Teen group takes aim at tobacco advertising

• Campaign kickoff

Teen members of the Start Noticing Coalition from Cottonwood, Jackson and Redwood counties gathered outside Center Stop in Windom Thursday noon to kick off a campaign to take notice of tobacco advertising and work to get it removed from the child’s eye level and below.

Talk about it

WINDOM — Walk into most convenience stores these days and you will likely be inundated with advertisements touting one brand or another of tobacco.

If you aren’t paying attention, the sheer number of the ads may not bother you. They have, however, garnered the attention of a group of teen activists in the region.

More than 50 students in Jackson and Cottonwood counties have banded together with teens from Redwood County in a new project encouraging people to take notice and take a stand against tobacco advertising.

Susan Vileta, health educator with Cottonwood-Jackson Community Health Services, said the group kicked off its new “Start Noticing” campaign Thursday at the Center Stop in Windom. The convenience store has made a conscious effort to reduce the amount of tobacco advertising on display in its business.

“It was just our feeling that we didn’t have to have anything on our counter advertising the cigarettes,” said Rhonda Kilbourne, manager at the Center Stop. “We just do the required ones up on top.”

The requirements come from both Phillip Morris and the R.J. Reynolds tobacco companies.

The Center Stop is the exception when it comes to posting tobacco ads, said Vileta. A February 2008 survey conducted in Windom showed that the quick service stops and grocery stores had, on average, 84 tobacco advertisements on display inside their businesses. In one store alone there were more than 150 colorful and catchy ads touting tobacco, she said.

In Jackson County, there was an average of 54 tobacco advertisements posted in convenience stores, while in Redwood County, the average was 61.

Vileta said many of those ads are placed right around a child’s eye level.

“The whole idea is why is it there?” she questioned. “It’s really easy for us to say, ‘Is that really necessary?’”

Statistics from TobaccoFreeKids.org say that children are three times more sensitive to tobacco advertising than adults and are more likely to be influenced to use tobacco by tobacco industry marketing than by peer pressure. One-third of underage experimentation with tobacco is attributable to tobacco company advertising, it claims.

Start Noticing Coalition members will soon begin visiting with retailers in Cottonwood and Jackson counties to question their use of point-of-sale tobacco advertising and ask that they be more cognizant of where the ads are displayed.

The Northwest Hennepin Human Services Council and the Southeast Minnesota Tobacco Collaborative, based in Rochester, are doing the same. Each of the agencies received funding from the Minnesota Department of Health’s Reducing Youth Exposure to Tobacco Influences initiative to conduct research and collect signatures for a petition favoring voluntary removal of all tobacco advertising placed at a child’s eye level of three feet or below.

Vileta said the research will include asking retailers whether tobacco advertising has a negative influence on children and teens, what they may be willing to do about it, and if they would consider posting positive messages about kids in place of the tobacco advertisements.

“We want to get kids talking to them — asking (retailers) if they realize that it might make an impact, do they care and what are they willing to do about it,” Vileta said.

In the coming weeks, the Cottonwood-Jackson-Redwood Start Noticing Coalition will also take its message to the public, planning displays at county fairs and at Farmfest in early August in Redwood County.

“The next step for us is to bring in more adult members,” said Vileta while emphasizing that youth involvement is a great asset to the coalition.

“The power of these youths is just incredible,” she said. “It’s something that they’re very passionate about. It’s kids engaged in activism.”

Vileta said the hope is that one day the coalition’s youngest members will see a change in the regulations for tobacco advertising and be able to say that they had a hand in making it happen.

Tags: state and region, news, tobacco, advertising, cottonwood, jackson, redwood