Protesters Paint Over Cigarette, Alcohol Ads

NEW YORK - Harlem residents fed up with billboards enticing them to buy alcohol and cigarettes splashed paint over more than a dozen of the signs yesterday and cheered a company that followed suit.

Singing ``Yield Not to Temptation,'' about 50 members of the Abyssinian Baptist Church marched with buckets and paint rollers down a street in Harlem, a section of New York where a recent study found men have shorter lifespans than men in Bangladesh.

``Alcohol kills more people than heroin, marijuana, crack and cocaine together,'' said the Rev. Calvin Butts, the protest organizer and church pastor.

Butts said billboards advertising such products as whiskey and cigarettes ``proliferate in the African-American community more than any other community,'' often degrade women and are designed to entice youths. ``The board says `Alive with pleasure,' but tell that to someone dying of lung cancer,'' Butts said.

The group passed graffiti-covered tenements and a dozen or so men drinking out of brown paper bags at 10 a.m. The protesters whitewashed more than a dozen 6-by-12-foot billboards.

Four police cars and a police van tailed the crowd, which included several children.

``We are using discretion,'' police Capt. Terry Tunnock said. ``We haven't had complaints from anyone. If any of the companies do complain there could be arrests, but none have come forward.''

Butts and others painted over several billboards a week earlier, prompting one outdoor advertising company, Scheiffelin & Somerset Co., to announce Johnny Walker Scotch and Hennessey Cognac would be banned from its billboards in low-income communities.

Protesters gathered at the church yesterday before hitting the streets with their whitewash and rollers. They got a surprise announcement from a visitor, John Brown, who is vice president of another sign company, Metropolitan Outdoor Advertising.

Brown announced that his company, one of the largest in the city and one of the biggest distributors of small billboards in the U.S., would remove liquor and cigarette billboards within five blocks of places of worship, schools and play areas in New York. He said the company would consider doing the same elsewhere in the country.

The billboard-blotting campaigns come at a time of heightened criticism of manufacturers that target advertising for cigarettes and alcohol at minority consumers.

In January, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. canceled plans to market a new cigarette, Uptown, with ads tailored to win over black consumers, after Health and Human Services Secretary Louis Sullivan joined Philadelphia community groups in criticizing the campaign.

A few bystanders seemed unimpressed with the effort.

``On every corner there's a liquor store and a bar,'' said Larry Rodgers, 21, who described himself as a recovering alcoholic. ``It's a good idea, but it's not going to help.''