MCPC - Macomb County Prevention Coalition, drug-free schools, ken lampar, macomb, michigan

return to articles

c & g newspapers letterhead

Board endorses tobacco ad-free magazines

By Olivia Goldberg / The Citizen
Wednesday, January 24, 2007 9:42 AM EST

AUBURN - The Auburn school board endorsed a resolution Tuesday night to extinguish tobacco ads in magazines carried in school district libraries.

Karen Darling, the coordinator for a youth-led anti-tobacco movement called Reality Check, asked for the school board's support, during a regular meeting, in the group's efforts to change advertising in mainstream magazines.

In 1998, four major tobacco companies (Philip Morris, RJ Reynolds, U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Company and Santa Fe Tobacco Company) entered into a master settlement agreement to refrain from marketing their products to young people, directly or indirectly. The ban included marketing to youth via newspaper and magazine advertising.

Beyond the direction not to target youth, the agreement did not restrict tobacco product advertising in magazines per se. Reality Check holds that sending magazines containing such ads to schools constitutes a way of marketing tobacco products to young people.

Currently, Time, Inc., which publishes Time, Sports Illustrated and People, publishes versions of its magazines without tobacco advertising. School Superintendent John Plume told the board Auburn schools currently carry a number of other magazines that retain such ads. These include Outdoor Life, Field and Stream, Popular Science, Ebony and Essence magazines.

The board's endorsement presses for the expansion of a selective binding agreement between the aforementioned tobacco companies and the National Association of Attorneys General, to encourage versions of the latter magazines, sans tobacco ads, that school settings may carry.