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 Twenty-two years ago a team of researchers traveled to some 200 U.S. preschools with a game board and a list. That now seminal study, in which 91 percent of the three- and six-year-olds they tested correctly paired mascot Joe Camel with his matching cigarettes, set off a cascade of antismoking legislation aimed at shielding American youth from aggressive tobacco ads. And in 2003 the World Heath Organization followed suit with an international treaty designed to limit the marketing power of tobacco companies in developing countries.

But new findings suggest that tobacco companies have succeeded in moving their campaign overseas regardless of international recommendations. This year a research team in Brazil, China, Russia, Nigeria, Pakistan and India conducted a very similar version of the original Joe Camel study. Among the 2,400 five- and six-year-olds they interviewed, 68 percent could identify at least one tobacco logo.

Experts say the finding is the latest in a series of recent studies to indicate that the same four tobacco companies that U.S. public health advocates kicked out in the 1990s are still targeting the most vulnerable members of society-namely, children, teens and those trying to quit, with a focus on less affluent nations.