ALBANY, N.Y. — Days after a federal judge blocked the Food and Drug Administration from requiring graphic warnings on cigarette packs, a campaign began educating New Yorkers about the dangers of exposing youth to in-store tobacco displays.
The print, radio and online blitz is sponsored by The Community Partnerships for a Tobacco Free New York, which calls for gas stations, convenience stores and supermarkets to cover or move tobacco to an area concealed to shoppers.
“Research shows that kids who shop at stores with tobacco marketing two or more times a week are 64% more likely to start smoking than their peers who don’t,” campaign materials state.
Select Hannaford Supermarkets and Price Chopper stores voluntarily added double-thick opaque filters and otherwise muted tobacco sets so as not to entice so-called “replacement smokers,” at the urging of Project Action Tobacco-Free Coalition, which educates community members and local leaders in the New York counties of Hamilton, Fulton and Montgomery, about the benefits of concealing tobacco advertising.
Grand Union Family Markets has also removed power wall displays and concealed tobacco behind customer service desks.
Rebecca Guarino, coordinator of Project Action, applauds these voluntary steps but finds that broad-based legislation is a more effective way to get stores to cover advertising.
“In Canada each province created their own legislation to cover up tobacco advertising in stores,” she explained. “There is now no tobacco advertising in the entire nation. Between 2002 and 2007, the smoking rate among Canadian youth dropped from 29% to 19%.”
John Singleton, spokesman for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., said that focusing on programs that help prevent the sale of cigarettes and smokeless tobacco to minors is a better way to regulate underage smoking.
“Even if kids see tobacco, [they can’t use it] if it’s not sold,” he said.
Singleton points to We Card, an industry initiative that provides free training materials to tobacco sellers to prevent underage sales.
R.J. Reynolds sponsors Right Decisions, Right Now, a program to prevent kids from smoking.
Community Partnerships spokeswoman Susan Kennedy said that even if the FDA successfully appeals the federal judge’s decision and graphic warnings are splashed across cigarette packs, The Community Partnerships will not change course.
“We’d prefer not to have tobacco in a prominent place either way,” she said. “[An appeal] could take years and we don’t have years.”
