UK
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has received and upheld an anonymous complaint saying that advertisements encouraging smokers to switch to e-cigarettes as safer alternatives are against EU law.
The advertisement in question appeared in a magazine, The Journal, and was for a particular vape shop. The EU Tobacco and Related Products Regulations 2016 (TRPR) forbids the promoting of vaping products on newspapers or magazines unless they appear on a trade-only publication.
Responding to the complaint, the publisher and advertiser pointed out that no brand appeared anywhere, yet the ASA argued that in line with section 22.12 of the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) code, it “reflects the TRPR except for ads targeted directly at the trade”.
The ASA advertising document says, “In the CAP code, which applies to non-broadcast advertising, rule 22.12 states that, “Except for media targeted exclusively to the trade, marketing communications with the direct or indirect effect of promoting nicotine-containing e-cigarettes and their components which are not licensed as medicines are not permitted in the following media: newspapers, magazines, and periodicals; online media; and some other forms of electronic media.
Factual claims about products are permitted on marketers’ own websites and, in certain circumstances, in other non-paid-for space online under the marketer’s control.”
“The law is even worse than this ruling implies,” said Christopher Snowdon, director of lifestyle economics at the Institute for Economic Affairs. “Even a generic appeal to smokers to switch to vaping would contravene the new EU tobacco products directive. If the UK government ran a stop-smoking campaign on television that encouraged vaping, it would be breaking the law. It’s an absurd state of affairs.”
There is, however, hope that after Brexit, the government will absolve these regulations and TRPR will have no place in the UK. Reference to this is made in the government’s newly released tobacco control plan document, titled “Towards a Smokefree Generation, A Tobacco Control Plan for England”, which talks about decreasing smoking rates from the current 15.5% to 12% or less by 2022.
The plan also encourages localities to develop their own tobacco control strategies, with a focus on e-cigarettes and other harm reduction or smoking cessation aides. It also aims to “identify where we can sensibly deregulate without harming public health”, including taking a fresh look at the tobacco products directive, (TPD) since it greatly applies to e-cigarettes.