Monday, May 05, 2014

Cocoa as a Cigarette Additive, Malawi's Tobacco Paradox, New Global Teen Campaign...

Eight (8) new papers and reports using tobacco industry documents have been added to the Tobacco Documents Bibliography.  Publications include "You're the target: New global campaign found to target teens" from the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, and papers covering Malawi's tobacco paradox, tobacco and direct democracy, and psychographic segments of college students, to name a few. 

Bibliography Highlight:

Sokol NA, Kennedy RD, Connolly GN. The Role of Cocoa As a Cigarette Additive: Opportunities for Product Regulation. Nicotine & Tobacco Research 2014 March 08.

Chocolate and cocoa flavored cigarettes are specifically banned in the FSPTCA, yet PM lists cocoa and cocoa products as flavors in its cigarettes and RJ Reynolds and Lorillard list cocoa and cocoa products as cigarette ingredients.  The authors examined tobacco industry internal documents as a means of understanding the tobacco industry’s historical use of cocoa in cigarettes, including cocoa’s function, and if and how its chemosensory effects may serve to attract or retain nonsmokers, smokers, or specific target groups. They found that cocoa has been widely used in American cigarettes due to its influence on sensory qualities and at least two tobacco companies continue to use cocoa as a cigarette additive at levels similar to those recorded in their internal documents. While cocoa does not impart a characterizing “chocolate” flavor at levels currently in use in cigarettes, cocoa can alter cigarette flavor substantially and affect product acceptability.



A few key documents from LTDL:


"Cocoa has gained wide application in the tobacco industry since earliest times both as a sweetener and to add its own characteristic flavor. In recent years it has commonly been added to the burley tobacco of cigarette blends to enhance the cocoa-like aroma inherent in burley and, at the same time, suppress undesirable odors, thereby improving the smoking quality" (Lorillard, 1982)



 

"The new casing incorporated higher levels of cocoa (approximately 100% greater than current CAMEL Lt), high fructose corn syrup at levels to achieve sugar/nicotine balance, and removed licorice. This casing had a very significant effect on smoothness and acceptance"
(RJ Reynolds, 1992)







"We do, in fact, use a couple of the ingredients you suggested in our current formulations. However, their contribution to the overall flavor is at a subliminal level rather than the high level that would be needed to effect the response your suggestion includes. Our experience has shown that the smoker does not want a flavor which overpowers the tobacco taste in a cigarette (with the exception of menthol). A number of brands have been introduced by cigarette manufacturers over the years which have such a design, and all of them have been failures in the marketplace. Examples are Lyme (lime), Spring (lemon), and Chelsea (chocolate)"
(Brown and Williamson, 1992)






"RJR is underrepresented among this smoker target group [18–34 year old women], especially among the 18–24 younger adult female smoker target subsegment…priority aroma candidates have been identified on basis of smoker preference and perceived compatibility with cigarettes...Vanillin and chocolate are currently most viable candidate. These two flavors’ ability to impact a distinctive smoothness benefit may be large. However, their ability to impact pleasant aftertaste or crisp, refreshing taste is less assured" -   (RJ Reynolds, 1986)

Friday, April 11, 2014

New Documents Added!

300 new documents have been added to the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library -

•  Brown and Williamson = 41 documents
• American Tobacco = 109 documents
• Philip Morris = 20 documents
• Lorillard = 103 documents
• RJ Reynolds = 27 documents

Thursday, March 13, 2014

Annual Tobacco Documents Workshop

 The University of California, San Francisco Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education (CTCRE), an interdisciplinary research community, announces its one-day workshop on using tobacco industry documents for advocacy.

The workshop will cover:

• introduction to tobacco industry documents databases, including the multimedia database; 
• hands-on practice searching and extracting key industry documents under the supervision of expert documents researchers; 
• examples of ways in which the documents can be of use to promote tobacco-free communities; 
• opportunities to network and brainstorm with top documents researchers and other advocates. 

Place: University of California, San Francisco, Kalmanovitz Library
530 Parnassus Avenue, 5th Floor Lange Rm - San Francisco, California 94143
 

Registration is on first come, first served basis and space is limited to 40 participants.
A California cuisine lunch and resource materials will be provided.
ADA accessible.

Applications for a 2014 Legacy Travel Scholarship to Increase Diversity may be requested. The deadline for the scholarships application is April 8, 2014.

For more information and to register for the workshop, please contact:
CTCRE.Workshop@ucsf.edu or 415.502.6341

Friday, February 28, 2014

New Papers on Tobacco Industry Strategies and Tactics

Nine (9) new papers and reports using tobacco industry documents have been added to the Tobacco Documents Bibliography.  Publications include the 2014 Surgeon General Report, industry marketing to low income females, and corporate influence on public policy formulation to name a few. 

