Current Research and Scholarly Interests
In 2006 I created a research group which studies the impact tobacco advertising, marketing, and promotion. The initial priority of SRITA was to create a digital repository of tobacco advertising material to support scholarship, advocacy, judicial proceedings, and regulatory/legislative deliberations. The online collection has grown to become the world’s largest repository of tobacco advertising images. Most images are high quality scan which are contained within a searchable, meta-data rich, annotated online database. As of January 2024, the online collection (tobacco.stanford.edu) is comprised of 62,547 tobacco advertisements and has had 1.1M unique users representing virtually every country in the world. The entire compendium of original tobacco advertisements from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries now reside in the archives of the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution. A Smithsonian exhibit featuring the collection “When More Doctors Smoked Camels” ran 2018-2022.
As our group seeks to influence policy, media attention is helpful in communicating the our research findings to policy makers and the public. The work of SRITA has been subject of articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, SF Chronicle, LA Times, Forbes, Times of London, Vox, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, Wired, History Channel, The Atlantic, Smithsonian Magazine, and many other media outlets. Numerous TV and radio news shows have featured the work of SRITA including CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NPR, AP, Reuters, and Bloomberg. SRITA research was featured in Netflix Big Vape: The Rise and Fall of JUUL (2023) and CNBC “American Greed” Series on The Rise of JUUL’s Business (2023).
As a Stanford University research group, SRITA focuses upon original scholarship utilizing the unique resource of our advertising collection. Our early academic focus was primarily historical study of advertisements using images of physicians and targeted to physicians in medical journals as well as overt health claims so prominent during the 20th century. A primary observation of SRITA research is that the tobacco industry continues to use similar advertising messages in the 21st century as they did in the mid-20’th century (health reassurance, social popularity, romantic success, etc.) although they employ different distribution channels today such as social media and influencers. An important research focus of SRITA is tobacco advertising targeting of special populations such as of women, youth, and Black Americans.
Dr Jackler has been extensively engaged in helping to inform policy through testimony in Congress (House Oversight Committee in July 2019, Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security in August 2021) and consultations with the FDA, legislators, regulators, and attorneys general from numerous states. SRITA also collaborates with the World Health Organization, The American Heart Association, and others.
In recent years, SRITA research has focused primarily upon emerging tobacco products such as e-cigarettes, heated tobacco, and novel forms of oral nicotine. SRITA has conducted numerous studies of the promotion of popular products (e.g. JUUL, IQOS, Puff Bar), social media marketing, cessation advertising, nicotine delivery, and the role of flavors in attracting youth. SRITA’s 2019 papers “The Nicotine Arms Race” (published in Tobacco Control) together with a research paper on “JUUL Marketing in its First 3 Years on the Market” were foundational in litigation by State Attorneys General leading to both marketing constraints and substantial monetary penalties. In addition to academic journals SRITA publishes comprehensive analyzes via our website (https://tobacco.stanford.edu/publications/).
