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Canada's top court unanimously upheld a law limiting tobacco advertisements today, dismissing arguments from three big cigarette companies that complained the legislation is too broad.
The nine Supreme Court judges declared the 1997 law is constitutional. It bans broadcast commercials as well as advertisements aimed at young people and obliges companies to put large graphic warning labels on cigarette packages.
The tobacco companies had challenged six parts of the law, arguing that the restrictions unfairly infringed their right of free expression.
But in a stinging judgment that referred more than once to deceptive advertising by tobacco companies, the court said the need to protect public health takes precedence.
"Parliament's objective of combating the promotion of tobacco products by half-truths and by invitation to false inference constitutes a pressing and substantial objective, capable of justifying limits on the right of free expression," the judges said.
The law was adopted in 1997 after the Supreme Court struck down a total ban on tobacco ads in 1995 on the grounds that it violated free speech.
The court said its latest ruling "must be set in the factual context of a long history of misleading and deceptive advertising by the tobacco industry. The creative ability of the manufacturers to send positive messages about a product known to be noxious is impressive".
Canada's leading cigarette makers are British American Tobacco's Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd; Rothmans Benson & Hedges Inc, a unit of Altria Group Inc and Rothmans Inc; and JTI-Macdonald Corp, owned by Japan Tobacco Inc.
- REUTERS
