Secret tobacco documents reveal gay campaign (8796)

According to once-secret tobacco industry documents, cigarette giant Philip Morris once had it sights trained on the gay community as a lucrative and burgeoning market of potential new smokers. But when conservative consumers complained of the damage being done to the company's Marlboro Man image, Philip Morris quickly emphasized that it was not targeting gays and downplayed its advertising in gay publications, saying that it was also advertising in Penthouse and Playboy.

The documents were examined by University of California, San Francisco, researchers who detailed how during the early 1990s Philip Morris first began advertising Benson & Hedges cigarettes in gay-oriented publications as marketers touted the brand loyalty and spending clout of gays and lesbians. The research article outlining the documents was released Wednesday and appears in the June issue of the American Journal of Public Health. A related study focusing on a national AIDS advocacy group's 1990 boycott of Philip Morris also appears in the June issue of the journal Tobacco Control.