Playboy, Penthouse and other sex-themed magazines will no longer be sold at US Army and Air Force shops, a move described by the stores' operators as a business decision based on falling sales, and not a result of recent pressure from anti-pornography activists.
The 48 "adult sophisticate" magazines being dropped are among a total of 891 periodicals that will no longer be offered by the Army and Air Force Exchange Service at its stores on US military bases worldwide. Other titles stopped include English Garden, SpongeBob Comics, the New York Review of Books and the Saturday Evening Post.
Morality in Media, a Washington-based anti-pornography group, called the decision "a great victory" in its campaign against sexual exploitation in the military, and said it would continue to urge operators of US Navy and Marine Corps exchanges to follow suit.
Chris Ward, a spokesman for the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, said the cutbacks, which took effect yesterday would reduce the space allotted to magazines by 33 per cent and free up room at the exchanges for more popular products.
He noted that newsstand sales of most consumer magazines were falling steadily as online alternatives proliferated.
Sales of the "adult sophisticate" category of magazines at the exchanges had declined 86 per cent since 1998, he said.
Hundreds of magazines will continue to be sold at the exchanges. The current top-sellers are People, Men's Health and Cosmopolitan.
Though many types of magazines are among the 891 being dropped, the adult magazines posed particular difficulties, Ward said. Under federal regulations, they required special handling and placement in order to ensure they were properly displayed out of reach of children.
Military personnel will still be able to bring explicit magazines onto their bases that they purchased elsewhere, and will have access to online pornography.
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