Cowboys to be featured in anti-smoking messages

By Angela K. Brown / Associated Press

    JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. -- For years, the billboard cowboy with the rugged good looks has been associated with lighting up a Marlboro.
    But now anti-tobacco groups are planning to use faux Marlboro men as symbols of lung cancer, emphysema and other smoking-related illnesses.
    Billboards in 26 states soon will feature images of two horseback-riding cowboys saying things like, "I miss my lung, Bob" and "Bob, I've got emphysema."
    The ads are being paid for with money from the $206 billion settlement reached by major tobacco companies and 39 states suing to recover tobacco-related heath care costs.
    As part of the settlement, the companies agreed to remove their billboard ads, but keep paying for the space until their leases expire so that anti-smoking groups can use them.
    A portion of the settlement money, $1.45 billion, has been earmarked for a five-year national anti-smoking campaign.
    The cowboy billboards, designed by the California Department of Health Services, will start going up April 23.
    "We have to counter really strong images put out by the tobacco industry, and there's no stronger one than the Marlboro man," said Colleen Stevens, chief of California's tobacco education program. "You really have to twist it somehow ... to show that there's nothing healthy, rugged or outdoorish about what happens when you smoke."
    Massachusetts and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have also designed billboard ads that will be used in various states. Some of those focus on children, with one reading: "First hamster, 5 years; first cartwheel, 8 years; first cigarette, 11 years."
    The states that plan to use the anti-smoking billboards designed by California, Massachusetts and the FDA include: Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and Washington, D.C.
    The other 13 states in the settlement chose to do their own billboards. They are: Arizona, Connecticut, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, New Mexico, New Jersey, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Washington and Wisconsin.