If you’re a teenager who sees an adult-oriented anti-smoking ad that says, "Talk: They’ll Listen," what’s the first thing you’re going to do?

Why, smoke, of course.

That’s the reaction high-schoolers have when they view industry-funded anti-smoking ads meant for their parents, according to a recent report by Australian researchers in the American Journal of Public Health.

(A subscription is required for a link to the study but a draft abstract is below).

The study adds more evidence to the notion that Big Tobacco’s campaign to discourage the purchase of their lethal product actually promotes it, and kids think cigarettes are less harmful after viewing certain types of ads.

And this, the authors claimed, was just what one tobacco company intended.

Is anyone the least bit surprised? When Phillip Morris targeted kids by telling them to "Think. Don’t Smoke" in a television campaign that ended in 2003, the same thing happened. No matter how helpful or responsible the tobacco industry tries to appear, it is never going to create ads that effectively discourage people from buying its product.

In fact, it keeps thinking of new ways to keep people addicted, such as getting smokers to alter their habit, rather than quitting altogether.

"Light" cigarettes, for example, which have lower levels of nicotine and tar, are just as dangerous as regular brands, studies show. Yet a survey of more than 12,000 smokers and former smokers showed that 37 percent turned to these brands because they thought they were less harmful.

Still, there is a solution to the lame smokescreen: require the anti-smoking ads to be as gory and visceral as possible, with an emphasis on the serious health consequences of smoking. Some of these ads can and do work.

Teens found smoking to be less cool when they were shown images such as gunk oozing from a smoker’s artery and a blood clot in a smoker’s brain, according to a 2003 study from the Cancer Council Victoria in Australia.

The reason the "Talk: They’ll Listen" campaign was such a bust is the overt message is that parents should talk to their children about smoking. But "no reason beyond simply being a teenager is offered as to why youths should not smoke," the Australian researchers concluded.

Developmental psychologists say teens 15 through 17 have a tendency to reject authoritarian messages. That’s because they see themselves as independent and self reliant and are less likely to rely on their parents for guidance as they transition to adulthood, something that has been demonstrated by national anti-drug campaigns.

Unfortunately, the groups that are able to put together the effective anti-smoking ads, such as the American Legacy Foundation, are suffering from budget cuts that will force it to advertise less in the future, according to the study. And state anti-tobacco campaign advertising has also begun to decline. So we’re relying mostly on the tobacco industry to come up with effective anti-smoking ads.

Personally, I like the idea of requiring all cigarette packages to carry shocking pictures of what smoking can do to a person’s physical appearance, especially when it comes to premature aging. Though having a grayish, wasted look and yellow teeth isn’t as life-threatening as lung cancer, young girls who learn that smokers in their 40s often have as many facial wrinkles as non-smokers in their 60s might think twice about sucking on cigarettes to keep their weight down.

Effect of Televised, Tobacco Company-Funded Smoking Prevention Advertisingon Youth Smoking-Related Beliefs, Intentions, and Behavior

Objective. To relate exposure to televised youth smoking prevention advertising to youths’ smoking beliefs, intentions, and behaviors.

Methods. We obtained commercial television ratings data from 75 US media markets, and to determine the average youth exposure to tobacco company youth targeted and parent-targeted smoking prevention advertising. We merged these data with nationally representative school-based survey data (n=103172) gathered from 1999 to 2002. Multivariate regression models controlled for individual, geographic, and tobacco policy factors, and other televised antitobacco advertising.

Results. There was little relation between exposure to tobacco company–sponsored, youth-targeted advertising and youth smoking outcomes. Among youths in grades 10 and 12, during the 4 months leading up to survey administration, each additional viewing of a tobacco company parent-targeted advertisement was, on average, associated with lower perceived harm of smoking (odds ratio [OR]=0.93; confidence interval [CI]=0.88, 0.98), stronger approval of smoking (OR=1.11; CI=1.03,1.20), stronger intentions to smoke in the future (OR=1.12; CI=1.04,1.21), and greater likelihood of having smoked in the past 30 days (OR=1.12; CI=1.04,1.19).