Bibliography Highlight:

Brown-Johnson CG, England LJ, Glantz SA, Ling PM. Tobacco industry marketing to low socioeconomic status women in the USA. Tobacco Control 2014 January 21.

The authors investigate the numerous marketing strategies used by the tobacco companies to reach low SES females in the USA, including military wives, low-income inner-city minority women, ‘discount susceptible’ older female smokers and less-educated young white women. Strategies included distributing discount coupons with food stamps to reach the very poor, discount offers at point-of-sale and via direct mail to keep cigarette prices low, developing new brands for low SES females and promoting luxury images to low SES African-American women.


A few key documents from LTDL:


On partnering cigarette coupons with Food Stamps to reach a specific market:
"The coupon recipients will be mainly females, as welfare mothers are most likely to receive food stamps...Some objections may arise due to the moral/ethical problems of inducing poor people to buy cigarettes with the little money they do have. It may also be misconstrued by some to look as though we are urging the recipient to misredeem their food stamps for cigarettes."
(RJ Reynolds, 1976)





 


 Segmentation of the adult female market for RJ Reynolds  - Career women were described as ‘content or angry or searching/insecure’, the ‘job-holder’ was ‘resentful of having to work’, young mothers could be ‘angry/frustrated/constrained…overwhelmed/unfulfilled’ and older housewives felt ‘trapped’ and potentially ‘frustrated/angry. (RJ Reynolds, 1980)







"[Raleigh and Belair female smokers] have very low SESs…They undoubtedly feel they must make every penny count… smoking represents a financial drain on family resources. Saving coupons for household items helps reduce the guilt associated with smoking…Belair women (and perhaps Raleigh women as well) feel their lives are controlled by outside forces… The ritual of saving coupons helps bring control to one small aspect of their lives..." (B&W, 1983)








"Prestige, status, pride and luxury are extremely important to Blacks who, as a people, were historically denied those things…The physical and psychological deprivation that occurred during and after slavery gave rise to certain wants and needs which, even today, affect Black consumer behavior...The desire for instant gratification reflects the inclination of a deprived people to get as much satisfaction as they can as soon as they can. And it may explain, to some degree, the tendency of Blacks to smoke cigarettes at a greater rate than the rest of the population" (RJR, 1990)






Proposal to target the population of ‘unbanked’ smokers, who were predominantly female, urban, of below-average education, disproportionately Latino or African American, and likely to have incomes below $25,000/yr. The proposal included a prepaid debit card which would provide bill pay, direct deposit, savings with interest, money orders/transfers, access to government benefits checks and easy-access cash for very low-income consumers without access to traditional banking services. (PM, 2005)

Thursday, February 27, 2014

Changes to Search Fields and a Call for Assistance!

We have added a few new documents to the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library today:

• 36 Brown and Williamson
• 1 American Tobacco
• 15 Philip Morris 

 Also, in anticipation of the new and improved LTDL coming out later this year, we have made some minor changes to a few field codes in order to consolidate and standardize across industry archives.  As of today, you will notice the following changes:

• the field "Trial Exhibit" (te:) is no longer in use and has been replaced by "Exhibit Number" (en:).  All values have been moved into the "Exhibit Number" field.  Although (te:) will still work in a search query, users will notice it brings back values in the (en:) field instead.
• the fields "Persons Noted", "Organizations Noted" and "Noted" are no longer in use and all values have been moved to the "Mentioned" fields.  Please use "Persons Mentioned" (menp:), "Organizations Mentioned" (meno:) and "Mentioned" (men:) from now on.
•  the field "Site" (site:) is no longer in use and has been replaced by "Area" (area:).  All values have been moved to the "Area" field and although (site:) will still work as part of a query, users will notice it brings back values in the (area:) field instead.

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We are currently in the thick of building LTDL3 and could use as much help as we can get!  If anyone would like to assist us with user testing of new pages and wire-frames, please contact our User Experience/User Interface Designer and let her know you are available!

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

New Searchable Tobacco Pack Database

• Search an online database of more than 3,000 cigarette packs.
•  Learn about which brands are compliant with health warning laws and which use pack design features that detract from the warnings.
• Compare cigarette packs across countries.

Thursday, February 06, 2014

Over 1200 videos uploaded to Internet Archive

We have uploaded 1,274 video and audio recordings to the Internet Archive making them available for immediate viewing and downloading.  The items are a mix of Tobacco Institute files and tobacco company files including commercials, trial depositions, and infomercials. This is the result of a large project to upload the remaining multimedia items in our possession and we are currently about 3/4 of the way there!  Stay tuned for more multimedia uploads in the near future.

In addition, 141 new tobacco industry documents were posted to LTDL today.

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