Warren Kinsella, an EYE WEEKLY contributor from November 1998 through June 1999, announced today on his popular weblog that he plans to organize an effort to lobby governments at all levels to withdraw advertising from EYE WEEKLY. The local lawyer, author and consultant (who runs the Daisy Consulting Group) invites the firms, advocacy groups and individuals who want to boycott EYE WEEKLY to express their support by leaving a public comment on his site.

Motivation for this battle cry was a news item this morning on CBC Radio, where it was reported that tobacco company JTI-Macdonald was advertising three of its brands in alternative weeklies in accordance with federal regulations that have curtailed cigarette brands from being promoted in print over the last few years.

But the ads are for a legal product, and the current campaigns are no less legal if focused on the product itself rather than any lifestyle attributes, and if the publication can statistically prove that 85 per cent of its readership is over age 18. (EYE WEEKLY checks in at 96 per cent.) The ads conform to certain restrictions upheld on June 28, 2007 by the Supreme Court of Canada, and the process leading up to their acceptance probably paid for a sweet Christmas vacation for a bunch of lawyers.

Mirage, the first brand advertised under this arrangement touting LSS (Less Smoke Smell) technology, made its first appearance in EYE WEEKLY on Dec. 6, 2007. (The following week, virile avant-garde celebutard Vincent Gallo appeared on the cover, with fag in hand.) Two subsequent brands, XS and Aria, were rolled out in full-page adverts over the winter months — invariably featuring Health Canada warnings on the images of the cigarette packages, and a warning along the bottom of the page.

From the Up Front page of the March 6 edition of NOW: “Big-buck tobacco companies are back to peddling their poison in full-page ads, mostly in 'alternative' weeklies (or is that weaklings?) hurting for ad revenue. The Supreme Court has banned tobacco advertising. But tobacco giant JTI-Macdonald thinks it’s found loopholes. Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada says JTI’s blowing smoke, that the ads, which promote new brands with ‘less smoke smell technology,’ are deceiving the public into believing that less smoke means less harm. Perhaps we should mention that one of the brands JTI is pushing is called Mirage.”

Two weeks later, this was newsworthy enough for the CBC, who interviewed NOW editor/CEO Alice Klein. She reportedly explained NOW’s refusal to accept the JTI-Macdonald ads was a matter of integrity — integrity that helps them sell NOW to other advertisers.

However, the cigarettes are being advertised in the country’s two other most prominent alt-weeklies: Vancouver’s Georgia Straight and the Montreal Mirror. The Canadian edition of TIME — which at this point likely doesn’t have a reader under age 68, let alone 18 — is also a present-day outlet for JTI’s advertising.

Mirage gained some press in response to Japan Tobacco’s claim surrounding LSS, with its vanilla-coated cigarette paper, as initially revealed in TIME. Louis Gauvin, spokesman for the Quebec Coalition for Tobacco Control, called for an immediate ban of the ads.

Since they will not be appearing on the outside back cover, inside front cover or page 3 of EYE WEEKLY — with added sensitivity to any copy appearing on the opposite page — the ads are possibly less likely to be noticed by those who aren’t in the target audience of existing smokers. A post on blogTO in late December attempted to stir up some discontent among the commenters, but few were riled.

A former smoker, Winnipeg blogger Mark Rabnett, expressed skepticism in a February posting: “The only thing I smell here is a skunk. I submit that LSS will turn out to be about as effective at dispersing stinky cigarette smoke as my past practice of spraying Lysol and furiously swiping an open palm back and forth in the boys' room. You might as well try dousing Pepé Le Pew with Chanel No. 5.”

The report on CBC Radio might’ve had a more subliminal effect, though, as outspoken Ryerson computer science instructor Ilkka Kokkarinen happened to notice the three JTI advertisements in EYE WEEKLY for the first time today: “Astonished, I kept looking for some sort of ‘parody ad’ disclaimer in the margin or some kind of hipster irony in the ad itself in style of the recent ‘Obay’ campaign,” he wrote.

“Perhaps the cigarette manufacturers know that as an ‘alternative’ publication Eye is an effective way to reach their target audience, knowing that the inference from someone being ‘alternative’ and an ‘independent spirit’ to that person being an ‘ironic’ slave to tobacco is probably as reliable as you ever get in social sciences.” Indeed, at first glance the Mirage ad looks like something out of Adbusters, and the graphic designs of both Aria and XS are extremely low-key.

