It may seem hard to imagine now - but it used to be commonplace for people to smoke in the cinema, on the bus and train, and in restaurants and cafes. It used to be normal that children would see cigarette billboards on their route to school and that tobacco brands would line the sides of pitches at major sporting events.
After decades of campaigning, a new normal has been established that recognises and limits the harms of tobacco advertising. Tobacco promotion in the UK was finally banned in 2003 and smoking indoors in public places in 2007.
For climate and health campaigners today there are valuable lessons to be learned from the fight against big tobacco. Cigarettes and polluting products have similar qualities. Both tobacco smoke and car exhausts contain similar toxins such as benzene, carbon monoxide and polycyclic hydrocarbons. The impacts of air pollution and tobacco smoke are both differentiated by wealth - with underlying health conditions meaning lower income households are worse affected than richer households.
Public health vs poorly regulated markets
Amidst these parallels it is crucial to remember that even against the deep pockets of wealthy and powerful tobacco companies, public health campaigning can succeed against those who argue for weakly regulated markets and the vested interests of big business.
It took four decades from the publication of the Royal College of Physicians’ landmark report, Smoking and Health, to get the ban it recommended written into law in 2002.
Starting in Scandinavia in the mid-1970s, public spaces and institutions began to adopt policies against tobacco advertising.
Following some initial legislation to prohibit tobacco advertising on television in 1965, tobacco companies hit back with a covert campaign, mainly in the USA, to spread doubt about the scientific research. They also lodged a series of legal actions, bogging down attempts to pass a cross-European ban for some years in disputes about the powers of the European Commission to act on health grounds.
One of the key turning points in the UK campaign was when the doctors’ union, the British Medical Association, decided to get heavily involved. It also gave permission to individual doctors to campaign locally, even providing them with black-edged postcards to send to MPs every time a constituent died of a smoking-related disease.
Listen below to Message Recall’s podcast on tobacco advertising
Key milestones in a sixty-year campaign
1954 The first research highlighting links between smoking and lung cancer published in British Medical Journal.
1962/63 Publication of reports by the US Surgeon General and the UK Royal College of Physicians (Smoking and Health) contribute to governments taking the impacts of smoking seriously. Both reports show the links between smoking and lung cancer, as well as heart attack, stroke and the severe lung disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
1965 TV advertising of cigarettes is banned in the UK.
1998 WHO establishes the Tobacco Free Initiative (TFI) to focus international attention, resources and action on the global tobacco epidemic.
2002 The Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Act in the UK introduces a wider ban on advertising, promotion and sponsorship.
2003 Adoption of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
2008 United Nations guidelines on implementing a comprehensive advertising ban adopted. Article 13 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control requires nations that have ratified the treaty to introduce comprehensive bans on tobacco advertising and promotion within five years.
Some lessons from the smoking campaign:
The clarity of message and messenger matters: for most of the 40-year campaign, messaging came either from radicalised doctors or – in the UK at least – from ASH (Action on Smoking and Health), the highly effective heart of the anti-smoking campaign.
Campaign against the sin, not the sinner – and stay positive. The BMA’s campaign always emphasised that individual smokers were victims and not their target. Their first newspaper had a huge picture of the sky and the headline ‘BREATHE!’
Have the facts on your side - but don’t always rely on them winning the argument – it was a tough thing to do initially because, although common sense, it was hard to prove conclusively that young people were starting smoking because of tobacco ads or sponsorship. Like much research, it was open to interpretation. Arguments that appeal to people’s emotions can be equally important.
Making sure that the debate happens within the establishment by having spokespeople, like senior doctors, who are respected.
Never forget that politicians generally only move after or in tandem with the public mood; you have to be able to help them take the right decisions.
