Ray Lader used to be an ideal customer for the tobacco companies: He was 12-years-old, loyal to his brand, and addicted. But within a few years, he turned into a major thorn in their side. Like thousands of other youth in Florida, Lader became an activist in the Truth Campaign, an unprecedented, highly successful program to curb teen smoking.

Lader, now an 18-year-old freshman at Gonzaga University, has the perfect credentials for an anti-smoking crusader. He's articulate, ambitious, and extremely angry. He was in seventh grade when his father, a two-pack-a-day smoker, died of a heart attack at age 48. Six months later, a teacher who had consoled Lader after the tragedy died of lung cancer. When a spokeswoman from the Truth Campaign visited his ninth-grade class, he was ready to listen. "She told us how the tobacco companies are manipulating us, and it infuriated me," he says. "Right then, I decided to get involved. And I'm never going to stop."

Lader isn't the only one who's fired up over tobacco. Since the campaign began in 1998, more than 10,000 Florida teens have joined the fight. They formed SWAT teams -- Students Working Against Tobacco -- that visited grade schools and middle schools. They served on community groups that pushed for tougher regulations. They discussed issues with legislators. In a break with normal protocol, they also worked as advisers for a multimillion-dollar media blitz that included slick television commercials and eye-catching billboards, many with the slogan "Our Brand Is Truth."

As repeated surveys showed, the message came through loud and clear. "The campaign really resonated with kids," says Danny McGoldrick, vice president of research for the national Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. Smoking by Florida middle school students dropped by 47 percent between 1998 and 2001. The decline among high schoolers was an impressive 31 percent. "That works out to about 75,000 kids who [aren't] smoking," McGoldrick says.

Despite this track record, the Truth Campaign is under attack. The program lost its most powerful advocate when Gov. Lawton Chiles died in 1998, and government support for the program has shriveled ever since. Between 1998 and the fall of 2001, funding for the campaign dropped from $70 million a year to $37 million. (The money came from Florida's $11.3 billion settlement with tobacco companies in 1997.) A new budget currently working its way through the legislature would trim between $7 million and $14 million from the program.

"The campaign keeps working with less and less funding," Lader says. "The legislators want to see what the limit is. And when we reach that limit, they'll claim that we're no longer effective and try to cut the program entirely."

The recent budget cuts may already be taking a toll. The latest surveys suggest that the decline in smoking among middle schoolers may have stalled. Another sign of trouble: Today's eighth-graders are slightly more likely to smoke than they were last year, when they were seventh-graders.

Nobody can say exactly why the program is under siege, but McGoldrick has his suspicions. "Florida legislators have received $800,000 in campaign contributions from the tobacco industry since the program started," he says. "I think they know what the industry wants."

Whether the campaign lives or dies, it's already an unqualified success. In 2005, the American Journal of Public Health published a report that attributed a 22 percent overall decline in youth smoking directly to the Truth campaign. From 2000-2002, the study found 300,000 fewer youth smokers as a result of the campaign.

It certainly has a winning formula: grass-roots activism combined with modern marketing. "They looked at their constituents and asked 'Why do kids smoke?'" says Sharyn Sutton, PhD, a Washington, DC-based marketing specialist who worked as an adviser to the campaign. "Young people want to act like adults and rebel [against being told they're kids]. The campaign channeled that rebellion against the tobacco industry."

The billboards, commercials, and school presentations put forth a unified message: The tobacco industry is trying to take advantage of kids, but kids have the power to fight back. In one memorable television ad, which Lader describes as "one of our best," teens walked into a real-life office of the makers of Kool cigarettes to provide the "Golden Hook" award for suggestive advertising. During a heated discussion, one executive actually said, "One hundred percent of people will die someday."

In the latest television spot, teens walk into another office building, where they are met by an actor portraying a tobacco executive. Instead of arguing, the executive breaks into a song-and-dance number. A sample of the lyrics: "Just stay focused on the positive! Every eight seconds a smoker dies -- it's becoming routine. But let's stay focused on the positive! Those seven seconds in between."

Until recently, Florida drivers could see a billboard featuring a balding, bikini-clad, 60ish man lying on a beach and smoking a cigarette. The tag line: "No wonder tobacco executives hide behind sexy models."

Such ads strike a perfect tone, McGoldrick says, thanks in large part to the teens who worked with the advertising companies. "The worst thing is for adults to lecture to kids," he says. "The next worst thing is for adults to try acting like kids."

The success of the Truth campaign stands in stark contrast to youth-focused "anti-smoking" ads funded by tobacco companies, McGoldrick says. Such ads suggest that smoking is for adults, not for kids. For the typical middle schooler or high schooler who can't wait to grow up, the message isn't exactly a deterrent. "At best these ads are ineffective," he says. "At worst they are intentionally counterproductive."

No matter what the future holds, the campaign has already changed the way public health experts think about teen smoking, says Ursula Bauer, PhD, a researcher with the Florida Department of Public Health. For the first time ever, there is both reason for optimism and a clear blueprint for success. "Hopefully, other states will start copying us," she says, "and we can finally win this war."

-- Chris Woolston, M.S., is a health and medical writer with a master's degree in biology. He is a contributing editor at Consumer Health Interactive, and was the staff writer at Hippocrates, a magazine for physicians. He has also covered science issues for Time Inc. Health, WebMD, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. His reporting on occupational health earned him an award from the northern California Society of Professional Journalists.

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First published December 17, 2001
Last updated January 30, 2007
Copyright © 2001 Consumer Health Interactive