Tobacco advertising faced an increasing amount of legislative restrictions over the decades, culminating in the Tobacco Act of 1997, which put the kibosh on traditional marketing. But the industry was allowed to sponsor cultural and sporting events through 2003, and underwrote glossy magazines and websites as a vehicle for product promotion.

These activities continue in the United States, and Toronto hardcore punk outfit Fucked Up are part of a class-action lawsuit against the R.J. Reynolds tobacco company for using their band name as part of a fold-out promotion in Rolling Stone. (See previous Scrolling Eye column from Jan. 10, "Fucked Up in Smoke.")

Warren Kinsella, however, has determined that EYE WEEKLY is complicit in an “immoral double standard” that has been chronicled on his blog in recent weeks.

Scrolling Eye coverage of a speech by blogger Kathy Shaidle was roundly criticized by Kinsella, who took issue with being described as her “sparring partner” — even though he proceeded to do just that, while complaining about the lack of attention the piece paid to the cheap shots at ethnic and racial minorities woven into her daily polemic.

Fair enough, although a few days later Kinsella offered links to Toronto Star pieces condemning New York Governor Eliot “Client 9” Spitzer for his indiscretions with Ashley Alexandra Dupré. Kinsella wanted to remind his readers that parent company Torstar profit from adult classifieds in EYE WEEKLY, something he firmly believes they shouldn’t.  

Kinsella has been down this road before. During his stint as media columnist for the National Post in June 2006, he assailed the Adults Only pages of EYE WEEKLY for featuring the likes of “Sasha, Yuki and Mimi nude or partially nude,” noting recurrent references to the youth and ethnicity of the young women pictured. (Of course, this presumed that the images in the ads were the actual women offering their services.)

While he was trying to start an ethical battle royale with then-Toronto Star media columnist Antonia Zerbisias, she basically sloughed it all off with rationalization.

NOW’s Alice Klein was also a target of Kinsella’s hypocrisy hysteria for defending the advertising in their back pages — and this was nearly 20 years after Mayor Mel Lastman tried to ban their distribution in North York for that same reason.

Well, they now probably agree on one thing: EYE WEEKLY running legal ads for cigarettes in 2008 is cause for a fatwa.

Further proof of this “immoral double standard” is produced by Kinsella, who cut-and-pastes a 2007 Toronto Star opinion piece by Kathleen Ruff — presumably the former director of the British Columbia Human Rights Commission — who uses those words to condemn corporations for undermining public health policy when it comes to promoting tobacco use. Kinsella also notes a personal motivation in this effort, pointing the finger at Big Tobacco for the death of his physician father.

What he fails to mention is that, when Kinsella’s column Feds ran in EYE WEEKLY under an anonymous byline — he disclosed himself as the writer in the aforementioned National Post column — the adult classifieds were a longtime fixture of the print edition. Not to mention the prominent advertising for cigarette-sponsored events like Player’s auto racing and the du Maurier arts foundation and jazz festival, all with prominent logos featured.

Kinsella claims his column ended because he was critical of future Liberal leader Paul Martin — Kinsella being a close friend of Jean Chrétien — and Torstar brass felt otherwise. He also claims that a comment he made deriding the “hooker ads at the rear of the paper” were conspicuously removed by the editor. Somewhere in there is a misunderstanding about the editorial independence granted to EYE WEEKLY — and its writers.

The real reason, according to former EYE WEEKLY editor Bill Reynolds, was an emerging distaste for political insiders who were writing agenda-laden columns without declaring themselves. (Similarly anonymous Queen’s Park dispatches ran in the paper through the 1990s.)

Regardless, an email and follow-up phone call to Warren Kinsella were not returned today. Meaning there was no way to ask him how he could receive a freelance writing fee — one reportedly more generous than the average — from EYE WEEKLY in good conscience.

Similarly, there was no opportunity to ask Kinsella if his friend, Premier Dalton McGuinty, is worthy of support, given how the provincial government directly benefits from tobacco sales financially.

But, of course, Kinsella can always respond on his site. And, while you’re there, don’t forget to sign up for the meeting to help shut his one-time bully pulpit down.

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