تاثیر ممنوعیت تبلیغات دخانیات بر مصرف در کشورهای در حال توسعه

Tobacco advertising bans have become commonplace in developed nations but are less prevalent in developing countries. The importance of advertising bans as part of comprehensive tobacco control strategies has been emphasised by the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control which calls for comprehensive bans on tobacco advertising. The empirical literature suggests that comprehensive advertising bans have played a role in reducing consumption in developed countries but that limited policies have not. This paper extends this analysis to include 30 developing countries and finds that bans do play an important role in reducing tobacco consumption in these countries. It finds that both comprehensive as well as limited policies are effective in reducing consumption although comprehensive bans have a far greater impact than limited ones. Furthermore, it finds that advertising bans may be even more effective in the developing world than they are in the developed world.

Possibly the single most important event in the history of tobacco control occurred in 1964 when the United States Surgeon General warned of the proven causal relationship between cigarette smoking and smoking related diseases, particularly lung cancer (United States Department of Health and Welfare, 1964, in Laugesen and Meads, 1991). This encouraged a wave of regulation and legislation in the developed world as governments began to restrict the advertising and promotion of cigarettes, place warnings of the dangers of smoking on packaging and increase prices using taxation (Laugesen and Meads, 1991). It is now generally accepted that smoking, as well as passive smoking, is a significant cause of premature death (United States Department of Health and Human Services, 1989, in Laugesen and Meads, 1991). More and more governments are finding it necessary to strengthen the regulation of advertising and in many cases banning it altogether. This is in line with the obligations and commitments contained in the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control which recognizes that a “comprehensive ban on advertising, promotion and sponsorship would reduce the consumption of tobacco products” (World Health Organisation, 2003/2005, p. 11). Furthermore it calls upon all ratifying nations to implement comprehensive bans on advertising. This has seen an increase in the number of developing countries taking steps to restrict and ban the advertising of tobacco products.

The principle question asked in this paper is what impact do advertising bans have on tobacco consumption. Secondary to that is what impact they have specifically in the context of developing countries. This paper has attempted to estimate cross-country demand models to quantify the impact of limited and comprehensive advertising bans on consumption controlling for changing prices and incomes. The static models show that comprehensive bans have a significant negative impact on consumption in that the imposition of a comprehensive ban results in a 6.7% decline in per capita consumption. It also indicates that limited bans have no significant impact on consumption. This is consistent with Saffer and Chaloupka's (2000) conclusion that only comprehensive bans have an impact on consumption since the imposition of limited bans only causes a substitution of advertising away from those media which have been banned towards those media that are still allowed. When considering only the sub sample of developing countries we find that the comprehensive bans have a significant negative influence on consumption but we also find that limited bans now have a significant negative impact too. Limited bans reduce per capita consumption by 13.6% while comprehensive bans result in a larger 23.5% reduction in per capita consumption (relative to the base case of a weak policy regime). The result is relatively robust when the definition of limited and comprehensive bans are relaxed although the result is not robust when the ban definitions are made more restrictive.