A Ban on Cigarette Advertising Should Not Be Half-Hearted

 The Standing Committee of the 12th National People’s Congress has recently conducted two rounds of deliberation on the draft amendments to the Advertising Law. According to expert interpretation, the second-review draft of the new Advertising Law leaves two loopholes for tobacco advertising: first, ads may be published inside tobacco retail outlets; second, producers may send advertisements internally to sellers. This means the much-anticipated comprehensive ban on tobacco advertising may fall through.

According to reports, there is clear disagreement over whether the revisions to the Advertising Law should impose a comprehensive ban or a broad ban on tobacco advertising. The National Health and Family Planning Commission has explicitly stated that, under the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, all tobacco advertising, promotion, and sponsorship should be comprehensively banned, which would help protect the health of young people. The State Tobacco Monopoly Administration, however, argues that China should currently opt for a broad ban on tobacco advertising, saying a total ban would harm the interests of more than 3 million tobacco farmers, over 600,000 tobacco industry workers, and 5.4 million tobacco product retailers.

At its core, the dispute over tobacco advertising is a debate over whether health or interests should come first. It must be recognized that leaving openings and green channels for cigarette advertising would not only undermine China’s international responsibilities and national image, but could also cause the effort to ban tobacco advertising to fail at the final stage. If cigarette advertising is not completely banned and loopholes are left in place, it will be difficult to control the spread of tobacco advertising, and over time it is likely to become rampant. In my view, if cigarette advertising is to be banned, it must be banned completely, with no gaps left and no half-hearted approach. The relevant authorities need to reach this consensus as soon as possible.