City Promotes Subway-Themed Condoms

New York City earned a new bragging right yesterday: it's own brand of condoms.

Packaged in what health officials are calling the "hottest new wrapper" – black with subway-themed letters — 150,000 of the condoms were distributed yesterday as part of its Valentine's Day launch.

Smiling as he displayed the new design, the city's health commissioner, Dr. Thomas Frieden, said, "We are unveiling, unfurling, unrolling, if you will, rolling out the New York City condom."

As part of health program that dates back to 1971, the city hands out 1.5 million free condoms monthly. Officials have so far ordered 26 million in the new design at a cost of 4 cents each under a deal with the maker of the LifeStyles condoms.

The free condoms, available at health centers and online, were also distributed at several retail stores yesterday, including Theory, MAC cosmetics store, and Kenneth Cole, where the new design was launched yesterday.

Health advocates praised the giveaway, citing AIDS as the third-leading cause of death for New Yorkers under age 65, after heart disease and cancer.

"Condom distribution is an important part of HIV prevention," the chief executive officer of the Gay Men's Health Crisis, Marjorie Hill, said. "Twenty five years into the epidemic, we know that condoms work."

But critics scorned the city's marketing push and questioned its efficacy.

"Condoms are inexpensive and they're available everywhere, so what is the point of passing them out free with pretty wrappers?" the president of the New York City-based Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, Bill Donohue, said.