Choices, choices
Re: “Abandoned Teens” by Wendy Malloy (Aug. 27-Sept. 2)
The farcical hypocrisy of your publication keeps reaching toward new heights. While your cover story decries the defunding of a government program aimed at stopping teens from smoking, a quick look shows you guys are sucking hard on Big Tobacco’s cash nipple: Parliament (not the Funkadelic kind) ads on page 7; a Salem ad on page 13.
I would not ever accuse your hippie-ass editorial board of having the courage of its convictions, but at least if you want to preach to teens you should “walk the walk.” This, after all, is the only demographic group that would find anything remotely informative in the Weekly Planet other than the Music Menu.
—K. Paul Boyev, M.D.
TampaThe following is an excerpt from Wendy Malloy’s excellent and compelling article: “But today, anti-smoking initiatives created from settlement dollars are virtually on life-support, as unrelenting budget cuts under Gov. Jeb Bush have eviscerated successful prevention programs overseen by the state Department of Health and funded by the landmark settlement.”
It is a tragedy that such successful programs that protect our youths, brilliantly planned and carried out by our youths themselves, must now be on “life support” for lack of state funding which, ironically, was originally acquired and intended for them.
I would like to point out, however, that some volunteer programs not supported by or dependent on state funds still survive and are looking for young volunteers to maintain anti-smoking initiatives. Here’s an example:
An award-winning video on the health and social aspects of smoking, They’re Rich, You’re Dead, is available in English and Spanish as a public service. The video can be obtained at copying cost by calling our reproduction company at 305-856-1245 or by e-mailing tapeorders@accordvideo.com. Additional copies may be reproduced locally, if this is more convenient, provided they are not edited.
The video includes testimonies from teen and adult smokers on how smoking affected their lives. It also presents medically illustrated patient histories on each of the Surgeon General’s warnings with simple explanations of how smoking caused their diseases. Although the video is explicitly graphic, it presents unedited medical TRUTH that is meant to be viewed by at-risk adolescents before they become doomed for life by a casual and uninformed decision to smoke.
A video study plan CD-ROM (which can be printed out) serves as a companion to the video. It is also available at nonprofit copying cost (see above) and can also be copied locally if not edited. It contains answers to 50 of the most common questions asked about smoking and is illustrated with 60 color slides and 50 video clips.
The video and video study plan may be previewed roughly and in part on our website, www.mededu.miami.edu/Tobacco. Our aim is to encourage students interested in community health to implement tobacco awareness projects targeting youths in their own communities.
—Arthur Pitchenik, M.D.
Professor, University of Miami School of Medicine
Director, Tobacco Awareness Community Program Targeting YouthMalloy’s article was utterly deficient in presenting any genuine evidence to support its criticism of Governor Bush, but it is the Planet that must take responsibility for printing such garbage.
It is interesting to note that in the very same issue is a full-page ad for Parliament cigarettes. You must have found a bumper-crop of tanning booths to advertise in your future issues now that you have obviously burned your bridges with Philip Morris.
Speaking of hypocrisy, let’s also not forget the tobacco agenda of Bush’s former but soundly defeated opponent. Bill McBride had big “plans” to harness cigarettes for raising revenue.
—Jeff Barker
Tampa
Ben Eason, you’re a nice, smart guy and you run a nice paper — with a major exception. Do you really need big tobacco money to turn a profit? If you can keep the Planet‘s doors open without taking money from “Big Death,” you really need to stop taking their damn money.
Some moral questions are, in fact, simple — black and white, sans middle gray ground. This is such an instance. Please, don’t invoke “freedom of commercial expression” of such crap, either, because that argument is exactly that — crap.
Don’t you have kids now? Do the right thing, Ben.
—Gary Shepherd
Tampa
Ben Eason responds:
The Weekly Planet has struggled with the issue of tobacco advertising for the past 10 years. You may recall in the mid-1990s, the Planet had a policy that banned cigarette ads from the paper (at the same time we were promoting a Planet Cigar in our “Best of” issue). We kept this policy for about five years and had fairly intensive debates about the underlying rationale. Ultimately we concluded that our issues with the cigarette companies centered on their manipulative advertising practices and the fact that CEOs of the big tobacco companies had lied before Congress.
To some extent, the remedies put in place by the states’ settlement with Big Tobacco brought this argument full circle. Wendy Malloy’s article was particularly on point because the Florida legislature and the lobbyists are trying to undo the main point of the settlement, which is to keep young people from getting hooked in the first place.
We’ve always been very leery of the argument that we should deny readers and advertisers the ability to communicate with one another based on a subjective notion of harmful behavior. What about cheeseburgers? People in the personals section who like S&M sex? Rolling papers for joints? Powdered urine to beat drug tests? Hookers? As an alternative newspaper we get a smorgasbord of unusual offerings by advertisers, and we have always tried to be as true to the ideals of free speech as we can. We’re not perfect, and there is no doubt that money figures into these equations as well.
The great thing is that most of our readership is very well educated and looks to the Planet for what it is — a marketplace of ideas, opinions and offerings. We think readers can pick their vices and make up their own minds. One thing’s for sure: While tobacco money does help pay our printer each week, it won’t keep us from publishing stories about cigarette companies like the one we just did.
This article appears in Sep 11-17, 2003.
