Birth control advert, on TV

Press, 10 December 1983, Page 19

Birth control advert, on TV

NZPA-AAP London Although the first television commercial for birth control will be screened in Britain this week-end, there will be no advertisements for contraceptives.

This rule also applies to undertakers, bookmakers, private investigators, hypnotists and fortune tellers — their services cannot be advertised on television.

The people in those professions, among others, and a long list of products, are

banned from British television screens under the Independent Broadcasting Authority’s Code of Advertising Standards and Practice, the “Daily Mail” reported. Contraceptives are in the code’s list of unacceptable medical products and services along with smoking cures, contact lenses, treatments for alcoholism, clinics for the treatment of hair and scalp, products for the treatment of haemorrhoids and pregnancy services.

Apart from cigarette advertising, political organisations, religious bodies and charities are also forbidden to advertise. The code also insists that no advertising can play on fear or superstition, offer any substantial prizes or “offend against good taste or decency.” Nothing can be shown that encourages children to enter strange places, talk to strangers, eat sweets at bedtime or lead them to

believe that if they do not own the product concerned “they wilsome way to other children or be held in contempt or ridicule for not owning it.” Also, advertisements should not urge children to persuade parents to buy. Children cannot be shown playing on the road, leaning dangerously out of a window or climbing up a cliff. Almost 20 per cent of the 14,000 television commercials vetted each year are sent back for revision.