Tobacco industry targeting of health-conscious youth with ‘lighter’ cigarettes: the case of Singapore

Abstract

BackgroundDespite Singapore’s strict tobacco control policies, smoking rates have not decreased since 2004. We examined the primary targets, motivations and strategies behind targeted marketing activities in Singapore from the tobacco industry’s perspective to understand how tobacco companies continue to target people in their marketing.MethodsSnowball search in the Truth Tobacco Industry Documents Library for documents covering the industry’s targeted marketing activities in Singapore. Information from the documents was subsequently triangulated with market data obtained from the Euromonitor Passport database, analysed for trends by tar segment and data from cigarette packs purchased from Singapore retailers, analysed in terms of product positioning.ResultsIn the 1970s and 1980s, as young people in Singapore became more health-conscious, tobacco companies positioned ‘light’ cigarettes for growth in the 1990s. Many of these ‘lights’ contained similar tar and nicotine levels as regular brands; they were only light in their branding. In the 1990’s, ‘lights’ became more popular in Singapore and this demand was largely youth driven. Into the 2010s, while the low tar (<6 mg) segment comprised only a small portion of Singapore’s cigarette market, most cigarette variants were marketed as ‘lighter’ or as having harm reductive benefits to appeal to more health-conscious people.ConclusionsThe differentiation of ‘lighter’ cigarettes remains an important marketing tool for tobacco companies amidst Singapore’s strict regulations. Legislation to remove all remaining avenues for tobacco companies to make harm reduction claims on their products, explicit or implicit, coupled with improving health literacy and exposing industry deception, could help to further bring down smoking prevalence in Singapore.

Tobacco industry: a barrier to social justice

“…9 This is just one example of an intersection between social justice and tobacco. Commercial tobacco is also a barrier to social justice for youth, 10 women, 11 the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT+) community, 12 Indigenous people, 13 people with lower income 14 and people with less education. 15 The tobacco-related burden of disease and death has also shifted from high-income countries to lower income countries, with over 80% of the world's 1.3 billion tobacco users now living in low-income and middle-income countries.…”

“…This is just one example of an intersection between social justice and tobacco. Commercial tobacco is also a barrier to social justice for youth,10 women,11 the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT+) community,12 Indigenous people,13 people with lower income14 and people with less education 15…”

Standardised cigarettes: the next step for tobacco policy?

“…Philip Morris’ early discovery of this process was an important part of the commercial success of its Marlboro brand,4 the world’s top selling cigarette since 1972 25. Young people perceive white-coloured, branded and slim cigarettes as more appealing and less harmful,26–28 and tobacco companies use design features that imply a reduced health risk, such as special filters and light colours, to reduce the perceived harmfulness of smoking and keep health-conscious smokers in the market 29–31. The companies used light and ‘slim’ cigarettes to target women in Western countries,32 where female smoking rates now are similar to, or—in some countries—higher than smoking rates in males 1…”