Initiative to ban tobacco advertising comes to fruition
The question of whether tobacco advertising should be banned from public spaces will be put to a public vote. The initiative will be submitted in mid-September.
How the Switzerland at the weekend writes in the current issue, the last signatures are currently being certified. The popular initiative "Children without tobacco" wants to ban cigarette advertising from public spaces - i.e. anywhere where children could see it. This includes not only posters and advertisements, but also cinema advertising, sponsorship and online advertising. The initiators are numerous Medical and health associations.
The initiative would give them leverage, writes the newspaper. The submission date of September 12 was not chosen by chance: Five days later, the Council of States will debate the second version of the Tobacco Products Act, which Health Minister Alain Berset drafted and presented at the end of 2018 (Werbewoche.ch reported). Parliament rejected the first version to the Federal Council in 2016 on the grounds that the advertising and sponsorship restrictions it contained went too far. In the second version, the Federal Council does not envisage any additional advertising bans. The proposed legislation was criticized by health organizations at the time as "despondent". The initiative now makes it clear that if parliament continues to oppose advertising bans, the people will decide. The chances of it being accepted are good: 58% of the population are said to be in favor of a general ban on tobacco advertising.
The Health Committee of the Council of States is currently in the preliminary consultation phase on the new Tobacco Products Act and will conclude this on Monday. Motions have been received from both camps: The conservative health politicians are calling for the tobacco advertising regulations to be relaxed. For example, advertisements for heating cigarettes, snuff or snus should no longer have to state that they are "highly addictive", but only "addictive". Phrases such as "natural" or "without additives" should continue to be permitted for cigarettes.
And CVP member of the Council of States Erich Ettlin wants the entire paragraph that regulates the cantons' authority to issue stricter tobacco advertising regulations to be deleted from the law. Opinions differ as to whether this would mean that the cantons would have to revoke their already stricter laws (see chart below). Cantonal health directors and the Federal Office of Public Health warn against deletion, as it would create legal uncertainty. The author of the proposal, Ettlin, is of the opinion that nothing would change for the cantons and that the law would only free them from ballast.
Other motions from the camp of health organizations demand a tightening of the advertising bans to the standards of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tobacco Convention.
The trade association takes issue with this in turn. It sees a WHO-compliant implementation as a violation of constitutional economic freedom and has published a commissioned report on this by law professor Urs Saxer. On the basis of the report, the association had already warned the Commission members in May against WHO harmonization (Werbewoche.ch reported). According to the report, even the WHO's minimum requirement would effectively correspond to a complete ban on advertising, sponsorship and sales promotions. In addition, the required disclosure of marketing expenditure is an encroachment on economic freedom.
