As musicians and fans gear up to honor the year's best musical entertainers at the 50th Annual Grammy Awards, advocates around the country continue to expand tobacco prevention's reach into the music industry and counteract tobacco industry inroads into the music industry.

From the sponsorship of music festivals and concerts, to advertisements in popular music magazines such as Rolling Stone, the tobacco industry has utilized the music industry as a channel to market its products. The landmark 1998 Master Settlement Agreement recognized the enormous impact media has on our culture, strictly limiting this type of advertising, and Attorneys General have since then stopped several efforts by the tobacco companies to reach young people through these means. Just two years ago, the Attorneys General helped put an end to R.J. Reynolds' "Kool MIXX" marketing campaign, which primarily targeted African American youth.

Despite these efforts, tobacco still has a presence within the music community. Local advocates from across the country have joined together with musicians and music industry professionals to counter tobacco's influence, requesting that music venues be smoke-free. Secondhand smoke - which claims about 50,000 lives each year - is particularly high in bars and nightclub, exposing entertainers, patrons and employees to tobacco's deadly byproduct. One Legacy grantee, the Indiana Tobacco Prevention and Cessation Agency, aims to build a statewide network that works to effectuate smoke-free workplace environments for wait staff workers and entertainers. The goal is to ensure that such workers receive the same protections against secondhand smoke enjoyed by the majority of the white-collar work force in Indiana.

Musicians for Smoke-Free Air (a project of BREATHE California) led the smoke-free music movement in California in the late 1990s, with musicians such as Boyz II Men, Richard Marx and many more, as active members of its network. Now, years later, support for smoke-free music has continued to grow. Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights has a list of smoke-free musicians and smoke-free bars on its Web site, www.no-smoke.org.