NEW YORK (AP) -- The latest voice in the growing chorus of anti-smoking campaigners is coming from the creator of the Marlboro Man.
Philip Morris, the nation's biggest tobacco company, plans to spend more than $100 million over the next year trying to drive away potential customers.The campaign target is kids, and it will include TV ads in which it has young people saying that smoking isn't cool.
But critics say Philip Morris is mainly trying to improve its image with kids' parents as the industry remains under attack in court and faces the prospect of renewed congressional efforts to regulate tobacco as a drug.
Anti-smoking activist Bill Godshall of the public health group Smokefree Pennsylvania said the campaign could backfire.
"If you want kids to start smoking, the most effective way is to tell kids they shouldn't smoke," he said. "It only makes kids curious."
Big Tobacco recently agreed to pay $206 billion to settle claims by 46 states, the District of Columbia and five U.S. territories for reimbursement for the health costs of treating tobacco-related illnesses.
The settlement payment included $1.7 billion to study why children smoke and to finance programs aimed at discouraging them from starting.
Philip Morris spokeswoman Ellen Merlo said her company wanted to act more quickly to reverse the recent reported rise in youth smoking.
"We feel strongly kids shouldn't smoke and we are taking what we hope is responsible action," she said Thursday.
She said more than half the first year's $100 million in spending will go to its anti-smoking advertising campaign, an amount comparable to what it spends advertising its best-selling Marlboro brand.
The first ads bearing the slogan "Think. Don't Smoke" are aimed at youngsters between 10 and 14 years old and will appear on networks like ABC, Fox, WB, TNT and The Cartoon Channel.
Merlo said NBC had refused to take the ads but didn't know the reason. Repeated calls to NBC were not returned Thursday. CBS said it was reviewing the issue.
Philip Morris chose TV for the campaign because the intended audience "tends to watch TV more than they read newspapers and magazines," Merlo said. "These are definitely not tobacco ads," she said.