JAMA : the journal of the American Medical Association
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OBJECTIVE--To test the hypothesis that symposia on environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) are more likely to present unbalanced data and be authored by tobacco industry-affiliated individuals than journal articles on ETS. To compare the publication records and affiliations of authors of symposia with the authors of scientific consensus documents on ETS. DESIGN--Content analysis of articles; computerized literature searches of English-language publications (except for one symposium) supplemented with additional sources. ⋯ Symposium articles were more likely to agree with the tobacco industry position (46% vs 20%), less likely to assess the health effects of ETS (22% vs 49%), less likely to disclose their source of funding (22% vs 60%), and more likely to be written by tobacco industry-affiliated authors (35% vs 6%) than journal articles (P = .0001). Symposium authors published a lower proportion of peer-reviewed articles (71% vs 81%) (P = .0001) and were more likely to be affiliated with the tobacco industry (50% vs 0%) than consensus document authors (P = .0004). CONCLUSIONS--Symposium articles on ETS differ from journal articles and consensus documents in ways that suggest that symposia are not balanced.
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To provide data on the sale of single cigarettes to adults and minors and to examine the sociocultural context in which these sales occur. ⋯ The illegal sale of single cigarettes involves complex sociocultural factors heretofore unexamined. An understanding of such factors may be useful in planning merchant education programs and drafting policy to control illegal sales.
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Smoking initiation by adolescent girls, 1944 through 1988. An association with targeted advertising.
To identify trends in smoking initiation among persons aged 10 to 20 years that might reflect the impact of specific targeting of tobacco advertising to women. ⋯ The tobacco advertising campaigns targeting women, which were launched in 1967, were associated with a major increase in smoking uptake that was specific to females younger than the legal age for purchasing cigarettes.