Vic: Tobacco marketing encourages children to smoke

AAP General News (Australia)
04-09-2000
Vic: Tobacco marketing encourages children to smoke

By Simon Johanson

MELBOURNE, April 9 AAP - Unscrupulous cigarette retailers and tobacco companies were
offering marketing gimmicks with cigarettes that may lure children into smoking, Quit
said today.

Vulnerable children could be enticed into smoking by gimmicks like watches, shot glasses,
diaries, pens, mini-ashtray keyrings and lighters, all of which are sold with various
cigarettes, the anti-smoking body said.

Quit executive director Todd Harper told reporters in Melbourne that dubious point-of-sale
advertising and promotional gifts offered with cigarettes ran against the spirit of Victorian
laws.

Mr Todd said Quit had bought many promotional cigarette packets within the past few
months and taken photos of suburban newsagents and convenience stores where cigarette
ads were placed near confectionary shelves and young girls' magazines.

The packets and photographs would be handed to the authorities to determine if they
contravened relevant laws, he said.

Mr Todd said the legislation was ambiguous and should be redrafted to include a licensing
system that punished retailers who breached regulations - so that such retailers could
not sell cigarettes.

But a representative of Philip Morris Australia, which owns the Peter Jackson brand,
denied the company had at any time aimed its product at children.

"We have in place internal procedures and policies to ensure that all our activities
comply with all applicable rules and regulations," spokesman Eric Windholz said.

Mr Windholz said Philip Morris included promotional items with cigarettes from "time
to time", but all marketing activities were aimed at adults who had chosen to smoke.

"We have programs in place designed to encourage retailers to comply with the law," he said.

However, Mr Todd said he was "outraged" at the marketing practices which were "a major
public health issue".

"We are highlighting our concerns because of the impact we think these products can
have on children, whether that's deliberate or inadvertent," he said.

If parents or other concerned citizens spotted what they thought were infringements
of the law they should report them to their local council health authorities, he said.

Jim Smith, state president of the Australian Institute of Environmental Health - an
organisation that represents government health officers - said the legislation was policed
by local councils who followed up complaints made to the health department.

In the past five years only nine people had been prosecuted for selling cigarettes
to children, he said.

"I think the intent of the legislation is clear, but I think that when you get down
into the act of parliament itself the provisions of the act aren't as clear as one might
make them.

"I think there's an opportunity to actually clarify that and make the enforcement a
bit easier," he said.

AAP sj/er/pjs/bwl

KEYWORD: TOBACCO QUIT

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