JOE CAMEL'S LEGACY

A new outpouring of R.J. Reynolds documents offers proof that the cigarette
maker wanted to turn kids into addicts

Examiner Editorial

YOUTHEN. It's a word invented by and for the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. of
Winston-Salem, N.C. When its executives tested the Joe Camel cartoon
character 25 years ago in France, a long-secret memo said they needed to
"youthen the brand" of Camel cigarettes.

The late Joe Camel, cool and suave and hip, became a role model.

"It's about as young as you can get," says a note from the advertising
agency that worked for RJR in 1974, "and aims right at the young adult
smoker Camel needs to attract."

Another memo from the vice president of marketing told his board of
directors about the need to compete with Marlboro by capturing the "young
adult market, the 14 to 24 age group" that "will account for a key share of
the total cigarette volume - for at least the next 25 years."

These were among hundreds of smoking-gun documents made public last week as
a condition of the $10 million settlement of a case with Joe Camel as an
unnamed co-conspirator. The suit was filed in 1991 by San Francisco
attorney Janet Mangini, who was joined later by City Attorney Louise Renne
and lawyers for several other California cities and counties. Plaintiffs
argued that Mr. Camel was part of a campaign to turn youngsters into
lifelong smokers, a contention hotly denied by the tobacco giant's fuming
spinmeisters.

Joe Camel brought hundreds of millions of dollars to RJR. Before his debut
in 1988, according to the documents, teen smokers accounted for a mere $6
million per year in RJR revenues. By 1991, the figure hit $476 million. A
cool and humpless character with a saxophone, sunglasses, leather jacket, a
pool cue and a cigarette dangling from his lips, he must have scoffed at
the brand's long-time slogan, "I'd walk a mile for a Camel." Contemporary
youth isn't noted for walking anywhere.

Before then, the cigarette's image was the scroungy-looking dromedary still
pictured amid the pyramids on packages of "Turkish & Domestic Blend
Cigarettes." The surgeon general's warning is printed on the back: "Smoking
Causes Lung Cancer, Heart Disease, Emphysema, and May Complicate
Pregnancy." Few statements are so accurate from the creators of Joe Camel,
who already was ailing when taken off life support last summer as part of
the same settlement.

Renne said the documents prove that the Joe Camel campaign was "exactly
what we always thought it was: an illegal and unethical effort to get
children to smoke."

RJR spokespersons claim the documents have been quoted out of context and
assert that the company never has targeted young people. Because study
after study shows that nearly 90 percent of smokers begin while in their
teens, the documents supply a quote that stands by itself as grim proof of
a calculated campaign: "To ensure increased and longer-term growth for
Camel Filter, the brand must increase its share penetration among the 14-24
age group which have a new set of more liberal values and which represent
tomorrow's cigarette business."

The latest evidence of the tobacco industry's flat-out lies should help
persuade Congress to put even more teeth into the proposed $368 billion
national settlement reached between the cigarette makers and state
attorneys general. The deal doesn't go nearly far enough in controlling an
industry that cynically intended to turn kids into addicts by means of a
well-documented strategy to, in a word, youthenize.