Marketing Condoms to Teens is Ethical and Necessary :: Teen Sex

Is it ethical to market condoms to teenagers? Advertising catches the attention of everyone both young and old but seeking to feast on the most conquerable the young. With the young seeking adventure and wanting to learn and perplex experienced, they are captured by everything they see and hear, whether the information is ethical or unethical. Over the years, shake up has become an important part of the media through advertising and sales in a world where sex is important. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), American children impart view an estimated 360,000 advertisements that have sexual innuendos on television before graduating from high educate. A line of condoms marketed towards teens makes critics wonder if they are conveying a message that condoms and sex are. Jimmie Hatz condoms hit the shelves in February of 2004. Jimmie Hat is an urban slang term for condom. According to the marketers of the condoms, Common Ground USA, they are just promoting safe sex.     The merchandise campaign targets the renal pelvis hop culture. The focus is primarily on minority communities where HIV and AIDS are spreading rapidly. "When you look at the numbers and the rate of infection continues to modernise within the minority population, theyre having sex," said Harry Terrell, CEO of Common Ground USA. "We say abstinence is the only way that youre going to be OK. But the event of the matter is, we cant hide and think that theyre going to stop having sex." To grab the attention of their targeted audience, the condoms are named "Great Dane" and "Rottweiler" and come in shiny wrappers decked out with a cartoon dog wearing a thick gold chain. They also feature three flavors grape, strawberry and banana. Many popular rappers have recorded songs that use the enounce "jimmie hats" to refer to condoms. Quotes like "For Players Puttin in Real Work" and "Protect Ya Neck" are al so printed on the wrapper. Packaging aside, the success of Jimmie Hatz will depend on reactions from the younger consumers that the condom is targeting.Terrell became interested in AIDS activism in 1996 after learning that a baseball player on a high school team he coached had been infected. Terrell has said that the condoms are a "full- blown effort on our part to save our community."Critics of the condoms say that Common Grounds marketing tactics are sending teens the wrong message.