Secretary of State Ilkka Oksala at the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health says that plans to amend the law on tobacco will not be implemented if officials are unable to interpret the measures as the working group on tobacco policy had intended.
By officials, Oksala is referring to the National Supervisory Authority for Welfare and Health (VALVIRA), whose representatives helped prepare the report. Oksala himself headed the working group. Helsingin Sanomat reported on the planned changes in tobacco legislation on Thursday.
In the final report of the working group preparing the matter, the eighth paragraph of the Tobacco Act was to be modified so that the ban on tobacco advertising would also apply to “the direct and indirect advertising and promotion of smoking”.
Valvira official Reetta Honkanen, who was interviewed for the Helsingin Sanomat story, said that banned advertising could include magazine or newspaper articles that mention in words and pictures that a person being interviewed smokes, unless the story has an anti-smoking slant in other respects.
Oksala rejects this interpretation. She says that the paragraph will be written as clearly as possible so that there will be no room to quibble.
“The role for interpretation of the law must be left as narrow as possible”, Oksala says.
Oksala insists that the purpose of the Tobacco Act is not to restrict freedom of expression. For instance, it will not be a crime in the future for characters in new plays and films to smoke.
Tobacco advertising has been banned in Finland since 1976.
A proposal for reforming tobacco legislation is to be brought before Parliament in the spring.
