A recent report has claimed that tobacco manufacturers are using the internet in order to promote their products.

The study team in New Zealand monitored the video sharing website YouTube, noting any tobacco imagery. They found that there were many videos that were “consistent with indirect marketing activity” by certain tobacco companies.

The hugely popular website is not obliged to remove any videos that promote smoking. Because of this, the researchers have called for governments move to possibly regulate the content of such websites.

After monitoring videos with tobacco content, the researchers found that around 70% of these videos had pro-smoking content. This is hugely contrasted to just 3.7% of anti-smoking content. ‘Tobacco companies stand to benefit greatly from the marketing potential of Web 2.0, without themselves being at significant risk of being implicated in violating any laws or advertising codes’ the report stated.

Tobacco advertising has suffered major restrictions in recent years. Many nations have enforced bans on advertising on television, radio, as well as banning tobacco sponsorship from major sporting events.

Research manager for Action on Smoking and Health (Ash), Amanda Sandford labelled the report’s findings “disturbing but fairly typical of tobacco industry activity”.

“As soon as one avenue of promotion is closed, companies will seek out alternative means of promoting their product and will do anything to get round advertising restrictions”, Mrs Sanford said.

The report has been met with criticism from the tobacco industry. A spokesperson for British American Tobacco, maintained that their company did not “use social networking sites such as Facebook or YouTube to promote our tobacco product brands”.

The issue is set to be further investigated. Despite the apparent advertising of tobacco advertising on a website that receives over 1 billion viewers a day, rates of smoking in the UK could be falling. The amount of people that are quitting is certainly rising. The NHS has recently released figures showing that through will power, patches gum, and stop smoking treatments, a record number of people in the UK are being able to quit smoking.