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Chapter 9 Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Henry Saffer If tobacco
advertising and promotion increase cigarette consumption,
they are isseus for public health policy. Although public
health advocates assert that tobacco advertising does
increase cigarette consumption, there is significant
emperical lieterature that finds little or no effect of
tobacco advertising on smoking. In this chapter, these
emperical studies are examined more closely with several
important insights emerging from the analysis. The chapter
also provides new empirical research from 102 countries on
the effect of tobacco advertising. The primary conclusion of
this research is that a comprehensive set of tobacco
advertising bans can reduce tobacco consumption and that a
limited set of advertising bans will have little or no
effect. The policy options that have been proposed for the
control of tobacco advertising include limitation on the
content of advertisements, restrictions on the placement of
advertising, restrictions on the time that cigarette
advertising can be placed on broadcast media, total
advertising bans in one or more media, counter-advertising
and the taxation of advertising. This analysis concludes
that neither restrictions on the content and placement of
advertising, nor bans in one or more media, are effective.
However, comprehensive control programs, including
comprehensive advertising bans, do reduce cigarette
consumption. Counteradvertising, which is the use of media
to promote public health, also reduces cigarette
consumption. The taxation of advertising also reduces total
advertising with the additional advantage of raising revenue
that could be used to fund counter-advertising.
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