From: Dale York [thedyork@yahoo.com] Sent: Monday, September 09, 2002 8:40 PM To: FDA Chief Counsel Daniel Troy Subject: RE: FDA Docket # 02N-0209 Dale York P.O. Box 393 Youngsville, LA 70592 September 9, 2002 FDA Chief Counsel Daniel Troy , Dear FDA Chief Counsel Troy: On behalf of US children, I urge you to implement stronger regulation of commercial advertising aimed at children. My concern is the sexually explicit commercials. I have found that to be the hardest to control/monitor. My wife and I monitor what television programs our children watch but we have NO control over the commercials. This is a huge area of improvement for the U.S. television industry. The average US child sees more than 40,000 advertisements a year on TV alone, and food commercials account for most TV advertising during children's peak viewing hours. (On Saturday mornings, children see one food commercial about every five minutes.) It is no wonder that childhood obesity, diabetes, and eating disorders (all serious public health issues for our kids) are linked to children's reaction to food advertising. From 1992 to 1999 the amount spent marketing to children shot from $6.2 billion to $12 billion. It is time for FDA to be much more assertive in regulating marketing aimed at children. Such regulation poses no real threat to freedom to do business. We're still free, productive, capitalistic - and the biggest economy in the world -- even after 30 years of pollution regulation by the EPA. Chemical companies haven't gone out of business just because they can't dump carcinogens into Love Canals anymore. Consumers, government -- even chemical companies themselves - expect those companies to operate without blatantly threatening our health and well-being. It's time to adopt the same attitude with the marketers who dump toxic messages and products into the stream of US childhood. It is past time that we hold advertisers accountable for their commercial exploitation of children. Sincerely, Sincerely, Dale W. York