Hello Jason,"I don't think these videos have any impact on girls smoking. Far more teen girls smoked before such videos existed than they do today."
I'm really kinda surprised you presented this argument. On its face, at least, there's an obvious problem...
A. Far more teen girls smoked before such videos existed than they do today.
Therefore,
B. I don't think these videos have any impact on girls smoking.
This argument might be more compelling if it were evident that A. were singularly dependent on the third-party cigarette promotional videos of B. However, that seems unlikely.
As has been discussed here on this board many times, direct tobacco industry magazine cigarette advertising, and other forms of direct tobacco industry cigarette promotion, has been in sharp decline for several years now.
Let's suggest a scenario where in year 0 direct tobacco industry cigarette promotion accounts for a 25% increase in the baseline underage girls' smoking rates. Over the following 5 year period, direct tobacco industry cigarette promotion is to be phased out completely.
For the sake of simplicity, let's say that direct tobacco industry cigarette promotion will be phased in a manner such that for each year in the 5-year phase out, direct tobacco industry cigarette promotion will diminish its increase in the baseline underage girls' smoking rate by 5%.
That is, at the end of year 1, direct tobacco industry cigarette promotion will have only accounted for a 20% increase in the baseline underage girls' smoking rate, at the end of year 2, direct tobacco industry cigarette promotion will have only accounted for a 15% increase in the baseline underage girls' smoking rate,... and at the end of year 5, direct tobacco industry cigarette promotion will have only accounted for a 0% increase in the baseline underage girls' smoking rate. That is, direct tobacco industry cigarette promotion will have been completely phased out by the end of year 5.
Now, let's say the third-party cigarette promotional videos of B. are introduced midway, say at the end of year 3, through the 5-year phase out of direct tobacco industry cigarette promotion. Further, let's suggest the third-party cigarette promotional videos of B. account for a 5% increase in the baseline underage girls' smoking rate, and that 5% increase in the baseline underage girls' smoking rate continues for all following years.
At the end of the 5-year phase out of direct tobacco industry cigarette promotion, the phase out of direct tobacco industry cigarette promotion and the phase in of the third-party cigarette promotional videos of B. will have resulted in a net reduction towards the baseline underage girls' smoking rate of 20%.
It also might not be particularly surprising if the underage girls smoking rate at the end of the 5-year period was at an all-time low.
Obviously however, the conclusion that the third-party cigarette promotional videos of B. have NO impact on the underage girls' smoking rate would clearly be false.
Presumably the data could never been read so clearly, but this does seem like a plausible scenario.
Take care,
