France Moves Toward Ban on Tobacco Ads

Will the Marlboro Man ride off into the sunset for good?

The French government Wednesday moved to ban all tobacco advertising in France by 1993, and American health groups are pushing laws that would force such ads out of existence in this country too. But a U.S. ban faces an uphill battle and, if adopted, might not hurt cigarette sales much, analysts say. In fact, magazines, newspapers, billboards and other media stand to lose out on the $1.5 billion the industry spends a year on advertising.

“I don’t think (tobacco companies) would mind terribly if advertising was banned,” said tobacco and beverage industry analyst Allan Kaplan at Merrill Lynch Research. “I don’t think they think that advertising stimulates demand. They just have to advertise because their competitors advertise.”

Tobacco advertising and marketing during the last century has created powerful images--such as the Marlboro Man--and slogans--such as Virginia Slim’s “You’ve come a long way baby”--that became part of the popular culture.

But cigarette ads are now as likely to attract criticism as they do attention. Recent efforts to introduce new cigarette brands--such as Uptown for blacks and Dakota for young women--have been widely attacked.

Furthermore, numerous nations across the globe ranging from Australia to Norway have banned or sharply curbed tobacco ads for health reasons. The proposed French law--which was approved by the Cabinet and must now go to the National Assembly for a vote--would ban all direct and indirect advertising and promotion, including the sponsorship of sporting and cultural events and the use of company logos on non-tobacco items such as T-shirts and luggage.

In the United States, tobacco ads have been banned on television and radio since the early 1970s amid concerns that cigarette commercials, particularly on television, largely attracted teen-agers and children.

Currently, numerous bills before both houses of Congress are aimed at tobacco ads. Under some of the proposed laws, companies could be forced to run text-only ads without trademarks or photographs and have the placement of cigarettes in movies reviewed by government officials.

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) is putting together an omnibus bill that would include these and other restrictions.

Anti-smoking forces contend that teen-agers are the ultimate target of cigarette advertising and promotions, a claim denounced by tobacco officials. “They are reaching out to the audience of young people who don’t smoke yet,” said Matthew Myers, staff director of the Coalition on Smoking or Health, which is composed of the American Heart Assn., American Lung Assn. and the American Cancer Society.

Myers said smoking among teen-agers in Norway has been significantly reduced since that nation banned tobacco ads in 1975. In contrast, smoking among adult Norwegians has been little changed, he said.

Any proposed law that would restrict tobacco ads, however, would be opposed by the industry as an infringement on commercial free speech, says Thomas Lauria, a spokesman for the Tobacco Institute, an industry trade group. “The safeguards on the protection of commercial free speech are in place and will be drawn upon by the tobacco industry.”

“With Americans smoking less and less,” said Lauria, “the only marketplace that exists is to get smokers to change brands. How does one do that without advertising?”

A ban would only serve to make it harder for new or smaller companies to enter the market, said Kaplan at Merrill Lynch. “It would be that much more difficult to pick up market share for the smaller guy.”

Kaplan and others say the recipients of tobacco advertising dollars stand to lose more than cigarette companies in the face of a ban. Tobacco companies, for example, spend millions to sponsor sporting events such as the Virginia Slims Tennis Tour.

Tobacco companies spent $200 million on billboard ads in 1989, making it the industry’s largest customer, according to the Institute of Outdoor Advertising. Although the billboard industry has grown less reliant on cigarette ads, the $200 million spent by tobacco firms accounted for about 13% of the industry’s total revenues.

For newspapers, tobacco ads contributed about $110 million in revenue in 1988, according to the Newspaper Advertising Bureau.

In the magazine industry, several major magazines, including Readers Digest, don’t accept cigarette ads. But tobacco firms account for 23% of Playboy’s ads and 37% of the ads in the supermarket tabloid Star, said Donald Kummerfeld, president of the Magazine Publishers of America.

“It sure is significant,” Kummerfeld said of the $400 million the tobacco industry spent on magazines in 1989. A tobacco ad ban would not cripple magazines, but he said, “at a time when advertising is not growing rapidly, it would certainly be harmful.”