The Point-of-Sale remains the largest area of marketing, advertising and promotion spending by the tobacco industry
The Federal Trade Commission Cigarette Report for 2011, released earlier this week, shows that in 2011 the six largest cigarette companies spent 88.8% of their total sales, advertising, and promotional expenditures at the point-of-sale. This spending amounts to over $7.4 billion spent at the point of sale to support tobacco marketing, advertising and promotions.
Spending on price discounts, the largest category, increased by almost $50 billion, from $6.49 billion in 2010 to $7.00 billion in in 2011. Promotions give a customer a reason to “buy now” because of cents-off, multi-pack discounts or other incentives, keeping prices low and especially appealing to price sensitive consumers.
Learn more about the FTC reports, The War in the Store, and strategies to change POS marketing, advertising and promotions in your community.
81.5% of middle school students and 86.9% of high school students report seeing pro-tobacco advertisements in stores. The new study, published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, also found that middle schools students who reported exposure to tobacco advertising had higher odds of being susceptible to starting smoking. The study, which also looked at exposure to advertising in magazines and on the internet, emphasizes that, in order to maximize the effects of existing tobacco control programs, more interventions are needed to eliminate youth exposure to pro-tobacco marketing. 
Despite tobacco control efforts, tobacco is still the leading cause of preventable death in New York City [1]. Trends reveal that since 2007, New York City youth smoking rates have remained steady at 8.5% [2]. In 2011, 28,000 NYC public high school students tried smoking for the first time while 19,000 under aged NYC public high school students identified as current smokers [3]. In order to curtail the incidence of tobacco use among youth, Mayor Bloomberg is introducing two new point-of-sale (POS) regulations addressing tobacco product discounts and tobacco advertising displays.
Research indicates that exposure to POS advertising is associated with smoking and smoking experimentation among youth [5,6]. Furthermore, pairing POS advertising alongside other products creates the social norm that tobacco use is socially acceptable thus increasing the chances that youth engage in smoking [7,8,9]. In 2013 researchers Johns, Rane & Kansagra found that across the previous 12 months, NYC high school students who visited retailers 2 or more times a week were 40% more likely to experiment with smoking than youth that visited retailers less frequently [10].
In 2009, Mayor Bloomberg signed an ordinance banning the sale of all tobacco products containing additives that impart a distinct flavor including: fruit, vanilla, chocolate, honey, candy, cocoa, dessert, alcoholic beverage, herb or spice. However, the law did not apply to mint or menthol flavors nor were tobacco bars subject to the new ordinance. To contest the ban, US Smokeless Tobacco Manufacturing and US Smokeless Tobacco Brands filed a federal lawsuit claiming that the policy was preempted by the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009. The subsidiaries of Altria argued that the NYC flavor ban overstepped the tobacco regulatory powers afforded to states through the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009 by attempting to restrict the ingredients that tobacco manufacturers use in their products. According to the Act, the federal government reserves the right to determine the safety of ingredients thus, if Altria’s claims were found to be true, it would be unlawful for NYC to assume authority in matters that fall within federal jurisdiction.
