There is a surprise at the end of Watchmen, the movie.
After two-plus hours thick with beatings, war, gore, maiming, mass
murder and other on-screen violence—not to mention sex and plenty of
naked Dr. Manhattan’s big blue Empire State Building—the filmmakers
get squeamish about…smoking. Deep in the end credits is a disclaimer
assuring audiences that when characters smoked, they smoked in service
of the 1985-based story, not because tobacco companies paid for product
placement.
Sensitivity to tobacco is not the exclusive purview of the Hollywood
elite. Cigarette advertising in The Coast’s print edition recently
triggered public debate: comments, letters, even a CBC news story. “The
Coast has been running ads by cigarette companies for just under two
years,” said CBC. “Smoke-Free Nova Scotia filed a complaint with Health
Canada about ads in 2007 and 2008, but the complaints were
dismissed.”
The best rules are simple. Here’s our guiding policy on ads, first
published in this space in 2002: The Coast accepts cigarette
advertising because as a newspaper we don’t agree with censoring things
that are legal yet controversial.
Tobacco companies have spent much of the last 20 years in court,
claiming that Canadian laws against advertising threatened their
freedom of expression. The latest Supreme Court ruling, from 2007,
approved a 1997 law that sharply limits how tobacco can advertise. But
ads for cigarette brands (rather than a falsely glamorous smoking
“lifestyle”) in publications whose readership is at least 85 percent
adults (as The Coast’s is) are explicitly allowed in the law.
Cynthia Callard, executive director of Physicians for a Smoke-Free
Canada, points to smoking in restaurants to illustrate the difference
between not breaking the law and doing the right thing. “Restaurants
now protect their staff from second-hand smoke because it’s the law,”
she says in a phone call from Smoke-Free’s Ottawa office. In hindsight,
the ban seems obvious and universally loved, but restaurants weren’t
going to abandon the smoking status quo until legislation forced them.
“Just because it was legal doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.”
The very real dangers of second-hand smoke turn tobacco into a vice
that transcends the realm of personal responsibility. Most people don’t
drive when they’re drunk, or necessarily get drunk when they have a
drink, whereas every fume from every cigarette can harm both the smoker
and anyone else in range. That said, being confronted with a
tobacco ad—even on a billboard 10 metres high—doesn’t carry the
same risks as catching a blast of smoke in the face when you’re walking
down the street.
It’s a distinction Callard hints at when she talks about tobacco in
the modern media landscape, naming smoking in movies as well as print
advertising among her concerns. Of the wide variety of print media out
there, she has especially insightful analysis about a certain niche of
youth-oriented publications. “Their whole business model is encouraging
young people to take risks with their bodies,” she says. You know,
covering stuff like drinking, getting tattoos, having sex. “It seems
prudish to say they can’t take cigarette ads.”
Corrections: In the March 3 feature “Saving Brindi,” about
Francesca Rogier’s efforts to get her dog returned from city custody,
Lezlie Lowe slipped up when she wrote that Rogier “goes back to court
June 5 to answer to the city’s second try—new charges stemming from
the three old attack incidents.” The new charges actually relate only
to the third attack incident. The Coast regrets the mistake, and has
changed the online version of the story to rectify the error.
Last week’s cover was a week premature when it warned your “last
chance” to vote in the Best of Food survey was imminent. The survey is
open until noon this Monday, April 6, and we’re sorry but this really
is your last chance.
What do you think: cig ads or no? Give a shout to
editor@thecoast.ca.
This article appears in Apr 2-8, 2009.
I didn’t think that the argument was whether or not the ads were legal… I was of the mind that people were kinda shitty that you would take $2000/issue from companies who have and continue to make money on a product which does more to harm than most others, including the other legal vices drinking and gambling.
Fouge: you forgot driving.
While it’d admirable (and predictable) that the Coast would play the non-censorship card, let’s face it – they need money just as badly as all the other beleaguered newsprint rags out there.
Trying to paint the decision to have cigarette ads in The Coast as some sort of freedom of speech issue is laughable, and Kyle Shaw should be ashamed of himself. He says they won’t censor things that are “legal yet controversial”. Would you accept ads from a company like Shell, trying to greenwash their reputation and fudge their environmental history? What about from some anti-choice group, calling for the banning of abortion? Maybe you would, I don’t know any more.
There are two reasons The Coast published those ads. The main one is that they gave you a huge pile of money. With tobacco advertising restricted to very few locations, I am sure they were ecstatic to find someone willing to give them space in their publication.
The second reason is that smoking still has a cool and edgy reputation, at least amongst some losers, and The Coast is apparently desperate to pander to that group. Comparing smoking to drinking, getting tattoos, and having sex (as if they were all equivalent activities with the same degree of risk), which Shaw does, only enforces the smoking mystique amongst their target demographic and makes it seem like a desirable activity. Well done!
