SPECIAL OUT SHOUT (SOS) BOX!
Urban neighborhoods in the Bay Area have been assaulted this week by a barrage of thousands of bright yellow flyers-found on sidewalks and streets for "Camel Wide" cigarettes. These inserts are in the SF Bay Guardian and the East Bay Express. They seem designed to fall out and are causing a tremendous amount of litter. On two separate occasions in the last week, I saw little kids picking up these flyers to check out the camel. A dozen or more were blown into my doorway. Hundreds of these flyers dot my street. I decided that enough is enough, and to speak up. I hope you will join me.
Below is a letter to the editor I sent today to the Guardian. Also, I collected, about 50 of these off the sidewalk yesterday by my home in the Mission. I am turning them into posters by BART, etc. urging people to complain about this rampant litter and tobacco marketing in the community.
What you can do:
1) Spread the word in your organizations and listserves, especially in urban areas where these free "alternative" papers are distributed. Send letters to the editor ([email protected]; [email protected]) and complain to city officials, both as individuals and organizations. SF residents: You can also call the San Francisco Department of Public Works' Litter Hotline at (415) 28-CLEAN (282-5326) or email them at [email protected].
2) Urge young people to organize, speak up, and fight back. This is about RJ Reynolds' manipulation of their future and their community. Young poeple can point to this, along with the Camel No. 9 ads, and other tobacco marketing blanketing our community and iniate creative responses to engage the community.
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SF Bay Guardian ([email protected])
Big Tobacco Shill and World-Class Hypocrite
Did you notice the thousands of Camel cigarette inserts from the Guardian blowing around San Francisco last week? Now every kid walking down a city sidewalk gets to learn about the exciting new products that community-minded R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company has waiting for them. Your articles hounding Mayor Newsom or promoting a Green city ring hollow and are deeply hypocritical when compared to your actual actions in the community. How about an investigative report probing the Guardian's role in delivering young people to an addiction that will kill many? Tobacco is still the #1 leading cause of preventable disease and death, killing nearly 500,000 Americans each year - many of them fine progressives. R.J. Reynolds - found guilty of federal racketeering charges last year - is no friend of San Francisco, young people, or independent media. This company seeks to ensnare young people in its web of nicotine addition - and knowingly kill them - for profit. I urge you to consider the serious role the Guardian plays in the tobacco industry. Progressive media should not equate progressive cancer.
Bronson Frick
Associate Director
Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights
CATT
(Community Advocate Teens of Today)
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Noteworthy Links!!! Check it out!!!
CLICK HERE FOR TESTING SITES FOR STD/HIV/AIDS in Santa Clara County!!!
one of our larger main on-going projects is anti-tobacco. our current project is trying to enforce annual tobacco licensing fees.
Fifteen years after California launched its tobacco control program and 10 years after passage of an statewide smoke-free workplace law, new data show that smoking among youth continues to decline.State health officials and public health advocates joined Sacramento middle-school students to celebrate the success of Proposition 99, the landmark Tobacco Tax and Health Protection Act of 1988, and California’s smoke-free workplace law that took effect in 1995.“Today we celebrate 15 years of reducing adult and youth smoking, exposure to secondhand smoke and tobacco-related diseases and deaths,†said Kim Belshé, secretary of the California Health and Human Services agency.In November 1988, Proposition 99 was approved by California voters and instituted a 25-cent tax on cigarettes and earmarked 5 cents of every cigarette pack sold to fund the California Tobacco Control Program, the nation’s longest running and most emulated comprehensive anti-tobacco program.New figures show that smoking among California youth has decreased to record lows. According to the 2004 California Student Tobacco Survey released today by the California Department of Health Services, 13.2 percent of high school students in California smoked last year, compared with 16.0 percent in 2002 and 21.6 in 2000.
-A Siliconeer Report