Despite being a vice chairman of the opposition Christian Democrats (KDH), MP Daniel Lipšic will not back an amendment to the Advertising Act proposed by fellow opposition MPs Tomáš Galbavý and Stanislav Janis (both from SDKÚ-DS), the TASR newswire reported on April 1.
The initiative seeks to ban advertising of all alcoholic beverages, except for beer, in all public areas, on billboards, posters, in other media and via sponsorship.
According to Lipšic, the draft will not help to lower alcohol consumption among underage drinkers. “Whether or not alcohol is on billboards will not dissuade youth from drinking it,” he said. Moreover, the KDH vice-chairman said that he doesn’t understand why beer should be given special treatment. “This has no rational justification,” he stressed.
Galbavý and Janis think, however, the exception stems from the fact that beer is produced with various levels of alcohol content, including even alcohol-free brews. “What's more, it's literally the people's beverage, so we view a ban on its advertising as neither feasible nor appropriate,” they said. TASR
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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