By Elizabeth M. Whelan, Sc.D., M.P.H.
Posted: Thursday, May 16, 2002

ARTICLES
Publication Date: May 16, 2002

estimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Oversight and Government Management, Restructuring and the District of Columbia, May 14 — Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), Chairman:

Good morning. I am Elizabeth Whelan, President of the American Council on Science and Health, a consumer education and advocacy group based in New York City. My background includes master's and doctoral degrees in epidemiology and public health from the Yale School of Medicine and Harvard School of Public Health. I appreciate this opportunity to address this critical issue related to women's magazines and their dubious record in reporting the dangers of smoking to American women.

Back in the early and mid-l970s, I began regularly contributing health-related consumer articles to popular women's magazines. Given that cigarette-smoking was then and is now the leading cause of preventable death in the United States, my health-oriented articles necessarily focused on the dangers posed by smoking.

I was astonished that my articles were regularly edited so that pejorative references to smoking were omitted — and sometimes they were simply spiked. In one of many instances, I was assigned a piece called "Protect Your Man from Cancer." Of course, I focused on the role of smoking in the causation of lung, bladder, pancreatic, oral, and other cancers — and the article was returned to me with full payment, noting that there were too many ads in the magazine that month to run such a piece.

With this personal experience of the difficulty of placing anti-smoking messages, I decided to take a close, quantitative look at the extent, or lack thereof, of coverage of issues related to cigarettes and health in women's magazines.

The first ACSH survey of popular magazines' coverage of smoking hazards was published in the early l980s. ACSH examined the health-related articles in eighteen magazines, dating back to 1965, and found that although the magazines covered a wide array of health topics, there was a near complete lack of coverage on smoking. Only one-third of the magazines surveyed reported the hazards of smoking both frequently and accurately. The majority either confused or obfuscated the facts, or failed to mention them altogether. Out of eighteen magazines, only five did not accept cigarette advertising, and the best coverage of smoking and health was present in those five magazines. At a time when information concerning the impact of smoking on health was already widespread in the medical literature, these results were disturbing.

Follow-up surveys throughout the 1980s and 1990s reinforced these earlier findings. Incredibly, while ignoring cigarette smoking as a health risk, magazines regularly warned women about remote or completely hypothetical dangers, purporting to reveal how to reduce your risk of cancer by keeping your alarm clock three to five feet from your bed to protect against emanating electromagnetic fields, or highlighting the health risks of lead wrappers on wine bottles.

Surveys of popular women's magazines from 1997-2000 showed that although the reporting was gradually improving, there was still little coverage of the health risks of smoking relative to smoking's enormous contribution to premature death and illness. In 1997, ACSH found that cigarette ads outweighed anti-smoking messages by six to one, and in 1998, the ratio had nearly doubled to eleven to one. In 2000, even with a surge in anti-tobacco ads, the ratio of cigarette ads to anti-smoking messages was ten to one. The total ratio of cigarette ad pages to full-fledged anti-smoking articles was thirty to one.

In the year 2000, articles about the health effects of tobacco in the magazines we surveyed still made up less than one percent of the 2,414 health-related articles published. These magazines are guilty of both omission and commission here: that is, not only do they not cover cigarette-related diseases, they also edit out smoking mentions where they would otherwise typically be. Examples are Glamour's list of "8 Simple Health Savers" including advice on taking calcium supplements and working out but no mention of stopping smoking, and Elle's "New Year's Resolutions" making no mention of smoking cessation.

ACSH last surveyed magazines in the year 2000. The year 2000 marked the beginning of anti-smoking ads placed by the American Legacy Foundation. In June 2000, Philip Morris announced that it would be pulling cigarette ads from forty-two magazines.

It will be interesting to see how these changes in cigarette advertising affect the editorial content of women's magazines. There is reason to believe that the reporting on the dangers of cigarette smoking will improve now that there are fewer ads. For example, the March 2002 issue of Self contained a two-page article on smoking cessation. We should keep in mind, however, that the presence of cigarette ads is just one reason, albeit a major one, that magazines have not covered cigarette hazards. Another reason is that the topic of cigarette-related disease is a "downer" — and these magazines seek to entertain.

