Column

Is this a bad advert for New Labour?

Advertising is everywhere. We advertise ideas as we write, feelings by our behaviour, and our appearance as we dress. Animals advertise with scent and ritual, flowers advertise their nectar, we advertise with body language. Advertising is a fact of life.

Nonetheless, many people don’t like advertising and all governments draw a line somewhere. You couldn’t find a commercial billboard in Russia in the sixties, you can only see women’s eyes in public in Islamic nations, and you can’t advertise liquor in some states of America. So what’s the difference between acceptable and unacceptable advertising? What makes some advertising part of a nation’s cultural heritage and some a social evil?

I hope this question is exercising Tony Blair and his colleagues, as they prepare to ban tobacco advertising in Britain. But I suspect it isn’t.

Advertising becomes unacceptable only if someone disapproves of it. It can be thought morally offensive, unaesthetic, or damaging — but however it is judged someone has to be against it. Ordinary citizens, bombarded by advertising of every type, can sometimes take action when we disapprove. We can turn our heads away, we can switch the radio off, we can ignore newspaper adverts, and can even spray our own slogans over offending billboards. But beyond this we have to grin and bear it. Politicians and law-makers, on the other hand, can enforce their prejudices.

New Labour want to prohibit tobacco ads. But why is tobacco advertising bad? Well, of course it is bad because it encourages people to smoke and smoking is dangerous. But in that case alcohol advertising is bad too, automobile advertising is bad, advertising trips to India is bad, advertising large dogs for sale is bad, advertising salt is bad, junk food advertising is bad — even political advertising is bad because it encourages people to vote, and everyone knows how damaging this can be. So there must be some other reason.

Perhaps tobacco ads are bad because smoking is addictive. But then junk food, alcohol, fast driving and exotic travel are addictive too. Perhaps cigarette adverts are particularly reprehensible because they entice children. But exactly the same applies to the other categories. Besides, the more you forbid something the more many young people will want it. Perhaps tobacco advertising is so bad because smoking is excessively dangerous. But if smoking is this bad it surely makes more sense to ban cigarettes, doesn’t it? It isn’t the adverts people get addicted to; it’s the nicotine.

To ban the sale and possession of cigarettes would impede people’s freedom of choice, and to do this is politically unacceptable these days. But then banning tobacco advertising is supposed to do precisely this — in the hope that if we forget about smoking we won’t choose to do it any more.

All this makes little sense. I would rather people didn’t smoke (though I wouldn’t prohibit it) and tobacco ads obviously exploit their targets. But banning them and not most other adverts is a weak gesture made obscene by the collection of tax revenue from the continuing sale of cigarettes.

Because politicians in power are so privileged, the least we can expect is that they exercise their tastes and biases consistently. It is deeply dishonest to ban tobacco advertisements and not to ban the products themselves. It is like allowing men to solicit prostitutes but not allowing prostitutes to solicit men.

It is OK and it is not OK — and for a newly elected government to take this line with a massive majority is either horribly confused or morally feeble. Whatever it is, it is an extremely

poor advertisement for New Labour.