Study: College Women Smoke for Glamour

DETROIT--College women are more likely than college men to smoke cigarettes, suggesting that the tobacco industry is successfully linking female smoking with an image of glamour and success, according to a federal study released yesterday.

"The cigarette companies emphasize two major themes in getting women to smoke: One is trying to associate smoking with being liberated and the other is more subliminal, but not very subtle, and that is that women should smoke to stay thin," social psychologist Lloyd D. Johnston said.

The typical cigarette ad aimed at women features "very long, slender models and very long, slender cigarettes," Johnston said.

Johnston was a director of the study conducted for the National Institute on Drug Abuse by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research.

Among college women, the daily smoking rate was 18 percent last year compared with 10 percent for men.

"It appears the tobacco industry's expensive and longterm effort to associate smoking with liberation and success among women has paid off, at least for the industry," Johnston said. "The payoff for those young women who bought the message is quite another matter."

Scott Stapf, a spokesman for the Tobacco Institute, a Washington-based trade organization representing cigarette manufacturers, called the conclusions "complete baloney."

The Tobacco Institute said advertising and promotions are aimed at current smokers as competing companies try to win converts or persuade smokers to stick with their current brands.

"There's not a single study that establishes cigarette advertising as the main factor" or a contributing factor in a person's decision to become a smoker, Stapf said. Rather, "peer pressure and the role of parents and elders generally" are the main factors, he said.

Officials of Philip Morris Inc., maker of Virginia Slims, and R.J. Reynolds, producer of More cigarettes--brands heavily marketed to women--could not be reached for comment because their New York offices were closed yesterday for the Fourth of July holiday.

Virginia Slims advertising has featured the slogan, "You've come a long way, baby."

The study grew out of a 10-year series of surveys of drug use by high school seniors around the country. About 1,100 college students were interviewed each year from 1980 to 1985. The results have a margin of error of less than 3 percentage points.

"Smoking tends to be highly related to grades and to school performance generally," Johnston said. "The smarter kids are less likely to get hooked on cigarettes."

The study did not say how much college women smoke. Past studies indicate that more women than men fall into the "moderate to light smoker" category, he said, but the situation may be changing and more study is needed.

The study found that cigarette smoking is much less common on campus than among young adults who don't go to college.

"Most smoking habits are established in adolescence," Johnston said. "The sex difference goes back to high school....For some reason, college-bound females are smoking more than college-bound males."