ndustry in North America, but the United States Congress has been discussing legislating a complete prohibition on tobacco advertising. In Canada, such a prohibition was instituted at the beginning of 1989, and this was a highly unusual event in western societies, since it is unusual for a government to institute a total ban on the advertising of a product that can still be sold legally. This legislation was federal government Bill C-51, the Tobacco Products Control Act. The purposes of this legislation are defined in Section 3:
a) to protect the health of Canadians;
b) to protect young persons and others from inducements to use tobacco products; and
c) to enhance public awareness of the hazards of tobacco use by ensuring the effective communication of pertinent information to consumers of tobacco products.
Section 4 states that no one can advertise any tobacco product offered for sale in Canada, and this includes advertisements by anyone in Canada that are placed in foreign publications or broadcasts for the purpose of promoting tobacco products specifically in Canada. However, this section also contains a blanket exemption for the contents of foreign media distributed in Canada (Leis, Kline, and Smally 367-368).
This latter element makes the situation in the United States critical for Canada, given the proliferation of American media crossing the border in various forms, notably television by broadcast and cable. In American society the regulation of risk has been applied to a large number of environmental hazards and other perceived hazards in the home and the workplace, with varying results. Both the government and the people have shown considerable interest in having the government serve as watchdog over certain specific hazards, and probably no perceived hazard has been addressed so assiduously or with such success as smoking. American society has changed over the last three decades from a society accepting ...