A grassroots advocacy campaign is calling on fashion magazines to stop advertising tobacco products, accusing publishers of contributing to the deaths of their main readers: young women.

The Associated Press reported May 30 that the letter-writing campaign singled out Vogue for accepting ads for Camel No. 9 cigarettes, a brand aimed squarely at young women.

"If you draw income from the advertisement of tobacco, you are as guilty as big tobacco companies in selling the health and future of so many of our youth in order to pad your bank accounts," wrote  Heidi Thompson of Freeport, Ill., to the Vogue editors.

Other U.S. fashion magazines like Glamour, Harper's Bazaar, and Lucky are also filled with tobacco ads. But such ads are banned from similar magazines in the European Union.

"I wish the publications themselves would look hard at what they're doing. Readers look to them to see what's cool, and what's trendy -- and they see cigarettes," said Ellen Vargyas of the American Legacy Foundation. Observers also noted that many in the fashion industry smoke, especially young female models.

The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids said that volunteers sent more than 8,000 letters and faxes to Vogue, but got no response other than a few notes faxed back on letters addressed to editor Anna Wintour, including one that said, "Will you stop? You're killing trees!"

A spokesperson for Conde Nast Publications, which publishes Vogue, told the Associated Press, "Vogue does carry tobacco advertising. Beyond that we have no further comment."

Magazine analyst Samir Husni of the University of Mississippi called it "oddly hypocritical" that women's magazines would run health articles alongside tobacco ads. "What they're saying is that they value their ad customers more than their million or two million readers," he said. "Country after country is banning cigarette ads in magazines."

The Magazine Publishers of America reported that tobacco firms spent $17.2 million in the first quarter of 2007 on magazine ads. Some publications, like Men's Health, Self, and Money, don't accept tobacco ads.