VALLEYWIDE : Lawmakers Protest Ban on AIDS Book

Assemblyman Tom Hayden, who is seeking a state Senate seat in the southern San Fernando Valley, has organized a legislative protest asking three of the nation’s largest retail chains to reconsider their decision not to sell Magic Johnson’s book on AIDS prevention.

In a letter this week, Hayden and 15 other Democratic lawmakers said: “Magic Johnson is a global hero and a role model to millions of young people who are vulnerable to the threat of AIDS. It is a matter of life and death that his message be heard.”

No Valley-area lawmakers joined Hayden in signing the protest letter.

The letter was addressed to top executives of K mart Corp., Wal-Mart and the Walgreen Co. in an effort to clarify the reasons the stores have banned the basketball star’s book, titled “What You Can Do to Avoid AIDS.”

Hayden, who is campaigning for the state Senate in a district that stretches from Calabasas to Santa Monica, now represents a Santa Monica-based Assembly district.

A Walgreen spokesman said the company decided in May not to carry Johnson’s book because “we found some of the material to be inappropriate for a neighborhood drugstore” and that it did not meet the firm’s “clean magazine policy.”

A K mart spokeswoman said that although the retailer rejected selling Johnson’s book, it is making it available through its Waldenbooks subsidiary.

A spokesman for Wal-Mart, the nation’s biggest retailer, was unavailable for comment but executives said previously that the chain determined the book is “not in keeping with what our customers tell us they want to read.”