ZURICH — The images are jarring to visitors: happy, glamorous
couples smoking together in a cafe, packs of cigarettes opened invitingly,
rugged Western landscapes that evoke the Marlboro Man.
اضافة اعلان
While many countries have long banned cigarette advertising, it
has lived on in Switzerland, where loose regulations on the sale and marketing
of tobacco products make the country an outlier in much of the Western world.
The ads adorn billboards on city streets, are shown in movie theaters, and are
ubiquitous at sports and cultural events like Montreux’s famed jazz festival.
But this weekend, much of that may start to fade away as Swiss
voters decide whether to place restrictions on tobacco ads that would
effectively ban them in public spaces.
The initiative, which is expected to pass in a referendum,
according to polls conducted by Swiss media outlets, has been endorsed by
health advocates who cite findings by bodies like the World Health Organization
that the ads encourage young people to smoke and make it harder for smokers to
quit.
“We want to protect young people and ensure tobacco prevention
efforts are not undermined through advertising,” said Hans Stöckli, who is
president of the committee behind the initiative.
The initiative has unsurprisingly been opposed by the tobacco
industry, but also by the government, which has maintained unfashionably
friendly relationships with tobacco companies that have set up regional and
even global headquarters in Switzerland. A majority of members of Parliament
have also come out against it. Many of them say jobs will be lost if the
referendum passes, since cigarettes rank with chocolate and cheese as some of
the country’s leading exports.
If voters approve the initiative, advertising for tobacco
products, including e-cigarettes, would no longer be allowed in places or on
websites that are accessible to those under 18.
Even though it would not be a blanket ban, it would nonetheless
represent a significant change. Switzerland is one of the few places in Europe
that has not introduced a nationwide ban on the sale of tobacco-related
products to minors. Although some parts of the country ban sales to children under
the ages of 18 or 16, others have no minimum age, and in many places young
people can be seen puffing away in public.
Switzerland has been unable to ratify the
WHO’s Framework
Convention on Tobacco Control, despite signing it in 2004, because of its insufficient
restrictions on sponsorship and advertising. The United States has also not
ratified the convention.
Stöckli said that even if voters approve the new legislation,
Switzerland would still lag behind other countries on regulating tobacco. He
said advocates had focused on protecting children and young people, instead of
a blanket ban, to improve the chances of the law passing.
“It was a compromise,” he said, adding that he would keep
pushing for tighter regulations and higher taxes on tobacco products, including
e-cigarettes, which contain nicotine extracted from tobacco.
Switzerland has long courted multinational tobacco companies.
Philip Morris and Japan Tobacco International have their international
headquarters in the country, and British American Tobacco also has a strong
presence. The sector employs about 4,500 people in Switzerland, according to
the government, including in the production of high-tar cigarettes that are
illegal to produce or sell in the European Union.
The referendum Sunday came out of a 2015 proposal by the Federal
Council, Switzerland’s executive branch, for a Tobacco Products Act that would
ban the sale of tobacco to minors nationwide and restrict advertising.
Parliament eventually approved an amended bill that would leave most
advertising intact.
In response to the weakening of the legislation, a group made up
of more than 40 health organizations launched an initiative to make it tougher,
and assembled the necessary signatures needed to put it to the voters.
If Swiss voters reject the initiative Sunday, the amended bill
will come into effect without the broad restrictions on ads.
The initiative also includes restrictions on offering discounted
or free tobacco products and on industry sponsorship of events that are
accessible to minors.
Despite strong support from civil society organizations, the
initiative has faced a lot of opposition from politicians in Switzerland.
Mike Egger, a member of the Swiss People’s Party and
co-president of a group formed to encourage people to reject the initiative,
said the proposed advertising restrictions were against Switzerland’s liberal
values.
“The initiative calls for a ban on advertising a legal product,”
he said.
Egger said that the harmful effects of smoking were well known
in Switzerland, and that tobacco packaging already included warnings. Cigarette
packs carry both written warnings and the gruesome pictures of diseased body
parts that have become common in many countries.
“I trust that citizens can themselves decide whether they want
to consume tobacco products or not, and there is no need for a superstate that
regulates the sector more strongly,” he said.
Anti-smoking advocates have also accused the Federal Council of
cozying up to the tobacco industry. They pointed to a statement in which the
council said that the initiative was welcome from a public health perspective,
but that it “had to weigh the public health interests against those of the
economy” and supported limiting “advertising to an extent that is acceptable to
the tobacco industry.”
In the statement, the council acknowledged that almost half of
smokers started the habit as a minor, and that tobacco use was responsible for
around 15% of the nation’s deaths.
Pascal Diethelm, an anti-tobacco campaigner and a proponent of
the initiative, said the declaration by the Federal Council was shocking.
“This is smoking-gun proof that the government has put the
tobacco control policy, which is a public health policy, under the tutelage of
the tobacco industry,” he said.
Read More Region & World
.jpg)
.jpg)
