The mass media

It is often declared that money received from tobacco advertising can help the Ukrainian mass media survive. It is suggested, for example, to permit tobacco advertising on TV in order to attract additional income for less wealthy TV companies. 

However, what is the source of such income? If any industry spends additional money for advertising, it expects that this money will be returned with a profit due to a sales increase. For the tobacco industry it is not simply a sales increase, but also a replacement for the smokers who quit or die, which is possible only by attracting a new generation of smokers - teenagers. Thus, the income for additional tobacco advertising in mass media can be taken only from pockets of teenagers, and they will also pay with their health. 

It should be also noted that even tobacco companies have a limited advertising budget, and that the redistribution of advertising expenses from one media to other is more probable, for example, if restrictions are eased - from the newspapers to TV, and in a case of toughening, for example, ban of the trade mark advertising on TV, on the contrary. The opinion that tobacco-advertising incomes will make mass media more independent is hardly justified. Currently, various financial and industrial groups own almost all media outlets. Any change of tobacco advertising regulation will cause only some change of incomes among these groups, and will most likely have no effect on well-being of journalists (probably, except for the chiefs of mass media, whose income comes directly from advertising). Besides, the presence of tobacco advertising is often a means of censorship for effective anti-tobacco materials. There have been a lot of cases where mass media refused to publish anti-tobacco materials for fear of the probable loss of income from tobacco advertising. In any case, the incomes of tobacco advertising are just single percents in any media budget and it will be possible to replace these incomes by advertising of other goods. For example, in Norway, which has forbidden tobacco advertising since 1975, sales of advertisements to Norwegian newspapers during the 8 years before the ban annually went up by 3,9 %, as opposed to a 5,6 % increase in the 8-year period after the ban. Some media outlets voluntarily or under legal restrictions have refused tobacco advertising, and in the case of a complete ban, they will have an advantage when competing with other media. For example, the tobacco-advertising ban will strengthen positions of radio and TV in competition with printed media, which at present can use tobacco money.

Any of the offered options can result only in the redistribution of the incomes and influences between various kinds of mass media. Changes in the regulation of tobacco advertising would have hardly any effect both on the total level of their incomes and the level of their independence.

In the present law on advertising, the allocation of a certain share of tobacco advertising expenses for anti-tobacco promotion is stipulated. However, from the public health position, it is hardly possible to consider this measure as effective. To weight down the effect of tobacco advertising, anti-tobacco promotion should be, as a minimum, equal to tobacco advertising in volume and quality, which is hardly possible. If the effect of anti-tobacco promotion was nevertheless higher than effect of tobacco advertising, the commercial sense to spend money for advertising would be lost if the conditions were to include the allocation of funds for anti-advertising. The real reasons for these kinds of allocation offers are the following. First, the mass media simply wants to receive money both for advertising and for anti-advertising, regardless of their effect. Secondly, this kind of allocation is a kind of a payoff for the opponents of tobacco advertising, and, unfortunately, some representatives from the public health community expressed readiness to accept this money. It means that they, as well as of some representatives of the mass media, do not care about people's health, but only about their own material well-being.

The tobacco industry

For tobacco industry, advertising is vital. Cigarettes belong to a category of products that have no objective value for the consumer (except for the satisfaction of addiction), and the appeal of a specific brand to the consumer is totally based on its image. If this image is not supported, the consumer quickly loses interest in the product in general and in the brand in particular. 

For the tobacco industry, the easing, preservation, and even toughening advertising regulation have no basic differences, as they can easily redistribute their advertising budget at the forms of advertising that are permitted. There are no data that the investments in television advertising pay off better than investment in other kinds of advertising; therefore the industry easily refuses television advertising to keep other kinds of advertising. Thus some tobacco firms even "voluntarily" refuse the most irritating forms of advertising, as they are afraid that these forms can strengthen the intention to introduce a complete advertising ban.

The tobacco industry is well aware that advertising promotes the growth of tobacco consumption and tobacco-related damage, while in a free market economy it is not capable of quitting advertising voluntarily because it makes a profit. This justifies the state regulation of tobacco advertising up to its complete ban.

If tobacco advertising only promoted the redistribution of brand shares in the tobacco market, the tobacco companies would support a ban, because it is altogether unreasonable to spend money on an activity that

is profitable only at the expense of the competitors' losses. However, there are no precedents in the world for transnational tobacco companies supporting a complete ban on tobacco advertising. On the contrary, they use every argument possible to even defer the introduction of the ban. Taking into account absolute contradiction of interests of public health and the tobacco industry (accordingly, the decrease and increase of tobacco products consumption), the tobacco industry attitude to advertising once again emphasizes that for public health, only a complete advertising ban is meaningful.

It is necessary to distinguish the advertising directed at the consumer of the products from the advertising directed at the professional workers that deliver the products to the consumers (it is sometimes called internal industry advertising or professional information). The ban on advertising directed at the consumer of tobacco products (with the purpose of reducing the consumption of these products) is quite reasonable, especially in the long-term. However, internal industry advertising (for example, in professional publications) can serve to self-regulate the tobacco industry, and a ban of this form of advertising is hardly justifiable.

Another opinion often voiced on this matter is that the ban of advertising is favourable only to firms that have well known brands, and that a ban will cause the local brands to suffer. To express this idea in other words, for the firm it will be favourable to stop advertising expenses, which pay off with profit, due to sales increase. Actually, factories without the foreign investments that control only about 4 % of Ukrainian tobacco market spend very little money on advertising. If a ban on advertising were put into effect, consumers would start to choose their cigarette brand not only by its image, but also by other consumer properties. In this kind of situation local brands can gain an advantage over international brands.

Tobacco consumers