New Zealand has long been in the forefront of nations that have restricted tobacco advertising. Below, Trish Fraser describes the death knell for the last remaining vestiges of tobacco advertising—point-of-sale advertising.—Simon Chapman, deputy editor

For the past 34 years New Zealand has been progressively eliminating tobacco advertising. In 1963 advertisments for tobacco products were withdrawn from radio and television. A decade later (1973) cigarette advertising was banned on billboards and in cinemas, and print media advertising was restricted to half a newspaper page.1 In 1995 all remaining tobacco advertising and sponsorship was banned except for point-of-sale advertising and some tobacco sponsorship exemptions.2 Point-of-sale advertising will cease on 11 December 1998.

In 1994 the Smokefree Coalition (a group of non-governmental agencies) was re-established to advocate for the strengthening of the Smoke-free Environments Amendment Bill (No 2) and its accompanying regulations. One of the coalition’s objectives was to end point-of-sale tobacco advertising. This was not included in the original bill because it did not have the support of the (then) governing National party, which was largely supportive of the tobacco industry.

The Smokefree Coalition included in its submission to the parliamentary select committee a proposal to regulate to allow price notices limited to visiting card size (90×55 mm) as recommended by the Ministry of Health. That recommendation stated: “It is proposed that regulation 4 of the SFE Regulations be amended to state that price notices shall not include any colour, depictions of tobacco products or tobacco product packaging, or trade marks of tobacco companies but shall instead be simply a notice stating the product available and its price. The intention is that the format and content of the notices will be controlled in this way and that price notices …