Community Health Program Director Edith Balbach told a Braker Hall audience yesterday that Big Tobacco is looking to untapped opportunities in the female population in its attempts to increase the number of smokers.
According to Balbach, the tobacco industry accomplishes this aim by marketing to women of low socioeconomic status and by forging relationships with national women's groups that are financially vulnerable.
While over 50 percent of the male population smokes, only four percent of females are smokers, according to Balbach, a senior lecturer. "The industry looks upon that as a huge point of opportunity," she said.
Tobacco companies particularly focus on poorer women. That measure tends to indicate a person's education level, which has increasingly become a predictor of one's likelihood of developing a smoking habit.
"College grads try cigarettes at the same rate as everyone else … but they drop off," Balbach said.
Tobacco kills 430,000 people within the United States and three to four million people internationally per year, Balbach said. She estimated that 10 million people around the world will die annually from tobacco use by 2030, if current trends continue.
The industry currently spends $37 million per day in promoting its products, Balbach said. Companies have coupled increased targeting of women with global expansion, she added.
"The U.S. market is considered a flat market by the tobacco industry," Balbach said. "They're taking the strategy overseas. Women are seen as a huge growth market everywhere."
In the past, tobacco companies have tried to make cigarettes desirable and fashionable for the female market with advertising campaigns that attribute cigarette usage to weight control, she explained.
The tobacco companies' marketing strategy is changing, Balbach said, noting that the industry now attempts to cater to women via an indirect approach.
"If you try and create ads that are super female-related, you won't reach the population," she said. "[The industry] needs programs that blend with the target's environment."
Where marketing falls short, Big Tobacco uses political tactics to draw in the female population, Balbach said.
In order to establish a more powerful presence in Congress, the industry looks to ally itself with groups that are politically identified and activist in nature, Balbach said. "Philip Morris figured out that women's groups were politically vulnerable because they are so underfunded," she said.
"How do we get out there, give money to women's organizations, provide them with our time and organizing ability in a way to make friends with them?" Balbach said in describing the tobacco giant's attitude. "Nobody was as farsighted as Philip Morris."
In exchange for garnering the political support of these national women's groups, tobacco companies help to resolve some of the economic and social policies that affect women and provide the organizations with access to powerful political figures, according to Balbach.
She described one case in which Philip Morris tried to promote the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 in Congress in an effort to bolster support among women. "We could be their knight in shining armor," she said as she read from a Philip Morris document.
All of this, Balbach said, is in an attempt to "lower the decibel level of attacks on Philip Morris from women's groups and anti-tobacco members of Congress."
Balbach concluded her talk with ways to confront the issue of tobacco companies targeting females. While it is a necessary objective, she said it is complicated by Big Tobacco's substantial coffers.
"I can't say that it's going to be possible to convince women's groups not to take money from Philip Morris … but you have to start somewhere," she told the audience. "We know this is killing people, so let's just take this small step and go somewhere."
Sophomore Katherine Evering-Rowe, who attended the lecture, said that Balbach offered valuable insight into the world of community health. "I never really thought before how tobacco industries had joined up with women's groups," she said.
Maryn Kaplan, a senior minoring in women's studies, agreed. "I thought [Balbach] was very engaging and informative," Kaplan said. "It was very thought-provoking."
The lecture was part of the Women's Studies Research Coll-oquium series and was entitled "Tobacco Industry Targeting of Women: A Story of Marketing and Money."
