Tobacco and Public Health - TCSC Indonesia

Committee, mentioned above, little tobacco control legislation was enacted in the
1960s. There were two notable exceptions: (1) In 1962, Italy became the first country in
western Europe to prohibit the advertising of tobacco—a measure dictated not so
much by health considerations as by the need to protect the Italian State monopoly in
tobacco (Roemer 1993). (2) In 1965, the United States Congress passed the Federal
Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act, which banned tobacco advertising on radio
and television and required health warnings on cigarette packages. The act was subsequently
amended in 1969 to include warning notices on little cigars and smokeless
tobacco. This legislation was impelled by the effective strategy of a young lawyer, John
Banzhaf, who petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to allow equal
time for antismoking ads under the ‘fairness doctrine,’ which allowed free time on the
broadcast media for opposing views on controversial issues. With powerful antismoking
ads authored by the American Cancer Society and a subsequent decline in cigarette
sales, the tobacco industry preferred a legislative ban to continued antismoking ads on
the electronic media, and it wanted to avoid different health warnings required by the
states (Warner 1979). Congress voted to ban tobacco advertising on television and
radio and to require a national health warning.
Comprehensive laws of the 1970s
RUTH ROEMER 679
In the 1970s, a wealth of legislation was enacted in various countries restricting
advertising on radio and television, requiring health warnings on cigarette packages
and advertising, banning smoking in hospitals, indoor supermarkets, and other public
places, and in workplaces. Countries that enacted legislation dealing with multiple
aspects of tobacco control rather than single-issue, categorical laws are Singapore
(1970), Norway (1973), Finland (1976), and France (1976) (Roemer 1993). All
these laws were designed to make one measure potentiate another and to express
more forcefully than single-issue laws the political will of the government to control
the tobacco epidemic.
A prototype for a comprehensive law was the law of Finland, enacted in 1976.
Concern about the death rate of adult males in Finland led to a finding that tobacco
was the culprit. The Finnish Parliament consequently banned all advertising of
tobacco, prohibited smoking in public places, and allocated a part of tobacco tax revenue
to antismoking activities. But tobacco prices were raised only slightly so that
tobacco became a cheap luxury. In 1985, the Advisory Committee on Health Education
of Finland issued a landmark report, announcing that
Every tobacco price decision is also a health policy decision: a decision as to the
amount of tobacco-related illness and premature deaths in the future. In making such a
decision, the needs of the State Budget, developments in the profitability of the tobacco
industry, and inflation control objectives have all traditionally come before public
health objectives, despite the fact that purely economic viewpoints also speak for a reduction
in smoking.