Relationship between high school student smoking and recognition of cigarette advertisements.

We report the results of a study examining the level of advertisement recognition and tobacco experimentation in a group of U.S. high school students. Students who smoked as few as one cigarette per week were found to identify a preferred cigarette brand. One brand of cigarettes accounted for 76% of all preferred brands. A dose-response relationship was found between smoking level and cigarette advertisement recognition, with regular smokers recognizing 61.6% of advertisements, compared with only 33.2% for nonsmokers. These data have potential implications for youth smoking prevention programs. Future research is needed to explain this association and to establish whether cigarette advertising and adolescent smoking are causally related.