Toronto paper stubs out cigarette adverts

Press, 29 August 1986, Page 6

Toronto paper stubs out cigarette adverts

NZPA-AP Toronto Canada’s leading national newspaper, the “Globe and Mail,” of Toronto, told readers yesterday that it would no longer accept advertisements promoting cigar-

ettes and other tobacco products. An editorial called on the federal government, which banned television advertisements for tobacco 10 years ago, to prohibit the promotion of brand-name tobacco pro-

ducts in print, on billboards, or through sponsorship of sporting and artistic events. “In urging this move, we acknowledge the argument that, since tobacco is legal, its promotion should be legal,” the

paper said. “But tobacco is legal only because it was introduced before its full effects were known. If a manufacturer were to propose today to market a product which produced addiction, disease and

death in epidemic proportions, harming not just the addicts but innocent consumers of their secondhand smoke, it would have no more chance than a request to add a known carcinogen to baby food.”

Toronto's Public Transit corporation announced this month that it planned to ban smoWtag in all trains and buses and on platforms. Some shorthaul Canadian airline flights are entirely nonsmoking.