BOSTON, USA, Aug. 15, 2001: The multibillion-dollar 1998 national tobacco pact has failed to turn back a torrent of cigarette advertising placed in magazines and aimed at children, a study concluded. “What surprises me is the sheer gall of the tobacco industry in general: their willingness to continue to find ways to get around the very agreement they entered into,” said former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger, who signed the pact. He is now president of Common Cause, a citizen’s lobbying group. The study by two Boston-based researchers says that cigarette makers have kept up a high level of spending for magazine ads targeted at middle and high school-age children. It says that last year, magazine ads for cigarette brands popular with teenagers reached 82 percent of them. That percentage was down from 88 percent in 1999, but the study’s authors said it was still way too high.
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