[Intl-tobacco] German Cabinet Backs Plan to Ban Tobacco Advertising

[robert weissman]

German Cabinet Backs Plan to Ban Tobacco Advertising
Bloomberg News

May 18, 2005

May 18 (Bloomberg) -- German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Cabinet
today approved a proposal to ban tobacco advertising from newspapers,
magazines, radio and the Internet as well as tobacco companies'
sponsorship of sports such as Formula One racing.

The bill, which only needs the approval of the lower house of parliament
and could take effect as early as August, meets the requirements of a
directive agreed on by European Union health ministers in 2003.

``We have to do everything to ensure young people don't even start
smoking,' Consumer Protection and Agriculture Minister Renate Kuenast
said today in a statement published on her ministry's Web site.
``Therefore I support the ban on advertisements that depict smoking as
fashionable.'

Smoking is the biggest avoidable health risk in modern Germany, causing
around 300 deaths every day, Marion Caspers-Merk, Schroeder's drug
commissioner, said today at a press conference in Berlin.
Tobacco-product sales in Germany in 2002 totaled 23 billion euros ($29.1
billion), about a quarter of the value for the entire EU, according to
the Confederation of European Community Cigarette Manufacturers.

The annual health, economic and social costs caused by smoking are
higher than tobacco tax revenue, which totaled 13.6 billion euros last
year, Caspers-Merk said. The government twice raised tobacco tax by 1.2
euro cents a cigarette in March and December last year, and a third
increase by the same amount is due to take effect Sept. 1.

In other efforts to cut smoking, the government and the country's Hotel
and Catering Association on March 2 agreed to expand the space set aside
for non-smokers in almost all restaurants and cafes. Germany also
yesterday became the first EU country to publish a list of all additives
in cigarettes, cigars, rolling and pipe tobacco.

Rebellious Youth

The ZAW German Advertisement Industry Association said today that the
ban on tobacco advertising will lead to higher consumption of smuggled
or fake branded tobacco, rather than a decline in the number of young
smokers.

``Cigarettes, with an aura of the forbidden, will once again become the
trademark of youth rebelling against the older generation,' ZAW
spokesman Volker Nickel said in a faxed statement.

Germany took legal action on Sept. 9, 2003 against the European
Parliament and the EU Council of Ministers in the European Court of
Justice over the EU agreement, arguing that a decision to ban tobacco
advertising should be solely a national responsibility.

``The directive touches on national law and doesn't belong in the EU's
competence,' said Niklas Schulze Icking, a spokesman for the Consumer
Protection and Agriculture Ministry, in an interview. The court's ruling
is expected by the end of this year or the middle of 2006, Schulze
Icking said.

The government expects to be completely successful with its appeal in
court, deputy government spokesman Thomas Steg said today in Berlin. If
that is the case, it will rescind the ban on tobacco advertising in
magazines, newspapers and radio and only maintain the ban on Internet
advertising and on sports sponsoring, Steg said.

To contact the reporter on this story:

Claudia Rach in Berlin at crach1@bloomberg.net