Tobacco Ads to Be Pulled From School Magazines

Four top U.S. tobacco companies have agreed to pull cigarette and smokeless tobacco advertisements from newsmagazine editions geared at schoolchildren, state attorneys general said Monday.

They said Philip Morris USA Inc., R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. and U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Co. would remove ads from hundreds of thousands of school editions of U.S. News and World Report, Time and Newsweek distributed weekly to high schools and middle schools.

In June, the Tobacco Enforcement Committee of the National Assn. of Attorneys General wrote to the four companies, asking that they make arrangements with publishers to ensure that their tobacco ads did not appear in the classroom editions.

New York Atty. Gen. Eliot Spitzer said the advertisements were “a clear violation” of the national tobacco settlement agreement, which prohibits marketing activities that target youth.

Pennsylvania Atty. Gen. Mike Fisher said the four tobacco companies had placed nearly 120 ads in these magazines from January 2002 to June 2003.

Newsweek alone distributes some 300,000 copies of its magazine each week to U.S. classrooms, according to the office of Massachusetts Atty. Gen. Tom Reilly. The school editions are distributed under programs called Time Classroom, Newsweek Education Program and U.S. News Classroom Extension Program.