Tobacco advertising and the First Amendment

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Sept 1, 1990 by Joe Hanson

Tobacco advertising and the First Amendment Through the years I've used this column as a forum to support freedom of the press. Some of my prior comments have focused on the problems between retailers and such titles as Playboy and Penthouse, or the U.S. Government's attempts to suppress Screw. I'm very much less comfortable with a current matter relating to the First Amendment: tobacco advertising.

The Freedom to Advertise Coalition (FAC)-which includes the Magazine Publishers of America as well as advertising and media associations-is testifying in Congress against a comprehensive anti-smoking bill that includes sharp restrictions on tobacco advertising. This bill, in effect, permits only "tombstone" ads on tobacco products: Warning labels would have to occupy at least 20 percent of the ad, and use of art or color would be prohibited. The bill also permits state and local governments to legislate and control tobacco advertising within their jurisdictions. On another front, there is a bill that would, for all intents and purposes, ban tobacco ads by eliminating the current tax deduction.

The FAC argues that tobacco is a legal product, the advertising of which is fully protected by U.S. Supreme Court decisions on commercial free speech. However, this position is clouded by some disturbing statistics. In a recent briefing to magazine executives, Dr. Louis Sullivan, secretary of Health and Human Services, noted that roughly 1,000 people die each day from tobacco-related illnesses. To place this in its proper perspective, Dr. Sullivan referred to the extensive investigations that take place following a plane crash that kills 100 people. Tobacco-related deaths, he said, represent the equivalent of 10 such plane crashes every day.

All of us know that freedom of speech has limitations. Beyond the obvious example about crying fire" in a crowded theater, there are some more subtle distinctions. Billboard advertising is restricted on many highways throughout the United States. Pharmaceutical companies face stringent restrictions on where and how they may advertise. And tobacco advertising has been banned from broadcast for many years.

Yes, tobacco is a legal product. Yes, I understand the logic of saying that if Congress is concerned about the effects of tobacco, it should outlaw the product rather than restrict advertising. But we all know what happened when

Congress tried to do that with liquor. I also am concerned that Congress has for years acted in a hypocritical and cowardly manner with regard to tobacco, providing subsidies for U.S. tobacco growers even today.

Although I recognize the impact that this proposed legislation would have on the ad revenue of many important magazines, I still favor legislation that provides severe restrictions on tobacco advertising.

Fulfillment: The critical stage

The impending sale of the magazine fulfillment company Neodata, currently owned by Dun & Bradstreet, to Dallas-based Telecommunications Marketing Inc., is coming about at a time when the services provided to publishers by their fulfillment organizations are more critically important than ever before. The reason has to do with the changes in second-class postal rates currently being proposed by the United States Postal Service. If adopted, these rates will dramatically increase the cost of mailing a magazine that enters the postal system from a single point. To reduce the potentially crippling impact of these increases, publishers will want to investigate entering the mail stream from more than one location-and this will necessarily involve assistance from their fulfillment companies and printers.

Recently, I was astounded to hear an important printer of small-run magazines remark that he receives mailing lists for his magazines from 80 different fulfillment operations. Clearly, that includes all the major and most of the smaller fulfillment companies in the United States, as well as in-house fulfillment operations and many local fulfillment services-which are probably microcomputer based.

The degree of sophistication required by any publisher, large or small, who wants to prepare magazines to be mailed from multiple entry points and, where appropriate, sectional center facilities and/or even finer postal sorts, will be substantial. The potential savings to publishers could be significant. But the capability to combine mailings of different magazines from the same publisher or different publishers, and the computer expertise needed to accommodate that kind of handling, are currently beyond many fulfillment and printing organizations serving publishers.

Questions arise as to whether different magazine titles can be merged using paper labels, or whether ink-jet printing is required. However, a smaller printer considering adding ink-jet printing capability is talking about expenditures probably in excess of $500,000. Obviously, that printer has to build in pricing that will permit the recovery of such an investment.

What we're all heading for is a situation where the distribution side of magazine publishing-where there is impact on both the fulfillment company and printer-will become much more important in the economies of our business and will require much greater attention than many smaller publishers have heretofore provided.