Tobacco ads face severe restrictions in Canada, but anti-smoking activists say teens are targeted by advertising in U.S. magazines that come into the country. Canadian media cannot run lifestyle ads with glamorous imagery and in the last ten years there has been a crackdown on cigarette ads aimed at children.
“We don’t have a ban on cross-border advertising,” said Lorraine Fry of the Non-Smokers’ Rights Association in Toronto, “so there’s all kinds of magazines that come across the border such as Sports Illustrated, Playboy, Glamor magazine, Vanity Fair that young people would read that have gorgeous, full-page print advertising of tobacco products.”
The World Health Organization has an international treaty banning cross-border cigarette advertising. Canada has signed and ratified it but it has not yet come into force. Fry says it should be implemented right away.
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