Students viewing news magazines at school won’t be exposed to
tobacco ads anymore.
Four major tobacco companies agreed to remove advertisements for
cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products from copies of Time,
Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report distributed to middle and
high schools.
Students viewing news magazines at school won’t be exposed to tobacco ads anymore.
Four major tobacco companies agreed to remove advertisements for cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products from copies of Time, Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report distributed to middle and high schools.
“Obviously (this) is very important. We have a library here that has a lot of magazines and periodicals. Students spend a lot of time in the library,” said Andrew Prisco, counselor and advisor of the TobAction Club at San Benito High School. “Those types of ads can certainly influence them.”
The No. 1 influence on children is whether a parent or other family member smokes, Prisco said, but the secondary indicators are the media and peers when children reach their teens.
“It’s important to try to send kids positive messages through the media pretty early,” Prisco said.
While some argue that the move has the possibility of cutting down on the number of teens who start smoking, others say it’s not enough.
Prisco said he would like to see ads for alcohol taken out of magazines in additional to tobacco ads.
Rancho San Justo Middle School Librarian Diane Smith said the companies should be pulling their ads from television over magazines.
“It’s a good decision, but at the same time, they’re pulling their ads from magazines, but they’re still airing them on TV. Kids view TV more than Newsweek or Time (at this age level),” Smith said.
Rancho students pick up Teen People and Sports Illustrated more than news magazines, she said. With so many of the school’s magazines getting destroyed or stolen, Smith isn’t ordering as many as she used to.
“If they target anything, they should target the billboards or TV,” she said.
The four tobacco companies involved are Philip Morris USA Inc., R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. and U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Co.
The importance of targeting these grades is serious – studies show that more than 80 percent of adult smokers began smoking before the age of 18. Also, research indicates that every day in the United States, more than 2,000 people under the age of 18 begin smoking and that one-third of those people will die from tobacco-related diseases.
The three magazines distribute hundreds of thousands of copies of the magazines each week to middle- and high-school campuses across the nation. The total estimated audience for Newsweek is 1 million students.
From January 2002 to June 2003, the four tobacco companies placed around 120 ads for cigarettes and smokeless tobacco in the three magazines.
The National Association of Attorneys General, including California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, brokered the deal with the tobacco companies.
