There’s a smoking advert on British TV for the first time in 20 years
Big Tobacco is back – but not quite as you remember it.
British TV will see its first advert from a tobacco company in 20 years – and it’s for British American Tobacco’s (BAT) e-cigarette.
The ad for Vype – BAT’s first UK e-cigarette – will be broadcast on television over the next two months.
The FT, which has seen the advert, explains it involves a man and woman running down a street before being catapulted into the air by a puff of vapour.
Currently, UK tobacco advertising regulations are strict enough to prevent anything so much as resembling a cigarette from being shown.
Cigarette on the TV have been banned since 1965, with tobacco and cigar ones banned in 1991.
Over in the US, the first e-cigarette advert popped up over a year ago.
The Advertising Standards Authority has launched a full public consultation on e-cigarette advertising. Speaking to the FT, a representative said there’s a regulatory gap when it comes to e-cigarette ads, as codes weren’t designed with products like them in mind.
The Vype news will no doubt see anti-electronic cigarette campaigners up in arms. A recent proposal from the EU would see e-cigarette users out in the cold with smokers, inhibiting their use indoors, and new UK legislation will see the sale of e-cigarettes banned to under-18s.
But while we don’t yet have a full picture of the health effects of e-cigarettes, and people are right to be cautious, there are several compelling reasons why criminalisation is a bad idea – and why the Vype ad should stay.
They're better for health
One, regardless of potential risks, they do give smokers a safer chance of quitting.
Two, 100,000 people suffer tobacco-related deaths in Britain each year. If e-cigarettes put a dent in that number – they’re now used by £1.3m of the country’s around £10m smokers – making them as hard and uncomfortable to use as possible can’t be the answer.
Big Tobacco’s betting on them
E-cigarettes are a groundbreaking technology that’s gone from being a prototype to a $3bn market in ten years.
And more than that, many think they could overtake tobacco, particularly in emerging markets.
Growing numbers of Big Tobacco companies are moving into the e-cigarette market, competing with smaller firms that jumped on the bandwagon earlier.
In America, e-cigarette sales were between $300m and $500m compared to $80m for conventional cigarettes in 2012. Sales have now reached around $1.5bn in the US alone.
What about children who smoke?
The worry is that smoking e-cigarettes is becoming – or certainly could become through advertising – a glamourised activity for kids; a “healthier” form of social smoking.
But be that as it may, in the UK alone, over 200,000 children aged 11-15 start smoking every year, according to anti-smoking charity ASH. And two thirds of adult smokers say they started when under 16.
Should fear of a growing trend deprive those individuals of a potential way out, or medicine?