(Norwich, NY) – Local anti-tobacco advocates say that the Surgeon General’s Report on teen smoking today highlights a problem they’ve been talking about for some time: tobacco marketing targeting kids in convenience stores, pharmacies and other retail locations where tobacco is sold.

The report, titled Preventing Tobacco Use among Youth and Young Adults finds the nation is falling far short of our national youth smoking goals and calls for immediate and urgent action to protect children from the predatory marketing tactics of the tobacco industry.

“One way to reduce kids’ exposure to tobacco marketing is to prohibit the display of tobacco products in all retail establishments to which minors have access,” said James Mutabiilwa, Tobacco Free Chenango Coordinator at Chenango Health Network. “Abundant research, summarized in this latest report, shows that kids regularly exposed to retail tobacco displays are more likely to smoke.”

The tobacco industry lures kids to use and get addicted to cigarettes through the use of prominent cigarette product displays, sometimes referred to as “power walls” behind the cash register in retail environments. In New York, over 80% of retailers that sell tobacco devote 50% or more of the merchandising space behind the checkout counters to tobacco displays. The amount of space that tobacco products take up in the stores that kids go into is astonishing – an average of 32 square feet in licensed tobacco retailers, and even more - 50 to 60 square feet in NYS pharmacies and other mass merchandisers. When children see such extensive tobacco product displays it distorts their perceptions regarding the availability of cigarettes and increases the likelihood that they will start smoking.

Last week, a federal judge in Washington, D.C. issued a ruling delaying the effective date of the FDA’s new graphic health warning requirement for cigarette packages and advertisements.  The FDA rule, which was scheduled to go into effect in September 2012, would require larger health warnings that cover the top 50 percent of the front and back panels of cigarette packages and the top 20 percent of printed cigarette advertisements.  The rule was mandated by Congress as part of the 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (TCA).  More information on the proposed warnings is available here.

Several tobacco companies challenged the FDA rule in federal court, claiming that it violated their First Amendment rights by requiring them to distribute a message with which they did not agree.  The judge, D.C. District Court Judge Richard Leon, agreed with the tobacco companies that enforcement of the rule should be delayed until 15 months after the court’s final decision (assuming that the court ultimately upholds the rule).  The companies claimed that without the 15-month window, they would have to start spending money in preparation for the warnings, even though the court might ultimately rule that the new warnings are unconstitutional.