Decrease Tobacco Advertising and
Youth Access to Tobacco Products

Reducing the availability and promotion of tobacco products helps smokers quit and discourages young people from starting to smoke. The following initiatives are focused on encouraging family-friendly and health-centered retailers to stop the sale of tobacco products and/or to reduce the visibility and amount of tobacco product advertising and promotion.

What's on this page:

• Tobacco-Free Grocery Stores
• Tobacco-Free Pharmacies
• GetMadAboutAds Campaign
• No Thanks, BIG Tobacco

Tobacco-Free Grocery Stores

Grocery stores have been increasingly assuming community leadership in promoting community health and well-being. Some examples include:

• Supermarket Health & Wellness Centers with store-based nutritionists & dietitians.
• Scoring systems that help consumers choose healthier foods.
• Extensive selections of natural and organic foods.
• Support for community events, youth groups and health-promoting charities.

What place does the sale of tobacco products have in your local market? Tobacco is the only legal product sold today that, when used as directed, does harm. There is no safe level of use. No responsible level of use. Only harm. And for those who become addicted, serious illness and too often, death.

Sign a petition to end the sale of tobacco products in supermarkets. Find out more about what you can do.

Tobacco-Free Pharmacies: Prescription for Change

Pharmacies are no ordinary store. The public perception of pharmacies, reinforced by their marketing, is that they are associated with good health.At the heart of each pharmacy is the pharmacist, a health professional.

• The sale of tobacco in a health care facility such as a pharmacy gives a false and dangerous credibility to cigarettes, and suggests that their use is compatible with health.
  
  
• Selling (and especially displaying) cigarettes in pharmacies undermines the messages of other health professionals that tobacco products are uniquely dangerous.
  
  
• Selling cigarettes (that cause disease) is inherently in conflict with the pharmacist’s role in preventing and treating disease.

Find out more about why 95% of pharmacists support an end to tobacco sales in pharmacies and what's happening in New York to make that happen.

GetMadAboutAds campaign

Tobacco advertising increases the odds your child will smoke. Consider. . .

• Tobacco advertising is most commonly found in convenience stores---where 3 out of 4 teens shop every week.
• In NYS, convenient stores average 5 exterior and 21 interior tobacco ads.
• Teens are more than twice as likely as adults to notice and remember retail tobacco advertising.
• Teens are more likely to be influenced to smoke by cigarette advertising than by peer pressure.

In the Capital District:

• 68% of residents think outside tobacco advertising should not be allowed within 1,000 feet of schools, playgrounds and daycare centers.
  
• 59% think retailers should not display outside tobacco ads at all.

Get informed. Get involved. Get Mad About Ads.

No Thanks, BIG Tobacco

The No Thanks campaign aims to build consensus among community-based organizations that tobacco industry funding hurts communities far more than it helps them and enlist organizations to commit to tobacco-free funding.

Tobacco companies donate to community organizations to build their image as good corporate citizens. But no matter how generous the tobacco industry is with charitable giving, the truth remains that the money being donated comes from selling a product that kills more than 400,000 people each year.

You, too, can take the pledge. And please show your support for the Capital District leaders who have already said "No Thanks". . .patronize their businesses, say "thanks", or make a donation to their cause.