Editor,
As college students, it may be difficult to believe the media is still campaigning intensely toward our age group in hopes that our minds will be easily molded by their tactics.
It is not only high school and middle school youth that are greatly targeted by tobacco corporations in magazines, gas stations and product placement ads within movies and TV shows. Ads give the impression that smoking is cool, sexy and rebellious. Walking around campus, it is easy to see that these advertisements reach their goals as seemingly bright college students begin smoking. Whether out of the stress of college or ever-present peer pressure, students are still buying into corporate tobacco and selling themselves out to addiction. The countless negative health effects associated with smoking obviously do not outweigh the strength of media campaigns, even in this modern day of overwhelming scientific evidence against tobacco use.
On Sept. 19, some active anti-tobacco advocating youth launched the bathroom initiative, in which urinal inserts and mirror clings were placed in some Albuquerque bathrooms. The objects state messages such as, "You'll be different from all the other girls. They'll have fresh breath," "Your teeth turn an amazing shade of yellow," and "No matter how much you brush, you'll never get the smell out of your hair. That's what's cool about smoking."
UNM students and patrons may have noticed some of this bathroom humor in a few restrooms around campus. As mundane and immature as the messages sound, our student population is still greatly suffering from the tobacco industry and its targeting of youth, including college-aged students. It seems that we should easily look past the glamorization of this deadly drug and not be so quickly manipulated by the power of the media. It is time to tell big tobacco that we cannot be bought, and that our health means more to us than appearing glamorous or rebellious.
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Kristen Woodruff
UNM student
