It's (never) time for a change*
An initiative aims to enshrine a new ban in the Constitution: The goal is to prohibit any form of advertising for tobacco products that could reach children and adolescents. This is already standard practice in most European countries.
Switzerland is probably a land of milk and honey for tobacco companies. Advertising for tobacco on radio and television has been banned here since 1964. However, when it comes to advertising on the internet, in print media and cinemas, at points of sale, events and on posters, there are no regulations, at least at federal level. A study carried out in French-speaking Switzerland in 2013 and 2014 found that young people encounter six times more tobacco advertising than prevention messages in everyday life outside of school. An initiative is now calling for this to change. The initiators, including health and youth organizations, want to extend the ban on advertising. To protect children and young people, they say, free offers, competitions and sponsorship of music events and parties, for example, should also be banned. After all, the majority of smokers start smoking when they are young.
It is important to know this: A discussion about the extent to which tobacco advertising should be further restricted in order to protect young people is already underway in Bern. In 2015, the Federal Council submitted a proposal to tighten up tobacco advertising. Parliament rejected the proposed advertising restriction. The reason given was that the free market economy should be given more weight than prevention. In the meantime, however, the Federal Council has presented new, less stringent proposals aimed at protecting young people. These include a nationwide ban on the sale of tobacco to under-18s and a ban on advertising in free newspapers and next to sweets, for example. However, the "Yes to protecting children and young people from tobacco advertising" initiative does not think the proposals go far enough. The area of sponsorship, for example, is not included in this proposal.
A look across national borders shows: Other European countries actually have stricter regulations when it comes to advertising cigarettes. Throughout the EU, advertising in print media and on the radio is prohibited. In most European countries, outdoor advertising and the sponsorship of events are also prohibited. Ireland, Norway, the UK and Finland, for example, also prohibit the visible display of tobacco products at points of sale. The toughest rules, meanwhile, are in Australia: on the other side of the world, not even advertising through packaging design is permitted. The cigarette packs are olive green, with the brand names printed in small, uniform lettering. The majority of the packaging is adorned with terrifying images pointing out the dangers of smoking. The Australian government is convinced that measures like these have contributed to the fact that only 14.7% of the red continent's population smoked in 2015. In 1990, it was still 27.7 percent.
*Advertising slogan from Lucky Strike
Text: Ann-Kathrin Kübler; published in Werbewoche 11/2018.