While the coverage may improve — that is yet to be seen — we must recall the astonishing blackout on coverage demonstrated in our surveys from l965 to 2000. Women who are now in their mid-fifties — and are being diagnosed with lung cancer, emphysema, and more from smoking — are the same women who were reading magazines in the l960s and l970s, magazines which withheld and distorted the health risks of smoking while using their pages to promote cigarettes as glamorous, sexy, and. yes, safe.

Dr. Whelan, President of ACSH, holds doctoral and master's degrees in public health.

Responses: May 24, 2002 Dear Dr. Whelan: My younger sister fits into your description of women's magazines and lack of stories related to tobacco-related diseases. My sister started smoking at age thirteen in 1968. She was diagnosed with lung cancer on Nov. 5, 1996 and died on October 16, 1999. We both grew up in the 50s and 60s and regularly read our mother's women's magazines. In particular I remember reading Ladies Home Journal and McCall's magazine when we were growing up. I am sure there were a lot of tobacco ads in those magazines in those days. I am also sure there were very few, if any, stories about the dangers of tobacco products. I also remember reading Post magazine and Reader's Digest as a child and I don't remember very many articles about the dangers of tobacco products. Sincerely, Laurie Comstock May 30, 2002 I am in total agreement with this commentary. In fact, I've spent a number of years counting the unhealthy ads in women's magazines, including Essence magazine, the number one magazine for Black women. Recently, I launched a letter-writing campaign in protest of the full-page cigarette ads that are prominently displayed on the pages and back covers of Essence. I am using the Internet to circulate the letter, asking recipients to sign it and mail it to the CEO of Essence. Do you have any other suggestions as to how to dismantle cigarette ads in popular magazines? —Gettye Israel September 3, 2002 While waiting to get my annual mammogram a few weeks ago, I happened to pick up an issue of Family Circle magazine. Inside were two ads for cigarettes. To me this was disgusting, and I pointed it out to the office manager. Yesterday in my son's orthodontist's office, I found another issue of Family Circle, this time with one ad for cigarettes. I pointed it out to the office staff there as well. I found your article ["Tobacco and Women's Health: A Survey of Popular Women's Magazines"] online when I decided to find out if this upset anyone else besides just me. Imagine my shock to find your list of magazines that carry tobacco ads. How these people sleep at night is beyond me. While looking for an e-mail address at the Family Circle magazine web site, I happened to find a list of the doctors that sit on their Health and Medical Advisory Board. I wrote several of the doctors listed (one of whom is an oncologist!) and asked them to explain to me how they can approve and endorse the promotion of a known cancer causing product. Thank you for publishing these findings. I will no longer purchase any of the twelve magazines you mentioned. Marti Brauer Durham, NC October 30, 2002 I don't buy magazines very often, but the one I usually buy is Chatelaine, and I don't recall ever seeing a cigarette ad in any of their issues. Good Housekeeping doesn't have any cigarette ads either. Personally, I think looking at an ad with a person smoking is disgusting. I think smoking is disgusting. I've never smoked a day in my life. Lung cancer took my father; my mother got breast cancer, I'm sure, from his second-hand smoke. My youngest son smokes but not at home. There is an article about teens and smoking in the latest issue of Good Housekeeping. It's a good article but doesn't really mention all the ways smoking can harm you. It almost suggests that smoking is a good way to stay thin for teenagers. Still, I give them credit for running the article at all. Sincerely, Liz Kerr Kingston, ON Canada For a more detailed account of the risks of secondhand tobacco smoke (some of which have been exaggerated), see ACSH's booklet Environmental Tobacco Smoke: Health Risk or Health Hype? and for more on direct smoking risks (many of which have gone virtually unmentioned), see Cigarettes: What the Warning Label Doesn't Tell You.