15/01/2013

E-Cigarette Company To Test Boundaries Of TV Advertising

The UK’s almost 50-year-old ban on advertising smoking on TV is to be tested as an e-cigarette company plan to launch a controversial advertising campaign telling smokers of the virtues of a product that uses nicotine.

E-Lites, which makes electronic cigarettes that do not contain tar but do use addiction-forming nicotine, is to launch a national TV advertising campaign on Saturday, 19 January.

Waterloo Road actor Mark Benton, playing a father who misses his baby's first steps because he had to go outside his house to smoke a cigarette, leads the campaign, which runs with the strapline "You don't know what you're missing".

Cigarette advertising was banned on UK TV in 1965 and cinema advertising followed in 1986.

The Advertising Standards Authority admitted that the new wave of e-cigarette products is set to prove a controversial test of its rules.

"As tobacco and smoking are areas [we] are keen to ensure that advertising upholds high standards of responsibility, we also have rules restricting products similar to tobacco products, references to smoking or tobacco products and the promotion of smoking in general," an ASA spokesman said.

"As it stands, it is our view that the advertising of e-cigarettes on TV is likely to be severely restricted, so the kinds of claims and images that could be used to promote them is incredibly limited."

(H/GK)


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