Yes Committee: Tobacco advertising leads youth into nicotine addiction
Tobacco consumption is the biggest preventable cause of death in Switzerland: this is how proponents of the tobacco advertising ban initiative argue. Research shows that children and adolescents start smoking more often the more they come into contact with tobacco advertising.
According to the initiators, 9500 people die every year in Switzerland from tobacco-related diseases. This is 40 times more than the annual number of traffic fatalities. More than 14 percent of deaths in Switzerland are attributable to tobacco, the sponsors of the popular initiative "Children and young people without tobacco advertising" stressed to the media in Bern on Thursday.
At the same time, tobacco consumption causes direct costs of three billion Swiss francs in the healthcare system every year. The initiative will be voted on February 13.
At the age of 15, 15 percent of young people smoke occasionally to regularly (excluding e-cigarettes). By the age of 17, almost 24 percent smoke occasionally to regularly. The majority of smokers thus start before the age of majority. However, the adolescent brain in particular is more receptive to nicotine.
Tobacco marketing is aimed at young people. After all, no one starts smoking after the age of 21, Alexander Möller, a pediatric pulmonologist at the Children's Hospital in Zurich, is quoted as saying in a press release.
The direct link between tobacco advertising and consumption has been proven by numerous studies. Virtually all studies show that there is a causal link between the frequency with which children and adolescents are exposed to advertising and promotion of tobacco products and the frequency with which they start smoking, the initiators stressed.
Criticism of the Tobacco Products Act
Today, tobacco advertising is where young people are: on the Internet and social media, in free newspapers, at festivals and at kiosks. For them, tobacco advertising is omnipresent. It is precisely this advertising that the new Tobacco Products Act continues to allow. Parliament has therefore deliberately neglected the protection of young people.
The major health organizations in Switzerland are behind the tobacco advertising ban initiative. In addition to the Alliance Healthy Switzerland, these are the Family Doctors and Pediatricians Switzerland, the Cancer League, the Lung League, the Association of Swiss Doctors FMH, the Foundation Addiction Switzerland, the Swiss Druggists Association, the Swiss Pharmacists Association Pharmasuisse, Pediatrics Switzerland, the Lung Specialists and the Cardiologists.
Of the parties, SP, Greens, EVP and EDU are represented in the initiative committee. The GLP supported the initiative in parliament by a majority.
Counterproposal by the Federal Council and Parliament
For the Federal Council and Parliament, the far-reaching advertising bans go too far. They want to achieve more protection for young people with an indirect counter-proposal to the initiative - the new Tobacco Products Act.
Advertising for tobacco products and e-cigarettes is to be banned nationwide on posters and in cinemas. Sponsorship of international events will also no longer be possible. No smoking products may be sold to minors.
The non-partisan "Committee against advertising bans" also rejects the tobacco advertising ban initiative as too extreme (Werbewoche.ch reported). Since there are hardly any places where young people do not spend time, and hardly any media that cannot also be viewed by young people, the initiative would in practice lead to a complete ban on advertising, opponents argue. (SDA)
