Time and Newsweek publishers are shouting "thanks a lot bitches!" to likes of Emma Watson and Lindsay Lohan today. The liquor industry has just announced that liquor companies will soon have to start facing tougher regulations when it comes to magazine advertising.

The liquor industry is toughening some of its ad standards for magazines, recommending that spirits makers should cease running ads on the back and inside covers as of July 1 in millions of copies of five major titles, including Time and Newsweek, unless the publishers can figure out a way to send thousands of school-library editions without those ads.

As of now, back page ads, which are at the top of the expensive page pile, can not be bought by liquor companies unless the publication has an adult readership over 70%. Yet, for some reason, schools think that kids can learn from magazines like Time, Newsweek, and ESPN, so these magazines (liquor ads and all) are often kept in the library. Makes it kind of tough to keep track.

Starting this summer, that means no more millions of dollars for those publishers, unless they can come with a solution to stop enticing kids to drink. (We're sure the kids won't mind if you just stop stocking their library.)

The liquor companies do have a point though. Middle schoolers would probably would never even wonder what drinking was like if all those ads in the library weren't forcing them to consider binging.

While advertising is at it, maybe mags should take out the perfume ads, too. Surely that would stop junior high kids from thinking about sex, too.

MAGAZINES GRAPPLE WITH SCHOOL LIBRARY LIQUOR AD BAN [Ira Teinowitz and Nat Ives, Ad Age]