Cigarette ad billboard offensive
Published:Thursday | August 31, 2017 | 12:00 AM
THE EDITOR, Sir:
A billboard advertising Pacific Breeze cigarettes is prominently positioned on Hope Road, at the junction with Ardenne Road. Jamaica had banned all billboard advertising of cigarettes in 2005, the same year it signed the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
But there it is in contempt of the nation's laws a billboard, prominently positioned just between the Police Officers' Club and Jamaica House advertising Pacific Breeze cigarettes. Its location is ironic. An in-your-face shot to both the political directorate that drafted those regulations and the police who should be enforcing them.
Is the public being asked to believe that the advertising agency that produced and installed the billboard, the company that commissioned and paid for it, the police, and the Cabinet members who frequent Jamaica House are all ignorant of its presence?
MICHAEL NICHOLSON