Governments have a responsibility to implement such policy. By eliminating existing powerful and pervasive commercial messages encouraging smoking, individuals will be able to make choices about smoking based on more relev-ant and accurate information. Far from experiencing freedom of speech, former employees have been pressured by industry to suppress their evidence and views on the knowledge and behaviour of their former employers. Other instances of censorship by tobacco companies include pressures on famous athletes to prevent them from promoting non-smoking messages. Democracy recognizes and respects the ability of each individual person to assimilate information and to make well-informed choices.
Advertising is also the voice of free enterprise.
It is therefore anathema to zealous regulators everywhere, and to all who believe that society needs to be planned in a top-down way. The World Federation of Advertisers and the International Advertising Association have resolved to promote and defend advertising and commercial freedom of expression. Freedom to advertise has been one of the issues most vigorously defended by the tobacco industry. Opposition to a ban lies in the legality of the tobacco product. Once governments start to control communication, the tobacco industry claims, individuals are likely to lose personal and political freedoms.