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In
September last year, about a hundred students—reportedly
aged 13 to 25—insisted on taking part in a lawsuit
initiated by one of the country’s biggest cigarette
makers against the Interagency Committee on Tobacco, or
IACT, the body created by law to monitor the
implementation of the government ban on outdoor tobacco
advertising.
Fortune
Tobacco Corp., owned by multibillionaire
Chinese-Filipino businessman Lucio Tan, had gone to
court to seek a clearer definition of the government’s
implementation of Republic Act 9211, or the Tobacco
Regulation Act of 2003, which, among other things,
banned outdoor tobacco advertising starting July 2007.
Fortune,
which manufactures locally popular international
cigarette brands such as Winston, Salem and More, and
popular local brands such as Hope and Champion, wants to
broaden the present exceptions to the ban—posters,
leaflets, or similar outdoor-advertising materials to be
located inside retail stores—to include store billboards
and signages mounted outside or atop stores. Its
position is unsurprisingly supported by other tobacco
companies Philip Morris Manufacturing Inc., maker of
Marlboro cigarettes; Japan Tobacco, La Suerte and Mighty
Corp.
Since
September, not much has been heard about that attempt to
intervene by the youth, who had cited their “direct
interest” in ensuring the effective implementation of RA
9211, particularly its ban on outdoor tobacco
advertising. Neither can it be ascertained whether the
Marikina trial court already ruled on Fortune’s
petition.
However,
a recent report by anti-tobacco activists indicates that
the outdoor-advertising ban imposed by RA 9211 appears
to be observed more in breach. In a statement sent to
the media recently, the antitobacco group Framework
Convention on Tobacco Control Alliance of the
Philippines (FCAP) called on city and town mayors to
remove outdoor ads, billboards and signs atop retail
stores bearing tobacco products, claiming these continue
to expose particularly the youth to the hazards of
smoking.
FCAP
claimed that, based on its monitoring last month,
tobacco companies have been violating RA 9211, as
evidenced by photographs of cigarette outdoor ads
prominently displayed in the cities of Manila, Makati
and Quezon in Metro Manila, and in Cebu, Legazpi and
Roxas, among many other urban centers.
“Most of
the violations were collected through online reporting
in
www.tobaccocontrol.ph and these come in the form of
outdoor store signage and mini billboards,” FCAP said.
“The tobacco companies are undermining the effectiveness
of the law as they assert these as posters within the
store premises, when they are clearly billboards and
signs installed outside the stores.”
The
alleged ad violations featured such brands as Hope,
Marlboro, Fortune and Winston, FCAP said, and that a
preliminary report was already submitted to IACT.
“Advertising or outdoor ads, for that matter, are very
effective ways by which the tobacco industry lures
children as young as 12 years old into the habit of
smoking. Even retailers who care for children and the
future generation should remove these as a moral
obligation, if they do not care to do it in compliance
with the law,” FCAP added.
Section
22 of RA 9211 prohibits outdoor tobacco advertising
starting July 2007. The exceptions are posters,
leaflets, or similar outdoor-advertising materials that
are posted inside stores where tobacco or cigarettes are
sold to the public. The same law also created IACT to
administer RA 9211. IACT is composed of representatives
from concerned government agencies, the tobacco industry
itself, and the nongovernment group FCAP.
In
trying to intervene in the Fortune lawsuit, the students
had claimed that if exceptions to the
outdoor-advertising ban would be broadened to include
outdoor signages, as what Fortune sought, then they
would no longer be “protected” from the lure of tobacco
advertising. This is the same assertion made by FCAP.
And it
is easy enough to understand this point of view. After
all, retail stores are so prevalent not only in urban
but also in rural areas, and one can just imagine how
beer, liquor, beverage, food and tobacco companies, and
even detergent makers, compete to supply branded
billboards or signages to these storeowners, and for
free, if only to build up their respective brands.
And
while one can insist that RA 9211 explicitly prohibits
outdoor tobacco advertising, if Congress had intended to
definitively ban such, then it should not have made any
exceptions to the rule. Unfortunately for FCAP, there
are exceptions, and cigarette companies are ready to
spend large amounts of money to bring to court their
fight for a more liberal interpretation of the law.
Perhaps
FCAP and the youth should now bring their cause to
Congress. An amendment to RA 9211 should be pushed, if
only to clarify our legislators’ true intentions
regarding the ban on outdoor tobacco advertising. A
legal battle will be long and expensive, and lopsided,
since tobacco companies obviously have deeper pockets.
For the youth’s sake, a fair ban on tobacco advertising,
as long as constitutional, should be legislated. That
smoking is harmful to one’s health is a fact. That
anything harmful to one’s health should not be
advertised at all should be the intent.
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