NEW TOBACCO ADVERTISING LEGISLATION
By Adnews Staff
The federal government will table legislation this week that cracks down on tobacco company advertising and event sponsorship. According to a report in The Globe and Mail, under the proposed regulations all broadcast, billboard, street-kiosk, bus-panel and countertop display ads will be banned. Print advertising will be restricted to those magazines that have a teen readership of less than 15%. Vending machines and self-service countertop displays would also be banned. The only area that tobacco companies will have open to them are in-store signs detailing the price or availability of a product. Event sponsorship will also be severely curtailed. Companies will only be able to advertise at the site of an event while it is taking place. And ads must be placed in a narrow band at the bottom of any promotional pieces, not taking up more than 10% of the overall space. However, companies will still be able to lend their names to events and have the names printed or broadcast. RJR Macdonald CEO Rich Kauffeld says in a press release that the proposed legislation represents an attack on freedom of expression. "The government should be working with the tobacco industry to arrive at restrictions together," Kauffeld said, "rather than taking an adversarial approach." Last year the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the similarly restrictive Tobacco Products Control Act, saying the government had failed to prove that the restraints on freedom of expression the act imposed were justified. Separately, the federal government raised taxes last week on a pack of 20 cigarettes by seven cents. That tax was matched by seven-cent increases from the provincial governments of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.