Is a total advertising ban the only way to protect youth from tobacco use?
Advertising is one of the aspects that need to be considered. However the thought that removing advertising would remove the allure of smoking is misleading. What might be better is a change of culture.
A recent example of this is drink driving or not wearing seatbelts. There was a time when not wearing a seat belt was considered acceptable. Now everyone knows that in order to stay safe it is important to wear one.
Equally if someone said they were driving people would still try and get them to drink alcohol. In recent times more effort has been made to raise awareness of the importance of not drinking while under the influence of alcohol.
In both these cases what originally was culturally acceptable became culturally unacceptable. With youth this is harder because there is an element of counter culture and wanting to be marked out as different. An outright ban on advertising may well have an unintended adverse effect.
What may be more positive is to raise more awareness for young people of the dangers of smoking. It may also be worth discussing the less appealing aspects such as the yellowing of the fingers, stinky clothes, breath and so forth. In short an appeal to the ego may have a more positive effect than prohibition.
• A ban on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship is a powerful tool to protect youth and is one of the World Health Organizations six MPOWER strategies that are designed to combat tobacco use, the leading preventable cause of death in the world today. • The six MPOWER strategies enable countries to protect their youth from an epidemic that could kill up to one billion people this century.
