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• Camel violated ban on using cartoons to sell cigarettes, judge rules 

The four-page Camel cigarette ad in Rolling Stone magazine two years ago was a surrealistic journey to a place called "Camel Farm," where a woman with a retro hairdo sprouted from a green field; where a gramophone, a disembodied hand and a trippy tractor drifted through the air.

It was meant to connect Camels with alternative music, and the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company argued it was far from Joe Camel, the Disneyesque spokescharacter of yesteryear that got it in so much trouble.

But a state Appeals Court ruled Monday that the company nonetheless violated a ban on using cartoons to sell smokes. Now a King County Superior Court judge may have to decide what sanctions the company will face for its ad.

"The Camel Farm imagery depends entirely upon the suspension of the laws of nature," Appeals Court Judge Anne Ellington wrote in the ruling. . . .

However, the court also ruled against the state's contention that a Rolling Stone feature that ran alongside the ad, and also included cartoons, was not R.J. Reynolds' fault.

Assistant Attorney General Rene Tomisser said he was gratified by the ruling because it affirms the state's contention that "it doesn't have to be a cartoon directed at kids ... Any cartoon fits the bill," he said.

Still, it's unclear what, if any, penalty Downing could impose on R.J. Reynolds now.

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Under a blue sky in a pastoral Eden, roosters hitch rides on floating tractors, speakers grow out of the ground and radios fly. This is in a world where the natural laws do not obtain, where cancer and serious health problems can cease to exist. For a product known to cause both, such a world is a potent sales device.
Appeals Court Judge Anne Ellington, on RJR's "Camel Farm" ad in Rolling Stone.