Sam Brownback: “I want to draw the attention of this body to a report that was released just today by the Federal Trade Commission. It…”

“I want to draw the attention of this body to a report that was released just today by the Federal Trade Commission. It is a followup study to one that was done last year on the issue of the marketing of violent, adult-rated entertainment material to children. It was a groundbreaking Federal Trade Commission study last year that found that much of our adult material, adult-rated entertainment material--movies, video games, music--was adult rated by the companies themselves, entertainment companies, the conglomerates, and then target-marketed back to children, for example, in the Joe Camel advertisement. It was said this was an adult-rated product, cigarettes, but using an image to target-market that then back to children. It turns out the entertainment community--entertainment companies and movies and music and video games--was doing the exact same thing. That report was released last fall, and it was very discouraging and disappointing that they would do this, particularly at a time when we have so much difficulty with violence in our society, violence among kids in our schools, killings among our teenagers. There was a followup study released just today to that September FTC study.”