In 1991 our country declared that we chose market economy as strategic development, for which advertising business is a characteristic. But the law regulating this field was adopted only in 1996 (as of April 30) during the time when Levon Ter-Petrosyan was president.
This law was applied for several years. Then Robert Kocharyan, who likes a “healthy way of living”, was elected as president. So accordingly the law had to be more strict in order to take care of our health. The law was amended. These amendments mostly concerned advertisements of alcohol and cigarettes.
It wouldn’t be right to say that this field was ignored the first time. Particularly according to that law it was forbidden to advertise alcohol and cigarettes within the period of 07:00-21:00. besides that it was forbidden to show the process of using alcohol and cigarettes in advertisements. The purpose of this was to keep children away from using alcohol and cigarettes.
In 2002 the same law was amended and it was forbidden to advertise cigarettes and strong alcohol drinks (more then 20% of alcohol). But there was an exception in the law: brandy was not included in it. Probably it was considered as specific national product and that is why their approach to brandy was different.
But in spite of this people found a way to go against the law. There are companies that produce other products too, but mainly they are known for their alcoholic products. And later the brands of these companies appeared in advertisements. So in fact no one could prove that the purpose of these advertisements was to advertise forbidden products, but no one could believe either that they wanted to advertise other products. There is another way for this too: sponsoring. It means that the company doesn’t make any advertisements, but becomes a sponsor for a program. In fact these two are related.
Later producers understood that they could attract teenagers also with the help of print materials and posters. This was also included in the amended law of 2002. It prohibited advertising alcohol and cigarettes on the cover lists, first and last pages of newspapers and journals. As for posters, there was a limitation for these kinds of advertisements: a minimum of 10 % of the poster capacity had to contain information warning about the danger of those products.
There are even provisions in the mentioned law that don’t concern the legal field, but have to do with feelings and they are funny. For instance, “It is forbidden to inspire that using alcohol and cigarettes is essential for being successful and having a good physical appearance.” But who and how can prove that any advertisement inspires or does not inspire such things? It is almost impossible to apply this law, as well as the following one: “It is forbidden to show people under 25 in advertisements”.
Generally the law is good, but it is another thing whether it is applied or not. But our authorities found out that something was missing. On December 16, 2005 the National Assembly amended Article 15 of the mentioned law by adding the following: “It is prohibited to show the external appearance of cigarettes on posters, announcements and other show materials”. The draft on making amendments in the law on advertisements was signed by Robert Kocharyan on January 31, 2006. This law had to be applied within ten days after signing. But the government, being the initiator of that law made another suggestion on February 7 to apply this law as of October 1, 2006.
Actually this was done for the purpose to avoid all possible problems, because the importing companies still have contracts with advertising companies and the expiration date is not near the proposed time. Now the government gives them time to find other sources of advertising their products. And starting from October 1 they will have to take their posters and advertisements out of the streets of Yerevan. In other words the only place they will be able to make advertisements will be in the press.
In fact this will reduce the demand for these products. But we can’t say yet whether this reduction will have an influence on the prices for advertisement posters and other show services. The prices for these show board services are fixed by quarter-municipalities.
The “law on local taxes” has been amended together with the mentioned law. According to this new law the local tax payment for one s.m. of soft drinks advertisement billboard covers 2500-5000 dram. On February 7, 2006, the government proposed amendments again. They suggested reducing this payment of 2500-5000 and make it 2500-3500 dram. Besides that they suggested to fix a tax payments sum for advertising cigarettes equal to 3000-5000 dram, which will stay until October 1, 2006.
The interesting thing here is the fact that after the adoption of this law they had to change it again in just 1,5-2 months. Couldn’t they discuss this issue in detail so to be able to make a good decision?
Of course it is good to have good laws. But it is also worth to mention that our law prohibits selling cigarettes to teenagers. And if the authorities apply this law and make people follow it in a duly manner, they will help us more than they can by taking the advertisement billboards off.