Marketing Admission Fuels Efforts To Target Smoking by Teenagers

A cigarette company's striking admission that the tobacco industry markets its products to children has given a big boost to education and health groups' campaigns to stamp out smoking among young people.

"We're going to take the ball and run with it," said Brenda Z. Greene, the manager for health programs at the National School Boards Association, which is establishing a national help-line for schools that want to achieve a smoke-free campus. "It adds credibility to what schools have been trying to teach," she said.

The Liggett Group Inc., the smallest of the country's five leading tobacco companies, acknowledged last month that cigarettes are addictive, that they can cause cancer, and that the industry as a whole markets to minors. These concessions--a first for any cigarette maker--were part of Liggett's settlement with 22 states that have filed lawsuits against the country's five tobacco giants for medical costs associated with the negative health effects of tobacco use. The Durham, N.C.-based company sells L&M...