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Support tobacco-free magazines |
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Magazines that carry ads for cigarettes or spit tobacco are part of the tobacco industry's drive to find new customers and make sure their current customers keep using. |
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Tobacco ads work! That's why the industry spends billions of dollars every year in all forms of advertising and promotion. The goal of advertising is to build a customer base. That includes obtaining new customers and retaining current customers. In the case of tobacco, new customers come from current users who switch brands, and from winning new users. Given the strength of brand loyalty for tobacco products, the best opportunity to get new customers is to convert non-users into users. One way you can counteract tobacco's quest for new addicts is to keep periodicals that carry tobacco advertising out of waiting rooms and waiting areas (see "Where do you wait?" in the sidebar.) The Task Force for Tobacco-Free Women & Girls recently announced an initiative to promote tobacco-free periodicals. Read their press release to find out more:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE On Thursday, August 26, 2004, the statewide Task Force for Tobacco-Free Women and Girls, based at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, celebrated National Women’s Equality Day by announcing, at a news conference in Albany, an initiative urging that physician’s offices, hospitals, beauty parlors, and other places where women and girls wait for services provide only magazines that are free from tobacco promotion. “Tobacco use is one equality that women can live without,” announced Kathryn Lake Mazierski, President of the National Organization for Women – New York State. Carolyn Webber, MD, President-Elect of the American Medical Women’s Association, reported on the effects of tobacco use on women, including a fact revealed in the 2004 Surgeon General’s Report, The Health Consequences of Smoking, that for every person who dies of tobacco-related illness, there are twenty living with chronic effects of tobacco use. Evelyn M. Currie, Immediate Past President of the American Association of University Women – NYS, provided examples of current tobacco promotion aimed at women. NYS Assemblywoman Sandy Galef outlined the Task Force initiative: A list of publications that are free of tobacco promotion is being sent to physicians and cosmetologists across the state, with information about the influence of tobacco advertising on women and girls. Magazines that do accept tobacco ads are being invited to change their policy so they can be included in the list as it is updated. Organizations are invited to endorse the Task Force initiative by signing on to this statement: “Physicians,
cosmetologists and others who would never directly encourage their
patients/patrons to use tobacco do inadvertently appear to endorse
its use when they allow tobacco advertisements in their offices
or places of business. We are calling on all offices and businesses
to allow only periodicals that are
free of tobacco promotion and tobacco-industry-friendly content
in their waiting areas.”
The organizations that have endorsed at this time include: American Association of University Women – New York State To endorse the magazine initiative or obtain more information about tobacco advertising targeting women, contact: Patricia Hysert |
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Web master TC Health Department Health Promotion Program Tompkins County Home Page T-Free: Tobacco Free Tompkins is funded by a grant to the Health Promotion Program at the Tompkins County Health Department |
