Black Lungs
By Salim Muwakkil
JUNE 22, 1998:
In 1994, cigarette makers attempted to parlay black youth's fascination with
the martyred Malcolm X into big profits. In the wake of Spike Lee's brilliant
marketing campaign for his movie Malcolm X, T-shirts and baseball caps
bearing the "X" logo were omnipresent in the black community. So Star Tobacco
Corporation began to manufacture a menthol cigarette called X. Packaged in the
red, black and green colors of the black nationalist movement, the cigarettes
were marketed in 20 states before a coalition of outraged African-American
community groups successfully forced the manufacturers to discontinue the
brand.
Anti-tobacco activists successfully beat back this and a few other
clumsy attempts to push nicotine to black teens, but the cigarette industry has
had the last laugh. A recently released study by the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC) found that the consistent decline in smoking once
seen among African-American youth has reversed dramatically. While a 1991 poll
found that only 12.6 percent of African-American high school students admitted
to smoking cigarettes in the past month, that number jumped to 22.7 percent in
1997. That's an 80 percent increase in just six years.
There are several reasons. The most obvious is the marketing savvy
employed by the tobacco companies, especially when targeting black youth. But
the credibility cigarette makers gained by supporting black organizations and
the tobacco industry's heavy advertising presence in black publications also
have had an impact. And a trend among black youth of mixing tobacco with
marijuana has probably worsened the problem. With smoking the leading
preventable cause of death in the United States -- and with 50,000
African-Americans dying of smoking-related illnesses every year -- these new
trends are a cause for alarm.
The sharp increase in smoking rates among black teens during the
past few years is particularly disturbing because, for many years, smoking
rates among young blacks had been going down -- a major victory, because
African-Americans are still more likely to smoke than any ethnic group except
Native Americans.
"In 1976, there was no difference between blacks and whites," says
Michael Ericksen, director of the CDC's office on smoking and health. "Then
there was this huge divergence, and black youth began to view smoking as a
'white thing.' Now it has turned around, and we don't know what happened."
Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) thinks he knows: the tobacco industry
stepped up its efforts to hook young blacks. Last February, Conyers released a
list of documents to support his claim. Among them was a 1973 document from the
Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation showing that the bulk of sales
increases in the company's Kool brand was among 16- to 25-year-olds, a
demographic that would "soon be three times as important to Kool." A Lorillard
Tobacco research study noted that in 1978 the success of its Newport brand was
largely due to black high school students.
Although these documents are now two decades old, they help
establish the context for what's going on now. As National Medical Association
President Nathaniel Murdock told the House Subcommittee on Health & the
Environment during testimony last March, "Recently released documents related
to the deliberate practices to capture African-American smokers do not present
the entire picture as to how the tobacco industry promoted and continues to
promote nicotine addiction."
The NMA, the country's largest organization of black physicians,
and other anti-tobacco groups argue that the industry should be required to
fully disclose how it targeted African-Americans. It charges that, among other
things, the billboard advertisements currently saturating black communities are
specifically aimed at minority youth.
The Summit Health Coalition, a national network of organizations
focused on African-American health issues, notes that 20 percent of the
advertising budget for Kool cigarettes was dedicated to marketing targeted at
African-Americans, even though blacks represent just 12 percent of the
population. The group charges that young minorities have been targeted more
aggressively as general levels of smoking have declined. Murdock suggests that
the tobacco industry should be made accountable for the inordinate number of
deaths in the African-American community due to smoking. "They should also
donate to the traditional black medical schools for further research and
prevention of cancer of the lungs and other related diseases," he says.
But some anti-smoking activists don't think the tobacco companies
are the only people to blame. In fact, some are scathingly critical of major
black institutions for their role in pushing -- or at least condoning --
nicotine addiction. Black newspapers, for example, have had a long, cooperative
and profitable relationship with the tobacco industry. Cigarette manufacturers
were among the first businesses to advertise in black publications, said Robert
Bogle, publisher of The Philadelphia Tribune and former president of the
National Newspaper Publishers Association, a trade group representing 250
black-owned papers.
