Tobacco companies spendmore than $5 billion annually to advertise and promote cigarettes and other tobacco products. Tobacco companies claim that the purpose and desiredeffect of marketing are merely to provide information and to influence brandselection among current smokers, although only about 10 percent of smokers switch brands in any one year. Since more than one million adult smokers stop smoking every year and almost half a million other adult smokers die from smoking-related diseases, the tobacco companies must recruit an average of 3,300 new young smokers every day to replace those who die or otherwise stop smoking. Tobacco companies contendthat smoking is an "adult habit" and that adult smokers "choose" to smoke. However, many medical researchers assert that cigarette smoking is primarily a childhood addiction or disease and that most of the adults who smoke startedas children and couldnot quit.

Unlike the pharmaceutical companies, which...