RJ Reynolds Sued For Enticing Indie Rockers (And America’s Children) To Smoke
So it turns out that indie rock bads, fans, and anti-smoking activists weren’t the only ones upset when RJ Reynolds and Rolling Stone published a pull-out advertising supplement last month called “The Indie Rock Universe” that included the names of just about every working band you could comfortably tag “indie rock” in iTunes. “Six U.S. states sued the maker of Camel cigarettes on Tuesday,” Reuters reports, with more apparently to follow.
The section, titled “Indie Rock Universe,” is designed to look like doodling in a student’s spiral-bound notebook, with drawings of planets made to look like animals and characters. It features Camel’s name and logo.
Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania filed suits. Maryland and Connecticut said in statements that the states of California and Washington also planned to file suit.
These states are of course suing the tobacco company not because of its blatant (and pathetic) attempt to look down with the indie nation, but because of “an outright ban on the use of any cartoon in tobacco advertising,” the same reason the company had to retire that dude in the picture above, who haunted my dreams as a child and turned me into the Camel-smoking reprobate I am today. RJ Reynolds is claiming ignorance and blaming the cutesy, lawbreaking design on Rolling Stone, because we’re sure no one at the company took a look at a very expensive ad campaign before it went to press. So far Rolling Stone seems to be off the legal hook.