When evidence of smoking's health dangers began surfacing, though,
black newspapers were conspicuously silent. And as the tobacco industry came
under increasing attack by anti-smoking activists, it found a safe haven in
many black newspapers. Seldom were anti-smoking articles published in NNPA
newspapers.
"Tobacco companies were our friends before anybody else was," says
Bogle. "A lot of groups have condemned us for taking those ads, but for many of
our newspapers, it was a matter of economic survival. And as long as it's legal
to grow it and smoke it, why should we be left out?"
Tobacco ads now represent 60 percent of ad space for most black
newspapers, said current NNPA President Dorothy Leavell. "Tobacco ads influence
us," she said. "We've pretty much taken the position that people should have
the freedom to make their own decision about whether or not they want to
smoke."
The tobacco industry also markets its product by underwriting
events in the black community and by sponsoring conventions of the major civil
rights organizations, including the National Urban League, the NAACP and the
Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. The College Fund (formerly the United Negro College
Fund) is a recipient of some of the tobacco companies' most generous grants.
The Congressional Black Caucus Foundation receives thousands in tobacco cash.
Cultural organizations, including the Dance Theater of Harlem and the National
Black Arts Festival, regularly receive generous donations from the industry.
The Kool Jazz Festival, which travels across the country during the summer, is
a salient example of tobacco marketers' pervasive presence in the black
community.
Civil rights groups are attempting to distance themselves from
tobacco money, but that's no easy task. In the past, these groups have
justified their indulgence by arguing that tobacco companies are attempting to
balance the harm they do with the money they give. Few still make that
argument.
"We're trying to wean ourselves away from this source of revenue,"
Hugh Price, president of the National Urban League, recently told the Chicago
radio station WVON. "And, quite frankly, it's not easy. Without additional
sources [of income], we have to scale back on some of our important
projects."
Still, tobacco is so ingrained into black life that few
African-American leaders express appropriate concern, said Makani Themba,
co-director of the Oakland-based Praxis Project, which targets tobacco
marketing. Tobacco companies fund black music, art, concerts, schools and
churches. They give money to African-American family reunion groups and sponsor
family reunion storytelling contests for children. What's perhaps most tragic
is that streets in black communities are full of larger-than-life images
glamorizing these deadly products.
Another part of the problem is black youth smoking marijuana in
hollowed-out cigars, or "blunts." The practice is said to have started in
Jamaica, where marijuana is routinely mixed with tobacco, and it took hold in
New York City in the mid-80s. Health experts worry that this new trend has
provoked a "reverse gateway" effect, bringing marijuana smokers to tobacco
rather than vice-versa. Although cigar makers like Havatampa (makers of the
popular Phillies Blunts) deny that they intentionally exploit this clandestine
trend, critics are not so sure.
"I see ads for Phillies Blunts in some stores in Philadelphia that
clearly seem to be capitalizing on the kids' blunts craze," says Charyn Sutton,
co-founder of the National Association of African-Americans for Positive
Imagery.
A few black groups are fighting tobacco advertising. Several
anti-tobacco organizations have started "white out" campaigns, defacing
billboards that glamorize smoking. And Conyers is working within the legal
system to make black concerns a vital part of tobacco negotiations in
Washington. Because we know part of the blame lies squarely at the feet of the
tobacco industry, argues Conyers, "there is compelling need for blacks to be
included in the settlement talks."
That agreement, which is on the verge of collapse, addresses a
variety of issues -- including the Food & Drug Administration's authority
to regulate tobacco advertising and promotion, and youth access to tobacco
products -- in exchange for giving the tobacco industry immunity from future
lawsuits. But it doesn't acknowledge the tobacco industry's special efforts to
induce African-Americans to smoke, even though it's important for black
America's public health that the settlement do so.
As African-Americans become increasingly aware of the harmful
presence of tobacco in their communities, their participation in the settlement
talks is vital. But whether or not that involvement leads to any substantial
change in the industry or among black youths remains to be seen. .
This article first appeared in In These Times.
|