Is a tobacco advertising ban effective in reducing consumption?
• A report of the UK Department of Health of October 1992 reviewed various forms of evidence to assess whether tobacco advertising affects the aggregate demand for tobacco products. Four countries (Norway, Finland, Canada and New Zealand) were chosen, as these countries introduced an advertising ban and enforced it effectively. In all four countries enough data were available to evaluate the ban scientifically. The main conclusion of this report was that current evidence available on these four countries indicates a significant effect. In each case the banning of advertising was followed by a fall in smoking on a scale which cannot reasonably be attributed to other factors (18). • Five years later in a report for the International Union against Cancer, the available data in the same four countries were examined. Canada was, however, replaced by France (advertising ban 01/01/1993), as in Canada a legal vacuum was created by the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision of 21st September 1995 t
