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Federal law requires cigarette companies to display conspicuously in advertisements and on cigarette packages one of four health warnings from the Surgeon General regarding the health risks of smoking cigarettes. The ability to read such warnings on two outdoor media, billboards and advertisements on taxicabs, was investigated. On street billboards, 46 percent of the warning captions were readable, while on highway billboards, the readability dropped to 5 percent. However, the brand name and other notable images contained in the advertisement could be recognized more than 95 percent of the time. Observers of 100 taxicab advertisements were unable to read the Surgeon General's health warning in any of them, although brand name and notable imagery were identified in 95 percent of the ads. Factors influencing the inability to read outdoor advertisements included the size of the letters, the length of the health message, and the distance and movement between the ads and the observer. It is concluded that the legally mandated health warning is unreadable in a majority of current forms used in billboard and taxicab advertisements., Outdoor advertising media represent a major vehicle by which cigarette companies promote their products. We investigated the readability of the Surgeon General's warning in cigarette advertisements (ads) in two outdoor media: billboards and taxicab ads. In an experiment in metropolitan Atlanta under typical driving conditions, observes were able to read the entire health warning on 18 (46%) of 39 street billboards but on only two (5%) of 39 highway billboards. In contrast, the content of the ads (ie, brand name, other wording, and notable imagery) could be recognized under the same conditions on more than 95% of the billboards. In a similar study of 100 taxicab cigarette ads in New York City, observes were unable to read the health warning in any of the ads but were able to identify the brand name in all ads and notable imagery in 95% of the ads. Significant differences between the readability of the warning and identification of the advertising content persisted even when partially read warnings were considered to have been read. We conclude that the Surgeon General's warning is not readable in its current form in the vast majority of billboard and taxicab ads. Factors contributing to unreadability include the small size of the letters, the excessive length of the warnings, the distance between the viewers and the ads, and movement between the viewers and the ads.

A National Health Interview Survey from 1974 to 1985 projects that 22 percent (40 million) of adult Americans will be smokers by the year 2000. Major inequalities are projected in the smoking patterns among people with different educational backgrounds. Fewer than 10 percent of those with a college degree will smoke, while at least 30 percent of those whose education does not extend beyond high school smoke. Along the lines of gender and race, it is projected that 21 percent of whites, 25 percent of balcks, 23 percent of women, and 20 percent of men will be smokers by the year 2000. Public health efforts to encourage people to stop smoking helped cut the numbers of smokers between 1974 and 1985. However, since that time, nearly 1 million Americans started smoking cigarettes each year. Smoking prevention campaigns should focus on young people, especially those less educated, in order to reduce the numbers of cigarette smokers., Data from National Health Interview Surveys from 1974 through 1985 are used to project cigarette smoking prevalence to the year 2000. Smoking prevalence in the United States has declined at a linear rate since 1974. If this trend continues, in the year 2000, 22% of the adult population (40 million Americans) will be smokers. By the year 2000, the major inequalities in prevalence will occur among educational categories. At least 305 of those who have not proceeded beyond a high school education will be smokers, whereas less than 10% of college graduates will smoke. Among the other sociodemographic subgroups, smoking prevalence is expected to decrease by the year 2000 to 20% among men, to 23% among women, to 25% among blacks, and to 21% among whites. Between 1974 and 1985, approximately 1.3 million persons per year became former smokers, indicating considerable success in public health efforts to encourage people to stop smoking. However, in the early 1980s, approximately 1 million new young persons per year were recruited to the ranks of regular smokers. This is equivalent to about 3000 new smokers each day. Public health efforts need to focus more on preventing young people from starting to smoke, and such prevention efforts should particularly target less educated socioeconomic groups.

Smoking patterns, including the number of cigarette smokers and the number of people stopping and starting smoking, were analyzed in terms of gender and race by the National Health Interview Surveys from 1974 to 1985. Smoking is considered to be the most preventable cause of premature death in the United States. Great effort has been made by public health professionals to decrease cigarette smoking in the last 25 years. The number men smoking has decreased linearly each year to 33.5 percent in 1985. Smoking by women decreased to 27.6 percent during the same period. Fewer men started smoking during the period, while the number of women starting to smoke remained the same. However, more women than men stopped smoking during the period. Smoking by whites and blacks decreased to 29.6 and 35.6 percent, respectively. Overall, fewer blacks than whites started smoking between 1974 and 1985. The prevalence of smoking has decreased for men and women, both black and white, although more slowly in women. A reduction in the number of people starting smoking, rather than the amount of those quitting the habit, is mostly responsible for the convergence of smoking patterns of men and women., Trends in the prevalence, initiation, and cessation of cigarette smoking are reported for the US population using weighted and age-standardized data from seven National Health Interview Surveys (1974 to 1985). The decline in prevalence was linear, with the prevalence for men decreasing at 0.91 percentage points per year to 33.5% in 1985 and the prevalence for women decreasing at 0.33 percentage points per year to 27.6% in 1985. For whites the rate of decline (percentage points per year) was 0.57, to 29.4% in 1985, and for blacks the decline was 0.67, to 35.6% in 1985. Smoking cessation increased among all gender-race groups from 1974 to 1985, with the yearly rate of increase (in percentage points per year) about equivalent for blacks (0.75 and whites (.77), while it was higher in women (0.90 than in men (0.67). Smoking initiation decreased among young men (-1.03), while it remained about the same in young women (+0.11). Initiation decreased at a more rapid rate in blacks (-1.02) than in whites (-0.35). We conclude that smoking prevalence is decreasing across all race-gender groups, although at a slower rate for women than men, and that differences in initiation, more than cessation, are primarily responsible for the converging of smoking prevalence rates among men and women.