Alliance for tobacco advertising ban demands constitutional implementation
Published: Tuesday, Feb 13th 2024, 11:10
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Exactly two years to the day after the people and cantons voted in favour of the initiative to ban tobacco advertising, the authors of the petition for a referendum are concerned about its implementation. Parliament is about to violate the constitution. The committee hopes that the councillors will give in.
In the vote in February 2022, the people and the cantons decided that tobacco advertising, advertising for e-cigarettes and other nicotine products must not reach children and young people. However, the Council of States and the responsible National Council committee do not want to implement the initiative text word for word and allow exceptions, for example for sponsoring music festivals.
Before the bill is debated again in parliament in the spring session, the association behind the "Children and young people without tobacco advertising" initiative is putting pressure on it. "The current form of legislation does not correspond to what the people and the cantons have decided," said Hans Stöckli, former SP member of the Bernese Council of States, to the media in Bern on Tuesday. This is indecent. "Parliament must not make unconstitutional decisions."
"Clear dilution of the constitutional text"
According to law professor Thomas Gächter, father of the initiative text, parliament wants to enshrine an extremely narrow definition of advertising in the revised Tobacco Products Act. The constitutional article is clear: any advertising aimed at young people that could tempt them to consume tobacco should be banned.
The fact that parliament wanted to remove the ban on sales promotion and sponsorship from the bill was a "very problematic step". Gächter referred to a recently published report by the Federal Office of Justice (FOJ), according to which the parliament's previous decisions were not in line with the constitution. Overall, this is a "clear dilution of the constitutional text", said Gächter.
The initiative committee now wants to await the National Council's decision on the Tobacco Products Act. "If Parliament does not decide in our favor, we will make our further plans," said Stöckli.
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