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To the Editor: As college and high school students, we were interested in previous research by Dr King and colleagues1 showing that cigarette brands popular among youths (aged 12-17 years) are more likely than other brands to be advertised in magazines that have high youth readership. Because the study did not include alcohol advertisements, we were motivated to extend some of the study's information.
We selected a convenience sample of 15 magazines listed by King et al1 that were available in our local public library. Eleven magazines had the highest youth readership (≥1.9 million readers) and 4 had the smallest number of young readers (≤0.8 million).2 We counted the number of pages of alcohol and tobacco advertisements to assess the volume of influence from the issue's sample (N=195), from July 1997 to June 1998. Based on our tally, we estimated the number of advertising pages devoted to alcohol and tobacco advertisements per issue and per year. Because not all issues were available, we reduced the likelihood of obtaining a skewed sample by reassessing 4 magazines during July 1998 to June 1999 that initially had approximately 40% or fewer of the complete year's volumes available in our library (Hot Rod [n=10], People [n=46], Sport [n=12], Vogue [n=12]). We also reexamined the magazine with highest number of pages of alcohol and tobacco advertisements for the year to determine whether it was an atypical year for alcohol and tobacco advertisements for that particular periodical.
Based on the number of pages of all advertisements, Rolling Stone, a semimonthly magazine, had the greatest number of alcohol advertising pages per issue, while the monthly Hot Rod magazine had the largest number of pages of tobacco advertisements per issue (Table 1). Sports Illustrated, a magazine that celebrates athletic achievement and has the highest youth readership, contained the highest number of pages per year for alcohol and tobacco advertisements. Furthermore, the sample of 1998-1999 Sports Illustrated issues (n=47) showed that the number of pages of alcohol advertisements increased an average of 65% per issue (2.7 to 4.5), while the number of pages of tobacco advertisements increased 11% (2.9 to 3.2) per issue.
A bimodal relationship between alcohol and tobacco advertisements and youth readership seems apparent in this sample. Magazines with 800,000 young readers or fewer (New Woman, Ladies Home Journal, Harper's Bazaar, and Self) had many fewer pages of advertisements per year for alcohol and tobacco than did Time magazine. However, Time magazine, with a relatively small number of alcohol and tobacco advertisements, and Sports Illustrated, with a high number of these advertisements, deserve comment. Both magazines have nearly identical adult (≥18 years) readership. Time magazine has 2 million readers younger than 18 years, while Sports Illustrated has 5.2 million young readers. We suspect that a possible reason for the greater number of alcohol (>5 times) and tobacco (>4 times) advertisements in Sports Illustrated vs Time may be due to the number of youth who read Sports Illustrated.
We acknowledge that there may be fewer young readers for certain articles and issues; thus, certain advertisements may be less visible to them, based on their placement in a particular issue. Likewise, there may be changes in youth readership from year to year, and younger readers may view only a portion of any given magazine. Despite the descriptive nature of these results, they bolster and extend previous work, suggesting that advertisers of tobacco products may target young readers. Based on the number of alcohol advertising pages in magazines with high youth readership compared with those with a small number of young readers, it appears that alcohol advertisers may target youths as well.
Alcohol and tobacco use by youths has dramatically increased since 1991.3 It may be difficult to reverse this trend in light of the high volume of tobacco and alcohol advertisements in magazines with high youth readership. Removing the likes of Joe Camel from billboards may not be sufficient.
Country-Specific Mortality and Growth Failure in Infancy and Yound Children and Association With Material Stature
Use interactive graphics and maps to view and sort country-specific infant and early dhildhood mortality and growth failure data and their association with maternal
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