MEPS VOTE TO STUB OUT TOBACCO ADVERTISING

Anti-smoking campaigners have welcomed the ban on tobacco advertising and
sponsorship in Europe approved by MEPs in Strasbourg yesterday.

Britain and other member states will move within weeks to implement the ban,
which should lead to an end to all tobacco promotion by the year 2006.

Once the law is in force, the only publicity allowed will be in trade
journals and inside shops selling tobacco.

Countries in the European Union will have three years to remove tobacco
advertising on billboards and in cinemas and four years to remove it from
newspapers and magazines.

Sponsorship of cultural and sporting events - except for Formula 1 motor
racing - must end within five years.

Formula 1 has been given an eight-year reprieve to find more backers after
intervention from the British Government, which feared losing the sport to
the Far East.

Doctors and other anti-tobacco campaigners last night welcomed the ban,
which will also cover tobacco logos on clothing and other indirect
promotion. A spokeswoman for the British Medical Association in Scotland
said: "The BMA, along with other organisations, has been campaigning for
this move for years. Now we want to see swift action to implement the
directive."

Maureen Moore, the chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health Scotland,
said: "This is a great day for public health in Scotland and the rest of
Europe. There are 540,000 deaths from tobacco-related causes in the EU each
year. The directive is a great opportunity to reduce this death toll. We
want to see the UK Government implementing this directive as quickly as
possible."

Sam Galbraith, the Scottish health minister, said: "It is, quite simply, the
most important step towards reducing smoking since tobacco advertising was
banned from our television screens.

"Smoking, and the cancer and heart disease which it causes, has blighted
Scottish health. More importantly, I believe that it has caught too many of
our children in its grip, a grip which has ultimately strangled the life out
of them before their time.

"I am convinced that removing the exposure to the messages of the
advertisers will help us to give our children a new choice.

"The fact that people dying from smoking-related diseases in Scotland could
fill a Glasgow to London shuttle flight every week has always shocked me. We
are determined to turn that plane around."

The Tobacco Manufacturers' Association said that, while the ban may give the
Government the legislation it is looking for, it would not reduce tobacco
consumption nor stop children smoking.

David Swan, the association's chief executive, warned: "If this ban goes
through, British jobs will be lost and grassroots sports in Britain will
struggle to survive, while the governments will continue to rake in billions
of pounds in tobacco taxes which they know will be barely affected."

Mr Swan claimed the Government may have "shot itself in the foot" in its
rush to get the credit for the measures during its EU presidency.

"It has pushed through a directive which is ill-conceived and, according to
many experts, probably illegal. We hope a more reasoned approach will
prevail when the UK Government tackles the detailed implementation of the
directive.

"The tobacco industry in this country stands ready to co-operate and discuss
with them how this can be achieved in a practical way."

The European Publishers' Council immediately threatened legal action against
the ban. Sir Frank Rogers, its chairman, said: "Once again we are seeing
fundamental freedoms, such as the freedom of expression, sacrificed for
short-term political expediency. A ban on tobacco advertising is the easy
option for politicians: it merely allows them to be seen to be doing
something in the name of public health."

In a statement accusing the European parliament of backing an "illegal"
directive, he went on: "There is no evidence that a ban on the advertising
of tobacco products will lead to a reduction in consumption of tobacco
products."

The chairman of the European Advertising Tripartite and publisher of the
'Economist', David Hanger, said: "Advertising is a means of making
information available to consumers about products legally for sale.
Advertising is not an agent of social change and should not be used for that
purpose by politicians. We do not believe that advertising bans will achieve
the stated objectives of the politicians."

It took ten years of fraught negotiations between Brussels and EU
governments to agree the ban and the issue generated some of the most
intense lobbying by industry seen in the European Parliament.

Checked-by: "Rolf Ernst"