Outdoor Tobacco Ads: Sign Blight and Health Hazard

BILLBOARD WATCH-Fifteen years ago, LA City Councilman and now-City Attorney Mike Feuer led the charge for an ordinance banning signs advertising tobacco within 1,000 ft. of schools, parks and playgrounds, youth centers, churches, and residential buildings. 

The ink was hardly dry on that measure, though, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a Massachusetts case that such restrictions violate the 1st amendment’s guarantee of free speech and while the LA ordinance is still on the books the city hasn’t attempted to enforce it.  

The result is evident by even a cursory glance around the city. Signs advertising cigarettes prominently placed outside convenience stores, gas stations, and other outlets well within the 1,000 ft. radius of schools and the other aforementioned facilities where youth regularly congregate. 

The signs at the 7-Eleven in the above photo, for example, are less than a block from a charter high school and adjacent elementary school. Young people who walk to school from a bus stop a few blocks away pass by those signs which are given maximum visibility by being placed right at the edge of the sidewalk. 

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Tobacco advertising on billboards and other forms of off-site advertising is prohibited by the master settlement agreement reached in late Nineties between tobacco companies and state attorney generals. But retail establishments that sell cigarettes and other tobacco products can advertise on poster-size signs both inside and outside stores. 

The ad in the photo is just one example of many throughout Los Angeles.

 

(Dennis Hathaway is the president of the Ban Billboard Blight coalition.  He can be reached at: [email protected]) 

-cw

 

 

 

 

CityWatch

Vol 12 Issue 56

Pub: Jul 11, 2014