Johan Koch : I couldn’t have said it better those are the thoughts that ran through my head when I saw those ads! I am a teacher and it upsets me how it seems every vulnerable teen wanting to be cool smokes. It really astonishes me I thought as a society we would have grown out of that belief but then I see the Coast- a paper I thought was cool -caving to the pressure. It reminds me of my “cool friend” who tried to give me smokes in high school.l I feel like I maybe should think about distancing myself from the ignorance. I don’t think its so much about censorship as caring about your audience.. There’s not too many people that would protest Dan Savage’s column even though it can be raunchy and rude but not too many would read it if he told us to run out and have unsafe sex in droves (and meant it) It’s about caring about your readership and I feel that the Coast just doesn’t care anymore.
I was very saddened when I first saw a cigarette ad in The Coast. I read your blah crap blah offering your explanation, and I was only moved to think how everyone has their price; too bad the Coast’s is so low. Tobacco kills. Tobacco sickens. Tobacco creates addicts. People strong enough to break free of the horrible all-encompassing killing addiction do not need big colourful displays flashed before them. Everything else you do is tainted with that. Everything. It’s blood money you are accepting. The Coast is now an accomplice to misery, suffering, and death; take off your rosy glasses my friends – you’re making a sad mistake.
Many good points so far, just wanted to add my two cents. I’ve been a reader of the Coast since I was about 12 years old. My friends and I used to look forward to Thursdays so that we could go across the street from our high school to a coffee shop (that distributed the coast) and read the newest issue. The fact that “at least 85 % of our readers are adults” does not mean there aren’t still many youths that read the coast.
Late to the party here – but a major problem for the prevention of smoking is the whole issue of the fact that while free will exists, it HUGELY influenced by determinants like the social environment – and that means culture, which is basically peer pressure writ large.
The Coast, whatever its stated mandate might be, is essentially a weekly culture magazine. Most of its articles are about food and dining, about music, movies, and entertainment, about books and the arts, and about large-scale social movements like sustainable economic development, greening our city, about empowering the poor, and on and on. It’s about culture.
And, once again, smoking initiation in youth is also about culture. A culture that allows it, and profits from it, and even promotes it. And a culture that is slowly, lurchingly struggling to change itself (a social movement!) to make this killer addiction unacceptable.
Cigarette ads in a culture magazine don’t just promote the idea that this killer addiction is not only acceptable, they endorse the idea that it’s cool by associating it with all those other cultural issues and movements listed above.
The ads are not cool, and they are not standing up for for speech. They are corporate propaganda in a paper that operates on the pretense that it supports movements again corporate propaganda. They look pretty hypocritical to me.
oops “movements *against* corporate propaganda”
If you’re dumb enough to start smoking because there’s a pack of cigarettes shown to you, whether it be in a newspaper, or on a store shelf, then that’s your health on the line, and your responsibility. If you see a picture of a gun, you aren’t going to shoot yourself. These people should be complaining about alcohol ads, as teenagers are far more likely to be persuaded by an advert boasting a cheap 12 pack of Keiths than a picture of a pack of Du Mauriers.
IMO, The Coast has nothing to apologize for. The issue is that Kyle Shaw and company bothered to defend themselves in any way other than saying, “They paid for advertising, we gave them the space. End of story.” There is no higher motive at work, as far as I can tell, and there doesn’t need to be; any writer at the magazine can disagree with the people who sponsor it, and as long as the sponsors know their products might get trashed, nothing else need be said.
Probably the Upper Canadian owner sold the ads in all the papers they own and Kyle Shaw was told to run the ad and utter the usual corporate bullshit if queried on the issue. That’s how it works with conglomerates.
I’d like to know how Coast figures it’s readership “is at least 85 percent adults”. There’s a comment from a school teacher who, no doubt, see’s students read the rag. Another who’s been reading since age 12. It’s a free publication. Teenagers take things that are free just BECAUSE they are free. And how do we measure the demographic surfing in to read the online edition? Just check out Savage Love to see what sort of readership The Coast has… advising a 16 year old girl to let her boyfriend fuck her with a toy. Nope, sorry. You can’t have it both ways.
The Coast goes on to say “we don’t agree with censoring things that are legal yet controversial”… yet the Coast will advise a 16 year old girl get fucked in many strange ways. THAT’S ILLEGAL. Why don’t you censor that bullshit?
The Coast needs to take responsibility for the impact this publication has on CHILDREN while justifying tobacco advertising and the drivel in this article just doesn’t cut it.
Jammie’s painted a pretty accurate picture here but leek… grow some facial hair and then we’ll talk. The Coast is officially a dangerous place for kids.