March 7, 2000

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Only losers smoke in Florida

Mar. 7, 2000

The state of Florida has cut teen smoking by as much as 54 percent, thanks to a series of The-Man-wants-you-to-smoke themed ads. The ads, which portray teen smokers as tobacco industry dupes, apparently did the near-impossible by making smoking less cool among middle and high school students.

Impressed, the deep-pocketed Legacy Foundation, a national anti-smoking group, copied Florida’s strategy with its own don’t-be-a-pawn-of-capitalism spots. The foundation ran into a snafu, though, when tobacco lawyers reminded it of a clause in its charter that bans it from vilifying tobacco companies or executives. One ad the tobacconiks deemed particularly offensive showed a woman with a suitcase labeled “lie detector” being kicked out of an anonymous tobacco company’s offices. The Legacy Foundation decided not to run the ad following tobacco industry objections. Now, anti-smoking activists are stumped — how can they make smoking uncool without a bad guy?

Read the CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR story here.

—KS

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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