Smoking still targets kids

A new study by the American Journal of Preventative Medicine shows that outdoor marketing of tobacco in places where it can reach children and adolescents persists despite widespread bans and voluntary pledges by industry groups.

Unfortunately, this breach is nothing new. In 1996, Consumer Reports teamed up with HBO to make a short documentary called "Smoke Alarm: The Unfiltered Truth about Cigarettes," which is airing today at 6:00 pm Eastern time and 9:00 pm Pacific on HBO Family. (See if you can pick up some of the celebrity voices, which include Tony Danza, Lou Diamond Phillips, and rapper Tone Loc.) Blending animation, skits, quizzes and interviews, the program was designed to help young people cope with the tactics tobacco companies use to hook kids on smoking. It was nominated for an Emmy for outstanding children’s programming.

In 1998, 46 states reached a joint settlement with tobacco companies outlawing the use of billboards and transit benches to promote tobacco. Additionally, a voluntary pledge of the Outdoor Advertising Association of America restricts outdoor ads for products that are illegal to sell to minors, including tobacco and alcohol, from within 500 feet of schools playgrounds and places of worship.

But researchers from the RAND Corporation looked at outdoor advertising in Los Angeles County and pre-Katrina southern Louisiana and found ads that violated both the tobacco settlement and the voluntary pledge. "A substantial percentage of outdoor ads for alcohol and tobacco was located within 500 feet of a school, playground, or church," the researchers note. The study found enforcement of the tobacco settlement ban in Louisiana particularly lax because no public agency is responsible for monitoring tobacco companies’ outdoor advertising practices, and because only state attorneys general are designated to investigate and prosecute violations, rather than local law enforcement officials who are better positioned to do so.

The study concluded that cities need to be empowered to properly enforce violations to the tobacco settlement, and that further legislation is needed to force advertisers to honor their voluntary pledge.

Twelve years after the release of "Smoke Alarm," we'd like nothing better than for that film's message to be obsolete. And while some strides have been made (see Joe Camel) it appears that tobacco companies are still marketing to children in our cities and on our streets.

The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act might fill some of the legislative gap. According to an article in the July 31st edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, that bill, currently under consideration in Congress, strengthens advertising restrictions and prohibitions on marketing to youth, according to Allan M. Brandt, Ph.D., author of the NEJM piece.

—Kevin McCarthy, associate editor

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