Cigarette Suit Says Maker Gave Samples to Children

[DaveSZ]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/27/national/27tobacco.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1088327142-Jemz6KhzMmn/eZTvcmZ7yQ


Cigarette Suit Says Maker Gave Samples to Children
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: June 27, 2004


OSTON, June 26 (AP) - The son of a woman who died of lung cancer is planning to sue a cigarette company for giving her free samples when she was a girl, contending that the giveaways were aimed at black children.

The lawsuit against the Lorillard Tobacco Company, maker of Newport cigarettes, is thought by legal experts to be the first to accuse a tobacco company of focusing on black children. It is to be filed Monday in Suffolk Superior Court, The Boston Globe reported Saturday.



In interviews with lawyers before she died in 2002 at 54, the woman, Marie Evans, said that as a child she got free sample packs of 4 to 10 Newport cigarettes from a company van that regularly came to the Boston housing project where she lived.

Ms. Evans estimated that she received free cigarettes 25 to 50 times, starting when she was 9, and traded them for candy until she was 13, when she started smoking.

[tkmorris]

1. Damn

Ya know I grew up in a neighborhood that was majority black, even though I was not. We were all fairly poor, and all the kids smoked when we were teens. I used to wonder why so MANY of the black kids smoked Newports. It seems obvious in retrospect that Newport targetted blacks as a demographic group at some point, thus creating a niche for themselves but I never researched it to find out when and where.

This was the seventies so I am guessing the kids I knew were just imitating a trend already prevalent in black culture, handed down from the previous generation.

Does anyone remember Newport giveaways in other communities? Was this sort of thing widespread?

[pinniped]

2. Well I grew up in a predominantly white middle class neighborhood...

and I found cigarettes in the mailbox oneday.

We lit one up but didn't smoke it.

I can't recall what brand they were though.