Board Votes to Phase Out Cigarette Ads on Buses

Saying public buses should not be carrying messages promoting unhealthful habits, the Orange County Transit District board of directors voted unanimously Tuesday to start phasing out cigarette advertising on them.

The directors took the action even though cigarette advertising now accounts for about 20%, or $200,000, of the transit district’s annual advertising income. The motion calls for limiting tobacco ads to 15% of the total advertising on OCTD buses beginning with the next fiscal year.

“My ultimate (goal) is to see no tobacco advertising,” said Orange County Supervisor Roger B. Stanton, one of the five OCTD directors and the one who made the motion to start phasing out tobacco advertising.

The district has received complaints from the public, among them letters from schoolchildren, about cigarette advertising on public buses.

The public criticism “pertains mostly to the cartoony Camel cigarette ads, which are perceived to be targeted at children,” said Ellen Harvey, the district marketing manager. “We have received letters and phone calls, and there have been signs and posters” against cigarette advertising “placed at our bus stops.”

Harvey presented four options to the directors. One called for phasing out tobacco advertising starting July 1 by limiting space on buses to 15% of the total advertising. Harvey said that option would allow time for other ads to be solicited.

Stanton said that the phase-out option “would allow us to reduce the (cigarette) advertising in the transition phase.”

OCTD Director William E. Farris said that cigarette advertising is not the only type that concerns him. He said he thinks “a certain brand of hamburgers” that has ads on buses “are just as bad as tobacco.”

County Supervisor Don R. Roth, another OCTD director, asked in jest, “Is our next phase not to take hamburger ads because of high cholesterol?”

Director Gary L. Hausdorfer, who is a San Juan Capistrano councilman, said the difference between worries about hamburgers and worries about cigarettes is that the U.S. surgeon general specifically warns against the danger of cigarette smoking. Hausdorfer added: “As far as I know cigarettes are the only product legally available that indicates they are terminal for your health. . . . I think it is wrong to advertise against drug use on one side of a bus, and then advertise for smoking on the other side.”