MULTILINGUAL WARNINGS PLEASE TOBACCO CRUSADER

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- A San Francisco man who helped launch an effort to
force tobacco companies to print the surgeon general's warnings in various
languages was pleased following a federal action requiring companies to do
just that.

``This will affect ethnic communities across the country,'' said Anh Le
following word of Friday's policy amendment by the Federal Trade
Commission. ``People are puffing away -- if they are literate only in their
native language, they don't know the dangers.''

Le long ago noted that cigarette ads aimed at ethnic communities were
printed mainly in Vietnamese or Chinese or Spanish. The notable exception
was that the surgeon general's warning was in English.

So two years ago, Le, who works with the Vietnamese Community Health
Promotion Project at the University of California-San Francisco, launched
his effort to force a change.

Friday's FTC amendment, effective immediately, requires advertising
disclosures, such as the surgeon general's warning, be in the language of
the ad's target audience.

According to the notice published Friday in the Federal Register, the FTC
said some advertisers had ``subverted'' the original intent of a 1973
mandate for ``clear and conspicuous disclosures'' in foreign language ads.

``This will reduce smoking habits. People will think twice about smoking
with the warning in their language,'' said Philip Nguyen, executive
director of the Southeast Community Center in San Francisco and San Jose.

The campaign to change the ads was spearheaded by the local
Vietnamese-American community in large part because of the high incidence
of smokers among male Vietnamese -- estimated to be 35 percent, about 1.5
times that of the general population.