FDA Taps Hip-Hop Culture for New Anti-Tobacco Campaign

A new ad campaign by the Food and Drug Administration is targeting ethnic minority youths to discourage smoking. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today announced the launch of a national public education campaign to prevent and reduce tobacco use among multicultural youth who identify with the hip-hop peer crowd – a group that is often hard to reach and frequently exposed to pro-tobacco images and messages.

The ads that FDA has been using will target young people and encourage them to kick the habit or never get started.

The agency said the campaign is being funded by tobacco taxes.

“We’re asking hip-hop teens to take and keep control of their own lives by choosing to be tobacco-free”.

“Unfortunately, the health burdens of tobacco use disproportionately affect minority teens – particularly African American and Hispanic youth”, said Dr. Jonca Bull, FDA’s Assistant Commissioner for Minority Health, via an NBC News report. “The “Fresh Empire” campaign underscores that important message to hip-hop youth, empowering this at-risk peer crowd to live tobacco free”. It also wants the ads to reflect that hip hop ideals like “being authentic, powerful, confident, fashionable, creative and trendsetting” mean staying away from tobacco. According to Washington Post, the first ad will be televised on october 13 in tandem with the 2015 BET Hip-Hop Awards. These advertisements will happen in conjunction with local outreach efforts and social media engagement – all in a targeted effort to reach young people especially at risk of tobacco use. More than 10 million youth ages 12-17 in the United States are open to the idea of smoking or have already experimented with cigarettes.

Tobacco companies are footing the bill for the campaigns through fees charged by the FDA under a 2009 law. It was discovered that based on the use of words like “smoke” and “smoking” in hip hop music, hip hop listeners are more likely to smoke tobacco products than others.

Cigarette smoking is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths in the USA each year, the leading preventable cause of death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.