Lorillard's "Candy Box" ad for Newport cigarettes: is she pregnant?

One of the axioms in tobacco control is that today’s outrage from the tobacco industry will be eclipsed by tomorrow’s. Just when you think you’ve seen the worst possible transgression by the bad guys, something even worse comes along. The “outrage” in the spring of 1985 was an advertisement for Newport Lights which featured a pregnant woman, or at least a woman who looked pregnant—very pregnant. The ad is reproduced on the cover of this journal supplement and as a figure in this essay (fig 1). Tobacco industry documents now available on the web shed light on the history of the ad. Lorillard called the ad “Candy Box” because it shows a young man oVering a box of candy to a young woman—a woman with a very protuberant abdomen. According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), “The ad ran extensively in April, May and June [of 1985] in many national magazines, including Family Circle, Time, People, National Enquirer, Woman’s Day, etc.” Health groups, not surprisingly, were aghast upon seeing the ad. The image “implies that it is all right for pregnant women to smoke and may be unfair and deceptive in violation of FTC regulations,” said Matthew Myers, then director of the Coalition on Smoking OR Health (and now executive director of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids). The Coalition and others asked the FTC to investigate. At the same time, a staV person for the US House of Representatives’ subcommittee on health and the environment (then chaired by Congressman Henry Waxman of California) reported that the subcommittee would hold hearings on cigarette advertising and promotion in September or October of that year, and that the Newport ad was already on the agenda. In an “informal survey of about 100 people” conducted by the coalition, all respondents described the model as appearing pregnant. But a spokeswoman for Lorillard told the Associated Press that it was all a matter of “poor cropping”: “The (uncropped) photograph of the girl shows she has a very tiny waist and tight jeans in that shot.” The billowing pink blouse, she said, was the result of the woman leading backwards. The company, however, refused to give the Associated Press the uncropped photograph or the name of the model. 4 Walker Merryman, vice president of the Tobacco Institute, characterised as “horse ......” the suggestion that a cigarette company would use a pregnant woman in its advertising.