Tobacco companies invite young opinion leaders to special events at nightclubs and use direct mail to market to smokers in a low-profile but effective strategy to recruit 18- to 25-year-old smokers, ABC News reported Feb. 20.

 "These are the most clever advertisers in the world," said Margo Leathers Sidener, president and CEO of Breathe California, referring to tobacco companies. "They spend $15 billion dollars, and that's 2003 figures, that's the latest that we have, and they spend that on marketing every year."

The 1998 nationwide tobacco settlement banned some, but not all, tobacco marketing. Tobacco companies are still free to mail coupons and promotional materials like matches to prospective customers, for example. "It's very, very pernicious, because first of all, it's almost completely out of the public eye so most authorities, most of the public, most people in the media don't even know about it," said University of California at San Francisco tobacco researcher Stanton Glantz. "They actually can develop relationship marketing and identify which young people are the leaders, who are the trend setters and target them."

Glantz said industry-sponsored bar events are a prime vehicle for developing lists of marketing prospects. "They scan your drivers license allegedly to confirm you age, but if you show up at one of these tobacco-industry bar promotions and show them your drivers license, you're just right in their data base and they can track you for the rest of your life," he said.

Glantz said the practice borders on identity theft and said it should be banned.