Philip Morris To Stop Targeting Teens

June 6, 2000 - Days away from crucial testimony against a potential multibillion-dollar punitive damages award, Philip Morris announced it is pulling advertising from 40 to 50 publications.

The company promised to stop youth marketing under $254 billion in state lawsuit settlements, but two recent studies indicate cigarette advertising is appearing more than before in magazines with high teen readership.

Tobacco lawyers arguing against damage claims by 300,000 to 500,000 sick Florida smokers have told jurors in the landmark case that the industry has changed its ways and should not be punished.

But the panel has seen dozens of current magazines ads and heard the smokers' attorney portray Philip Morris' $74 million youth anti-smoking program as a drop in the bucket of the $6 billion annual industry budget for advertising and promotion.

Philip Morris Inc. CEO Michael Szymanczyk intends to offer testimony about his company's new corporate philosophy. In keeping with that position, the company said Monday it would stop advertising in dozens of magazines by September and no longer buy back-cover ads.

The last Philip Morris ads in Sports Illustrated and Rolling Stone ran in May, a company statement said.

“I consider it a very postive development,” Philip Morris trial attorney Dan Webb said Tuesday. “It's a business decision made by the business people at Philip Morris.”

Smokers' attorney Stanley Rosenblatt considered the announcement opportunistic, saying, “The jury will see through this ploy.”

Meanwhile, Circuit Judge Robert Kaye reversed a decision he made Monday to limit testimony by an economist called by smokers about the finances of the nation's five biggest cigarette makers.

With the jury absent Monday, Kaye barred George Mundstock, a University of Miami law school finance professor, from talking about foreign cigarette sales and parent and sister companies.

But he returned to court Tuesday saying he reconsidered the issue overnight and would let Mundstock say what he wanted and “the jury can either accept it or not. It's up to them.”

The jury already has ruled against the industry and awarded $12.7 million in compensatory damages to three representative smokers.

The defendants are: R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., Philip Morris Inc., Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., Lorillard Tobacco Co., Liggett Group Inc., the industry's defunct Council for Tobacco Research and the Tobacco Institute.


By Catherine Wilson