They sarcastically thank "Big Tobacco'' for singling them out as a target market, making them beautiful by smoking cigarettes, making them impotent and slowly killing them.

The television ad, aimed at getting young people to quit smoking or not to start, may soon be showing up on your television, between the music videos on MTV or VH1.

And that commercial time -- ironically enough -- is being paid for with money from Pennsylvania's settlement with those tobacco companies.

It is one of 10 ads that could be shown on Comcast Cable before the end of the year under a contract approved by the Lancaster County Commissioners on Wednesday.

The ads are part of a multi-media campaign the Lancaster Drug & Alcohol Commission designed to encourage smoking cessation. The commission also hopes to place signs on billboards and in newspapers. They already have ads airing during sports broadcasts on radio station WSBA, said Stephanie Horst, the commission's prevention specialist.

With the $39,343 contract with Comcast Cable, the commission is targeting Lancaster County households and different demographics within those households.

For example, they plan to buy advertising time during Sunday night professional football games in order to reach men and male teens.

They will focus on youth with the ads on MTV, the Music Television network, or young adults on VH1, another music channel.

To reach women, the coalition plans to advertise during "chick flicks'' -- movies aimed at women broadcast on the Lifetime Network.

For both men and women, the commission is turning to NASCAR auto racing, whose viewers are about 40 percent women, said Horst.

The public service advertisements are being provided free by the Centers for Disease Control. The commercials have been proven effective in other places where they have been broadcast, she said.

Still, the ads have not yet been approved by the state's Department of Health for use in anti-tobacco programs.

The state provides funding for the smoking cessation programs from a $400 million annual pool of money from the state's settlement with major tobacco companies. The county's share of that is $1.1 million. No county revenue is funding the effort.

The cable contract will pay for airing the ads in 1,137 commercial slots by the end of the year. It will also provide 500 promos, such as when an announcer during a sports event says: "sponsored in part by the Tobacco-Free Coalition,'' for a total of 1,637 broadcast "mentions'' of the program, Horst said.

Horst said the commission chose to spend its money buying time for the free commercials, rather than attempting to create their own commercials.

The free ads the commission is seeking to air were created by other states, but the message is the same.

In one for the Florida Tobacco Control Program, two young men make a road trip to Marlboro Country only to find that the famous cigarette smoking cowboy has died of lung cancer.

That ad is aimed at the youth. It attempts to show the manipulative marketing strategies employed by the tobacco industry.

In another, created for the Kansas Health Foundation, a little girl asks her mother to not smoke around her because the second-hand smoke makes her sick and makes her stink.

That ad is aimed at parents. It plugs into the feeling of obligation parents have to protect their children from harm.

Horst said the campaign has proven effective in other areas. In Florida an extensive anti-smoking marketing campaign, which included billboards, radio and television ads and T-shirts, was credited with decreasing the rate of teen smoking by 27 percent, she said.

Along with the marketing effort, the commission is also working in elementary and middle schools to teach children the harmful effects of tobacco use. It works with police to cite stores that sell tobacco to minors through sting operations involving teenagers.
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