The tobacco industry and sports just don't mix. The first makes a product that is the leading preventable cause of death in the United States, killing more than 400,000 people every year. Most important, virtually all new tobacco users are children. Most are hooked long before they are old enough to purchase the product legally because the tobacco industry's products are highly addictive.

Why is it that close to 90 percent of all smokers start as children? Certainly the rebellious nature of adolescents plays a role, but it is no coincidence that 87 percent of children who smoke use the three most heavily advertised brands. For decades the tobacco industry has been saying that it doesn't want kids to smoke and then spending billions of dollars marketing its products in ways that makes them appealing to children.

In contrast, sports and athletics activity represent vitality and health. Athletes are role models for our children. They are supposed to provide a guide to our children to healthy living and responsible behavior.

Now the tobacco industry wants to "partner" with sports organizations and leagues around the country in the guise of programs that they describe as designed to prevent children from smoking. The tobacco companies have been offering money to sports organizations to sponsor sporting events or fund prevention programs. We believe that such partnerships with the tobacco industry cause more harm than good and are intended solely for the public relations benefit of the tobacco companies rather than to reduce youth smoking.

The tobacco companies are trying to use these partnerships to create the image that the problem of youth tobacco use has been solved and that they are part of the solution.

Have the tobacco companies reformed? Have they suddenly become guardians of our children? Sadly, the answer is no.

They continue to engage in marketing practices that addict more than 2,000 kids every day, and at every turn they continue to fight real solutions to reduce youth smoking.

Earlier this year, the Federal Trade Commission released a report showing the tobacco industry increased marketing expenditures by 42 percent in the two years after it promised to stop marketing to kids in the 1998 state tobacco settlement. According to the report, the tobacco industry spends $9.6 billion a year -- $26 million a day -- to market its products. Much of this increase was originally directed toward magazines popular with kids. Today, the tobacco companies are focusing their marketing and promotions on convenience stores, another venue highly effective at reaching kids.

In addition, recent studies have shown that the tobacco industry's prevention programs -- the same ones they are seeking to promote through partnerships with sports -- are at best ineffective and at worst counterproductive. A study released earlier this year by the American Legacy Foundation, which runs the "truth" tobacco prevention program, found that non-smoking adolescents exposed to ads for Philip Morris's "Think, don't smoke" campaign were more likely to say they intend to smoke in the future. The study also found that less than half of 1 percent of kids were even aware of Lorillard's "Tobacco is whacko if you're a teen" campaign. The themes of these industry campaigns also are troubling. They often frame smoking as an adult activity, which, as any parent knows and tobacco industry documents recognize, is an effective way to tempt teens to try an activity forbidden to them.

At the same time the tobacco companies say they don't want kids to smoke, they continue to fight measures proven to reduce youth tobacco use, such as effective prevention programs, cigarette tax increases, and protections from secondhand smoke. Among other things, they have funded front groups to oppose such measures and attacked successful state and national prevention programs.

Major public health organizations, including the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association and the Campaign For Tobacco-Free Kids, have taken the unusual step of writing to the chief executives of every major sports organization in the United States, including the NCAA, urging that everyone associated with U.S. athletics at all levels carefully consider the harm that partnerships with the tobacco industry can cause to real efforts to protect our kids.

The public-health community became particularly concerned recently when the National Basketball Association entered into an agreement with the Lorillard Tobacco Company and its prevention program to sponsor the NBA's popular "Hoop-It-Up" basketball tournament. This took place even while Lorillard continued the marketing that made its Newport cigarettes the brand smoked by about 80 percent of all African-American high-school seniors who smoke. After negative media coverage and local protests by citizen groups, the NBA severed its agreement with Lorillard.

A growing number of sports organizations have realized the harm caused by involvement with tobacco companies. The Women's United Soccer Association (WUSA) has had a national smoke-free initiative since its first year, allowing no smoking or sales of tobacco products at its games and actively promoting a smoke-free lifestyle. FIFA, the international soccer federation, worked with the World Health Organization to ensure that the 2002 World Cup was smoke-free.

The tobacco industry's money is tempting, but sports organizations should not kid themselves that they are helping to solve a serious problem when they take this money. It doesn't make sense for respected sports organizations to link their reputation with a product that addicts almost a million children annually in the United States. Big Tobacco doesn't belong anywhere on the playing fields of America.

Matthew L. Myers is president of the Campaign For Tobacco-Free Kids, a non-governmental organization headquartered in Washington, D.C.