The World Health Organisation (WHO) clearly states that the advertising of tobacco on social networking websites by employees promoting the product is prohibited. However there have been a growing number of employees who have taken to the likes of Facebook and are actively promoting the brands their company produces.

This is all the more shocking when you realise that these employees are from countries that have ratified the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which bans all tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship.

In Australia Simon Chapman, professor, School of Public Health, University of Sydney and  Becky Freeman, research officer, School of Public Health, University of Sydney carried out a study “The cancer emperor’s new clothes: Australia’s historic legislation for plain tobacco packaging” which was recently published in the British Medical Journal. The study found that certain tobacco companies are side stepping the international conventions against cigarette advertising by using social networking sites.

In a statement British American Tobacco(BAT) Australia’s managing director, David Crow, said: ”It’s absolutely not our policy to use social networking sites such as Facebook to promote our tobacco product brands. To do so could breach local advertising laws”.

“Our rules mean that employees should not post branded material on social networking sites, blog sites, chat forums or other ‘user-generated content’ sites such as YouTube – whatever the intention in posting the material may be” he added.

However, the study found more than 500 networks for BAT employees, but noted there was no way of knowing if these were a form of promotion. The next most common type of group was for BAT cigarette brands. ”Twenty-six BAT cigarette brand groups were found as part of the search and of these, five had members who were part of the BAT network” the study said.

The article’s lead researcher, Becky Freeman, said the Facebook pages appeared to break not only domestic laws against cigarette advertising but Australian commitments to the World Health Organisation treaty against the practice. “The breach needs to be addressed”, say Becky Freeman.

This comes at a time when Australia is the first country in the world to mandate plain packaging of cigarettes as part of a push towards new tobacco control measures. The plain packaging will be introduced by mid 2012 and will drastically restrict the use of brand imagery and promotional text currently used by tobacco companies.

Writer Helen Splarn.  Editor Dr Ramesh Manocha.

Source: British Medical Journal