Efforts to counter marketing and promotion strategies by the tobacco industry in the United States have been sponsored primarily by mainstream health sector organisations. African Americans and Latinos are under-represented in such organisations. Although women are well represented in their memberships, they are largely absent from positions of leadership. This is despite the fact that tobacco companies have heavily targeted these groups with specific brands of cigarettes, extensive and comprehensive advertising campaigns, and marketing and promotion initiatives.^1–4

There is a general lack of activity and interest in tobacco control among African American, Latino, and women’s organisations and their leadership. Explanations for this have been largely anecdotal. A major question, however, concerns the large amounts of money received by these groups from tobacco marketing and promotion initiatives, and whether the leadership of these organisations has been thus compromised. There has been little systematic review of this. One reason is that research priorities are established by the mainstream, reflecting the interests of its members. Indeed, although health advocates protested over the targeted marketing of cigarettes to African Americans living in the inner cities of America, the issue did not get appreciable attention until the aborted attempt of R J Reynolds to develop and market Uptown cigarettes that were specifically designed for African Americans.⁵

This paper, developed as a companion document to that prepared by the Group on Marketing and Promotion (p SI9), specifically reviews the marketing and promotion activities of the US tobacco industry in relation to African Americans, Latinos, and women and describes specific areas worthy of policy research and analysis.