Kathmandu

It is a fact that cigarettes have harmful effects on health. To counter this, different countries have their own legal provisions.

Nepal formulated a law to ban advertising of tobacco products in the electronic media in 1997. But the question is, will the ban alone decrease consumption of tobacco.

A research by Stewart in 1993 published in International Journal of Advertising analysed tobacco consumption data from 22 countries for 27 years, out of which six had implemented ban on all forms of advertising by 1990. However, the analysis did not show any real effect of the advertising ban on tobacco consumption. Instead, the six countries with advertising bans experienced increased consumption. Similarly, in a comprehensive study by Cameroons (1998), Duffy (1996), Lancaster and Lancaster (2003) and Duffy (1996) found that there is little or no effect of ban on advertising over consumption. It seems it is misleading to form a relationship between cigarette consumption and advertising in isolation.

Advertising can change consumer preferences, create brand loyalties and persuade consumers to favour commodities that they didn’t previously find useful. Advertising may persuade people to buy things by creating a desirable product image. But Advertising is not the only factor.

Advertising merely gives a choice. The decision lies with consumers. A man is not going to buy sanitary napkins just because the market is bombarded with their ads, because it’s of no use to him and he decides not to buy.

As per data available, the total distribution of tobacco from 1997 (when the ban came into effect) had not decreased until 2003.

In Nepal, the government has not been able to effectively carry out anti-smoking campaigns and follow up action. The government has failed to educate people about the ills of smoking. Cigarette advertisings are far too powerful compared to what the government has done against them. The government should have undertaken mass media education campaigns featuring long-term, high-intensity counter-cigarette advertising programmes, increasing the focus on community and school-based education programmes to reduce tobacco use initiation or continuation.

Banning advertisement would stop cigarette manufacturers from taking out direct adverts. But soon they will find some way out, like surrogate advertising.

Price can be another deterrent. Huge tax on cigarettes, making them costly, can reduce both initiation and consumption.

Advertising as a gimmick creates impressions on children most. In US, 22.9 per cent children smoke after being subjected to advert gimmicks that promise luxury and fun. Teens who own a tobacco promotional item and who could name a brand of cigarette, are more than twice as likely to become smokers.

This means that until and unless the society itself takes the initiatives to fight against the tobacco, we will keep adding smokers to the existing pool.

Schools, colleges and home must have effective ways of preventing access of children to cigarette advertisements. Advertising affects the children the most, because they have less reasoning capability.

Thus ban on advertising alone is not enough to decrease smoking. Until and unless we succeed in convincing people that smoking is bad and make smoking an expensive habit, we will not be able to stop people from smoking.

(With inputs from Sarad Upadhyay, Ganga Timsina, Nirmal Gautam, Suraj S Thapa and Bal Kishan Gurung, KUSOM)