to stop smoking.

That the state happens to be participating in anti-smoking campaigns is positive, she added. Claire Cortright, president of the Brown County FACT Youth Empowerment Program, believes in the ads’ effectiveness.

David Gundersen, tobacco prevention coordinator, said the ads will debut statewide Monday. The public knows smoking is harmful, so the ads try to portray the tobacco industry as manipulating young people into using their products, Gundersen said.

“What these ads do is target the kids that don’t like to be manipulated,” he said.

He summarized the ads’ messages, “If you’re really a rebel you don’t smoke, because if you smoke then you’re really just a stooge of the tobacco industry,” he said.

While tobacco companies are accused of marketing their products to youth, Philip Morris, the maker of Virginia Slims, states on its Web site that, “As the manufacturer of a product intended for adults who smoke, that has serious health effects and is addictive, we have a responsibility to help prevent kids from smoking.”

In 2003, cigarette sales amounted to $293.6 million in tax revenue for the state and in 2004, taxes on sales brought in $291.3 million. There was no change in the tax rate and the money is not earmarked especially for tobacco prevention, according to the governor’s office.