PM pledges no marketing to youth

[Robert Weissman <rob@essential.org>]

Note that this story is from June 3. I may even have posted it earlier.

Robert Weissman
Essential Information			|   Internet:	rob@essential.org

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Philip Morris to revamp ad practices / Chairman wants emphasis on not
marketing to youth

Richmond Times-Dispatch
Wednesday, June 3, 1998
BY CHIP JONES
Times-Dispatch Staff Writer

<EXCERPT>

Philip Morris Cos. Inc. will revamp its advertising and marketing
practices to try to show the company does not market to children, the
company's chairman told employees last week.

"We will align our marketing and selling practices here in the USA and
overseas so that we cannot be accused of marketing cigarettes to youth,"
Geoffrey C. Bible, chairman of the nation's largest tobacco company,
told employees in New York.

Pledging to put the youth-marketing issue "behind us once and for all,"
Bible said he recently appointed a senior executive to "design more
actions" to back up the company's long-held claim that it does not try
to appeal to youngsters.

...

"In our overseas markets we are going to eliminate the more obvious
elements our marketing people point to," and get the entire tobacco
industry "to do the same thing," Bible said, without explaining what
elements those might be.

If other companies don't agree to voluntary compliance, he added, "We'll
go to the [foreign] government and say we're prepared to do it, but we
can't go it alone."

Bible also said he would like his American competitors to take voluntary
actions against youth marketing.

But without a comprehensive law passed by Congress, he said, getting a
united front by the tobacco companies is "quite difficult to do because
of antitrust reasons."