It is all part of a recent agreement between Mayor Michael White and Eller Media, the outdoor advertising company that controls most of Cleveland's billboards. White actually wants to go further. He wants to ban all liquor advertising within 1,000 feet of schools, churches and playgrounds. He got an ordinance to do that through the city council three years ago. It hasn't taken effect because Eller is challenging it in federal court.
Everybody has seen outdoor ads for beer and whiskey, but not everyone realizes just how ubiquitous they are in America's inner cities. According to one survey, more than 60 percent of the billboards in Cleveland in 1998 were touting either alcohol or tobacco. In the mayor's view, it is an indisputable truth that children are the targets. "The city health agencies, schools and churches are communicating an anti-alcohol message," White says. "But on every street corner, there are highly successful pro-alcohol messages." He thinks shielding children from the ads is crucial to getting the positive message through.
A 1999 Federal Trade Commission report pointed to alcohol advertising as one reason why as many as a third of high school seniors and 40 percent of college students are binge drinkers. In response to those types of statistics, Los Angeles, Oakland and Chicago have all come to conclusions similar to Cleveland's and passed ordinances of their own regulating billboard advertising. Two states are involved in legal disputes over laws that limit alcohol advertising in newspapers. The legal issues are many and murky, and the Supreme Court hasn't yet ruled definitively in favor of the municipalities or the advertisers.
But the murkiest issue of all remains: whether the laws actually help control the prevalence of underage drinking.
Baltimore is the birthplace and capital of the movement against liquor billboards. In 1994, it passed the first ordinance in the country to restrict alcohol advertisements on billboards in residential areas and within 1,000 feet of schools, recreation centers, places of worship and licensed day-care centers. City Council President Sheila Dixon had been working that issue for five years, after she says she realized that her inner-city constituents were being targeted and exploited by the liquor industry.
Dixon had the help of an organized and vocal citizens group, known as the Citywide Liquor Coalition. That alliance proved sufficient to win in the city council over the opposition of the liquor industry, area retailers, outdoor advertising companies and Anheuser-Busch. The anti- billboard side also prevailed in the Maryland legislature, which had to pass an enabling law because Maryland is one of 18 "control states" which concentrate legislative authority over alcohol at the state level.
The pro-billboard forces took the issue all the way to the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, but they lost: The court noted that billboards were "conspicuously absent from more affluent communities" and that they presented "a stark contrast to adolescents between the lifestyle depicted in the advertisement and the actual neighborhood surrounding them, thereby enhancing the attractiveness of the product."
So for the past three years, liquor billboards have been absent from Baltimore's residential neighborhoods and from the vicinity of its schools. Supporters of the regulation are convinced it has made a difference. They say children are being better protected. "Anecdotally, we feel we've made a stride of protecting them from the environment," says Pete Pakas, director of special projects for the Citizens Planning and Housing Association, which helps to organize the Citywide Liquor Coalition. But Pakas acknowledges that his group doesn't have any specific data that point to less underage drinking. "The only thing we can rely on is that we know the advertising is geared to kids," he says.
Of course, the advertisers disagree. The Outdoor Advertising Association points to its own voluntary code, which stipulates that members will not post alcohol ads on billboards within 500 feet of schools, churches and playgrounds. Another industry code requires liquor ads to be placed only where at least 50 percent of the audience is of legal drinking age. In addition, the Federal Trade Commission prohibits "false, deceptive or misleading" ads. Myron Laible, vice president of regulatory affairs and operations for the association, says the codes and FTC rule strike an adequate balance between community concerns and advertisers' rights.
But in Chicago, Alderman Danny Solis didn't see evidence that the association's code was working. In 1997, he proposed and the city council approved an ordinance modeled after Baltimore's, with the intent to remove liquor billboards from children's sight in any residential neighborhood. Last year, the statute was rewritten to ban alcohol ads from manufacturing districts. The advertising industry has challenged it in federal court, the case remains open and the ordinance remains unenforced.
But Solis says he is already winning. He says advertisers have placed fewer alcohol billboards and "more appropriate" ads in his ward since the ordinance was passed. "When they get threatened, they become more sensitive," he insists.
The outdoor advertising industry maintains that additional mandatory restrictions aren't necessary and that they infringe on free-speech rights. "There's concern when you start having government censorship of legal ads," he says.
Most of the cases brought by advertisers against city billboard ordinances are based on two First Amendment-related decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1976, the court ruled that pharmaceutical advertisements were entitled to some constitutional protection, as long as they were not false or misleading. Then, in 1996, in 44 Liquormart Inc. v. Rhode Island, the court said Rhode Island's ban on the advertisement of alcohol prices infringed on retailers' free- speech rights.
But the Liquormart case didn't have anything to do with billboards; its only clear directive is that a total ban on price advertising is unconstitutional. Some legal scholars believe that billboard restrictions can survive court scrutiny as long as they continue to allow some alcohol billboards, such as along highways, and present evidence that the purpose of the ban is to protect children. Those were the points on which Baltimore's ban survived in federal appellate court.
The issue of protecting minors is at the heart of Pennsylvania's dispute with the liquor industry in an ongoing case. Three years ago, a change to that state's liquor code prohibited alcohol advertisements in any publication "by, for, or in behalf of any educational institution." For student newspapers at state colleges and universities, this meant they could no longer accept ads for liquor stores or drink specials at nearby bars.
The Pitt News, the University of Pittsburgh student paper, estimated that it lost $17,000 in advertising revenue in the first year after the new code's adoption. Its student business manager and editor-in- chief teamed with the American Civil Liberties Union to file suit against the state, arguing that the prohibition damaged the paper financially and didn't stop students from seeing the ads, which continued to appear in city newspapers sold on the same newsstands.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled in favor of the state and against the school, and the Supreme Court decided in January not to hear the case, so the decision stands.
Even while fighting against specific measures, the liquor and billboard industries continue to insist that advertising is not the real issue--that the most effective way to deal with underage drinking is through point-of-sale regulation. Ordinances, says Eric Rubin, a lawyer for the Outdoor Advertising Association, "have proved to be sort of a cynical way to deal with much more complicated matter. The real problem with this doesn't come down to advertising." He suggests that public service-type billboards discouraging underage drinking are more effective than the types of restrictions passed by Baltimore.
Vitold Walczak, the ACLU lawyer arguing for The Pitt News, says alcohol awareness programs run by the Pennsylvania State Liquor Control Board and social alternatives, such as alcohol-free housing, better address the problem of underage drinking than the current liquor code. "Censorship's not the answer," he insists.
The FTC recognized the First Amendment issues raised by alcohol advertising regulation in its 1999 report. The commission nevertheless recommended better enforcement of the industry's voluntary codes, curbing on-campus alcohol advertising and placing liquor ads where fewer children would see them.
The anti-billboard forces aren't claiming that any simple answer exists. But, they counter, cutting back the number of conspicuous ads seen by children is one component of a successful multi-pronged attack. "I don't think there's a magic bullet," Cleveland's Mayor White says. "It's part of a very broad, coordinated effort to lessen the impact of the `you've gotta drink, you've gotta smoke' message."
