About the Cover
This month's cover image is from the American Legacy Foundation's "truth" campaign, a public health initiative that intervenes in a key area of tobacco industry influence, namely, the media. For many young people, the tobacco industry's marketing and promotional practices largely shape their ideas of what tobacco use means from an early age. Through media of various forms, such as the brilliantly colorful and exciting collage of texts and images in this corner store, influential ideas about tobacco use circulate and take root. For adults who are established tobacco users, the media serves to reinforce the perception that tobacco is a glamorous and seductive lifestyle choice. We have learned a great deal about the role the media plays in structuring the concentration of tobacco use among disenfranchised and deprived groups, such as impoverished youths living in communities of color. The "truth" campaign has taken these lessons and used them to effectively counter tobacco use among these very groups. Photo by Jim Knight.
Lyndon Haviland and Robert Sember
[Table of Contents]
Copyright © 2004 by the American Public Health Association.
