Abstract

Tobacco companies use color on cigarette packaging and labelling to communicate brand imagery, diminish health concerns, and as a replacement for prohibited descriptive words ('light' and 'mild') to make misleading claims about reduced risks. Dr. Glantz analyzes previously secret tobacco industry documents to identify additional ways in which cigarette companies tested and manipulated pack colors to affect consumers' perceptions of the cigarettes' flavor and strength.

Biography

Stanton A. Glantz, Ph.D.
Professor of Medicine
Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education
University of California, San Francisco

Dr. Stanton Glantz, the University of California, San Francisco, Truth Initiative Distinguished Professor of Tobacco Control, conducts research on a wide range of topics ranging from the health effects of secondhand smoke (particularly the cardiovascular system) to the efficacy of different tobacco control policies. To reflect the changing tobacco landscape, his work now includes e-cigarettes and marijuana. Dr. Glantz is Principal Investigator for the $20 million 5-year Tobacco Centers of Regulatory Science (TCORS) funded by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health. The overarching theme of this Center is the development of improved models to inform tobacco product regulatory strategies that integrate (1) economic impacts of tobacco use on health costs; (2) risk perceptions, perceived acceptability, and consumer responses to pro-tobacco marketing and anti-tobacco messages and other social determinants of tobacco use; and (3) rapid changes in risk due to tobacco use and secondhand smoke exposure as manifest in cardiovascular and pulmonary dysfunction.