Young adults support bootleg smokes
So says research commissioned last year by the Canada Revenue Agency in advance of a planned $5-million advertising campaign designed to educate the public and raise awareness of the problem.
The agency hired the research firm Phase 5 to test-drive the proposed campaign with eight focus groups in Ontario and Quebec, made up of 64 smokers in their teens and early 20s. What the researchers discovered suggests the government’s message will be a tough sell.
Among 16-to-24-year-old smokers, the level of awareness and knowledge of contraband cigarettes is “very high.” Most focus group participants could readily describe their taste, appearance and packaging and knew where to buy them.
It was clear, researchers said, that the “vast majority” of participants had bought and smoked illegal cigarettes. They talked about buying them from school friends, coworkers, directly from native reserves and even under the counter from convenience stores. Most didn’t consider black-market cigarettes to be particularly harmful, said the researchers. Though participants in the focus groups knew they were illegal, “they are so common that this is not a concern or something they think about.”
In fact, a majority didn’t oppose their sale.
Almost all said they buy contraband cigarettes because of their low cost. A carton of legal cigarettes with tax sells for between $70 and $106 in Canada. By contrast, a carton of black-market cigarettes can be had for $10 or less.
When he announced plans for the ad campaign in May, Keith Ashfield, the minister of revenue, said it would “connect the dots between tobacco contraband and organized crime.”
But the young smokers in the focus groups weren’t buying it, researchers reported.
The link to organized crime was unclear and “farfetched,” participants said. “They simply did not understand how purchasing contraband cigarettes leads to things associated with organized crime such as prostitution, drugs and guns.”
They also “really struggled” with understanding how contraband cigarettes made their neighbourhoods unsafe -a key message of the campaign.
