Notes from the Meeting Table: banned advertisement

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

UPDATE: Stop Urban Outfitters From Selling Products that Promote Prescription Drug Abuse

Photo Credit: Drugfree.org

Thanks to you, we are gaining momentum to put a stop to Urban Outfitters selling products made to look like prescription pill bottles!

U.S. Congressman Hal Rogers (KY) has sent a letter directly to Richard A. Hayne, CEO and Chairman of Urban Outfitters, encouraging him to “remove these items from the shelves immediately so as not to contribute to this epidemic” [of prescription drug abuse].

Along with Rogers, Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway, who co-chairs the Substance Abuse Committee of the National Association of Attorneys General, has joined the effort.

In just the past few days, various media outlets have brought this to the public’s attention, including ABC News, Associated Press, The Huffington Post, News 4 WOAI (thanks to our alliance with The San Antonio Council on Drug and Alcohol Abuse), UPI and more!

We’re not done, because we still haven’t received a response from Urban Outfitters.

Please take the time to tweet your plea. Here are some sample tweets:

Join me in stopping @UrbanOutfitters from selling products that promote teen Rx drug abuse. http://ow.ly/kQbJm #endmedicineabuse

Help stop @UrbanOutfitters from selling products that promote teen Rx abuse. http://ow.ly/kQbJm #endmedicineabuse

If you can’t tweet, we encourage you to invite your family, friends and colleagues to sign and share the Facebook Causes Petition today.

Article courtesy of The Partnership at Drugfree.org

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Can Electronic Cigarettes Challenge Big Tobacco?

A curious television commercial aired across the

U.S.

last month that, until its final few seconds, was indistinguishable from an ad for cigarettes — even though such advertising has been banned from broadcast TV for four decades.

In the television spot, the “cigarette” smoke, ash tip and flame look real. The carton looks authentic. The man smoking it looks satisfied.

The smoke, however, is vapor. The ash tip, plastic. The flame, simulated. The “cigarette” is a so-called electronic cigarette — in this case, an NJOY King, the first smokeless, nicotine-delivering, cigarette-like object that (at least according to its manufacturer) looks and feels and “smokes” like the real thing. Television commercials for NJOY Kings began running nationally in early December, making it the first smoking ad to run since Jan. 1, 1971, when Virginia Slims ran one final commercial a minute before the midnight deadline during The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. (President Nixon had signed legislation banning cigarette ads on TV and radio the year before.)

E-cigarettes, invented in 2003, currently account for less than 1% of the $80 billion U.S. cigarette market. But they are growing rapidly: UBS projects that sales, which have doubled every year since 2008, will reach $1 billion in 2013. Numbers like that have put Big Tobacco on notice. “Consumption of e-cigs may overtake traditional cigarettes in the next decade,” predicts Wells Fargo analyst Bonnie Herzog. “And they’ll only evolve and improve as time goes forward — at far less risk. The technology portion of it is sort of like Apple. This is just Version 1.”