French Women's Magazines Sever Tobacco Ties

A unique government-media initiative in France aims to wipe women's magazines clean of glamorous images of smoking. "Smoke-Free Women" ("Femmes Sans Fumee") targets the estimated 28 percent of French women who smoke regularly. Through it, leading publications including Marie Claire, Elle, Prima, Cote Femme and Madams Figaro pledge not to run editorial content depicting tobacco in a positive light, as well as to:

• Avoid showing people smoking
• Not refer to the pleasures of smoking
• Provide information on the risks of smoking
• Refuse all association, direct or indirect, with the tobacco industry.

The initiative also includes a special edition magazine reprinting anti-smoking articles from participant magazines. Some 400,000 copies of this publication are being distributed at health centers. doctors' offices and beauty salons nationwide.

According to background material for the initiative, cigarettes came to symbolize freedom, sexual equality and intellectualism in the 1950s and 60s. Ever since, and especially in recent years, French women have smoked more, smoked at a younger age and died at a higher rate. The average "fumeuse " smokes 13 cigarettes a day, up from 11.2 in 1992. Forty-three percent of French women between 18 and 35 smoke. Nearly 80 percent (79.5) of 17-year-old females have tried smoking, and 40 percent smoke daily. At these rates, the number of French women who die each year of tobacco-related causes could increase more than 15-fold by 2020, from 3,000 now to 50,000.

Independent studies affirm these trends, if not quite these numbers. Dr. Gary King, a Penn State University researcher studying smoking-related deaths among American and French women, found that almost half of French women surveyed between the ages of 18 and 24 smoke, versus less than a quarter of American women. If these rates continue, says King, female mortality rates attributable to smoking will increase 10-fold in France.

Although the U.S. has outpaced France with anti-smoking educational programs, women's magazines here seem disinclined to embark on a "Smoke-Free Women" campaign of their own. In 1999, according to the U.S. Surgeon General, tobacco companies spent $8.24 billion on cigarette advertising and promotions, up 22.3 percent from the year before. Dr. Elizabeth Whelan, a long-time critic of tobacco advertising, told a Senate subcommittee last year that in 1997, "cigarette ads outweighed anti-smoking messages by six to one" in popular women's magazines, and by 11 to one in 1998. Two years later, even with a surge in anti-tobacco ads, the ratio of cigarette ads to antismoking messages was 10 to one.

It's not just money that keeps U.S. women's magazines from kicking the habit. A principal goal of these magazines is to entertain in an upbeat fashion, something the topic of cigarette-related disease clearly fails to do. It's instructive to note that many of the women who are now being diagnosed with lung cancer and emphysema once read magazines that actively promoted cigarettes as glamorous, sexy and even safe.