|
Quebec law upholds most restrictions on tobacco advertising
|
View this Thread in Original format
| Jayx1 |
These is a complete abomination of our so called freedom of speech. Tobacco is a legal product. If we want to ban it's advertising we should just make the product illegal. I wonder if the one ruling allowing it to display names at events will allow goldclub to return though?
This will be interesting.
| quote: |
Most of federal tobacco advertising law upheld
Canadian Press
MONTREAL — The Quebec Court of Appeal upheld Monday most of the federal law on tobacco advertising but eased some advertising restrictions.
While the court said some parts of the 1997 Tobacco Act are unconstitutional, it upheld provisions ordering labels warning about the health hazards of smoking.
Robert Cunningham, a lawyer for the Canadian Cancer Society, says "99 per cent of the law was upheld."
The court said it is unfair to forbid tobacco companies from exhibiting their company names when they sponsor an event. However, they are still not able to sponsor an event using a brand name.
The three justices struck down some provisions which, "based on their ambiguity, restrained in an abusive manner the manufacturers' freedom of expression."
Lawyers for Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd, Rothmans, Benson & Hedges Inc. and JTI-Macdonald Corp. had challenged the Tobacco Act in 2002 on the grounds certain provisions of the law violated their freedom of expression rights.
The companies argued the law basically forbid all advertising and other promotional activities. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled in 1995 that a total ban on advertising was unconstitutional.
It wasn't immediately clear how the ruling would affect tobacco sponsorship of cultural and sporting events, which have lost a major portion of their funding.
The Canadian Grand Prix was dropped from the Formula One's 2004 calendar when the federal government refused to soften anti-tobacco legislation. It was reinstated when organizers came up with $30 million (including $12 million from the federal and Quebec governments) to compensate the teams for lost ad revenue.
Tobacco opponents fear the tobacco companies will change the name of some of their products to their corporate brand in order to advertise at cultural and sporting events.
Imperial Tobacco said in a statement "the decision acknowledged in particular the right of the companies to communicate with adult smokers."
The company said it intends to study the ruling in detail before making further comment.
According to the Canadian Cancer Society, smoking rates have declined by nine percentage points to 21 per cent after the adoption in the 1990s of the federal law regulating tobacco products.
Francis Thompson, an analyst with the Non-Smokers' Rights Association, said the ruling is good news for public health.
"(But) it's not a total victory," he said in an interview.
Thompson said it is likely the tobacco companies will appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court. Until then, consumers probably won't see any changes.
"In practical terms, it doesn't change much. It confirms the social consensus that tobacco is a serious danger."
|
|
|
|
| MarkT |
I'm quite ok with tobacco and most alcohol not being allowed to be advertised on tv during children and early teen programming, for example.
i.e. there is room for reasonable restrictions...freedom of expression is not absolute. |
|
|
| Jayx1 |
| quote: | Originally posted by MarkT
I'm quite ok with tobacco and most alcohol not being allowed to be advertised on tv during children and early teen programming, for example.
i.e. there is room for reasonable restrictions...freedom of expression is not absolute. |
ok reasonable is fine. But can you honestly say that today's laws are reasonable?
All laws start out reasonable and then they go to far. |
|
|
| MarkT |
I don't think it's reasonable to prevent companies from sponsoring sporting and cultural events...kids don't generally have direct access to these events without parental involvement of any kind.
I certainly do think it's reasonable to heavily regulate advertising to children and anyone under the age of 18...HEAVILY regulate...print, tv, whatever.
unrelated to the legal argument, I really think we need to start focusing our energies on something other than preserving a nation-wide addiction to a known carcinogenic substance...but that's just rehashing an old debate all over again ;)
tough case from a legal perspective...IMHO, it's a industry with no redeeming features...one that is still around only because of it's historical existence, gov't taxation, and a significant % of our population having an addition...yet it's also hard to legally justify imposing limits on these companies which are not also imposed upon others simply because we think they're "bad" for people.
make cigarettes illegal or let the market be (for adults). |
|
|
|
|
