By Joe Mandak
  TRIBUNE-REVIEW

  The executive committee for Sheetz convenience stores will meet Friday to mull a request by the
  state attorney general that the stores stop using billboards to advertise cigarettes.

  Although the attorney general's letter, which Sheetz received Tuesday evening, doesn't specifically
  threaten legal action, it does imply that possibility, said Louie Sheetz, executive vice president of
  marketing for the Altoona-based chain.

  Sheetz said the letter makes reference to a similar dispute last month between Attorney General
  Mike Fisher and Wawa Food Markets, a Delaware chain that operates several stores in the  Philadelphia area.

  Sheetz declined to provide a copy of the letter to the Tribune-Review, but said that it states, in part:
  "We had contemplated filing suit over the issue and are pleased that Wawa chose to act responsibly."

  "That's obviously put in (the letter) as a bit of a threat, but that's not surprising," Sheetz said.

  The letter, which Sheetz described as "very cordial," goes on to say that Fisher hopes Sheetz
  officials will follow Wawa's lead and pull their billboards.

  The billboards in question are yellow with plain black lettering that reads:

  "Leading brand cigarette packs as low as $2.34 plus tax. Limited time at participating stores. Any
  cheaper, we'd be in jail. Sheetz."

  Wawa officials pulled similar billboards because Fisher's office claimed that the signs violated
  settlement terms of a nationwide lawsuit against tobacco manufacturers.

  In November 1998, Big Tobacco settled a lawsuit brought by 46 states citing marketing practices
  designed to entice people, including children, to smoke.

  Fisher helped draft a settlement under which Pennsylvania would receive $11.3 billion out of the
  total $206 billion settlement over 25 years.

  But the settlement also required tobacco companies to stop advertising their products via billboards,
  among other means.

  Fisher targeted Wawa and Sheetz because they advertised cigarettes on billboards after the
  settlement - even though the retailers weren't targeted in the lawsuit and weren't a party to the
  settlement talks.

  Fisher press secretary Sean Connolly said his boss is entitled to go after retailers' billboards because
  "tobacco companies are required to take `commercially reasonable' steps to make sure retailers
  don't advertise their products" under the settlement.

  Simply put, Fisher believes that means Big Tobacco is supposed to lean on retailers until they agree
  not to advertise cigarettes.

  "The language in the settlement was purposely ambiguous," Connolly said. "The goal under the
  national settlement was to take down the billboards so that children aren't exposed to this
  advertising."

  Connolly said advertisers and retailers weren't targeted in the tobacco lawsuit, in part, because there
  were "First Amendment" questions about whether they could legally be forced to stop advertising a
  product they sell legally.

  "Why don't we sue the retailers? We are going to voluntarily ask the retailers to take down these
  billboards," Connolly said.

  "That's why this (tobacco lawsuit) agreement was so effective, because the industry as a whole
  agreed that these billboards appealed to children and agreed under the settlement to remove them,"
  Connolly said.

  "No longer is there a Joe Camel on a billboard across from a school."

  But if the attorney general's office wasn't sure that targeting the billboards themselves was legal, why
  did it seek to ban them indirectly through the tobacco settlement?

  "Could we have gotten that (result) in another way? Maybe not. But this was an important health
  initiative and was important enough to fight for," Connolly said.

  However, Connolly said Fisher's office isn't sure what it can do if Sheetz or other retailers buck their
  request for "voluntary" compliance on the billboard issue.

  "Whether we can take enforcement action remains a question, and so far we haven't made that
  determination," Connolly said.

  Sheetz said he believes it is OK for the convenience store chain to continue using cigarette
  billboards, but stopped short of saying how the company will respond to Fisher's letter, which it
  probably will do on Monday.

  "We certainly feel we have every right to market these things the ways we've been marketing them.
  But it depends on what the push-back is from these guys" as to what Sheetz will ultimately decide to
  do, Sheetz said.

  "We look at it as, `Hey, 25 percent of our customers are adult smokers and they expect us to have
  their brand, and to have it in stock 24 hours a day and to have good prices on them.

  "I can't anticipate what the final decision's going to be, but I'l put it this way: Our first thought is to
  continue to go to market the way we've been going to market," Sheetz said.

  "Now, how that's going to manifest itself in a response to the attorney general remains to be seen."