Section 17 – Advertising and brand sharing
53.Section 17(1) of the Act contains a wide power for the Scottish Ministers to make regulations to prohibit or restrict advertising and brand-sharing of NVPs. The powers could, for example, be used to prohibit or restrict the advertising of NVPs on billboards, product displays, bus stops, posters, leaflets, banners, brochures and certain published material in Scotland. Regulations could also prohibit or restrict unrelated branded products or services being used in NVP branding, and vice versa. The regulations can only apply to an activity in the course of a business. Section 17(2) contains a non-exhaustive list of the kind of provision which may also be made in regulations, covering enforcement, offences, penalties, defences and exceptions e.g. there could be an exception made for specialist trade shops and an exception allowing certain forms of advertising and promotion at point of sale.
54.Section 17(3) specifies the maximum penalty which regulations may prescribe for offences as, on summary proceedings, imprisonment not exceeding 12 months or a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum (currently £10,000) or both and, on conviction on indictment, imprisonment not exceeding two years or an unlimited fine or both.
55.Section 17(4) defines certain expressions used in section 17. In particular, the definition of “nicotine vapour product advert” concerns a “published advertisement” whose purpose or effect is to promote a NVP, but it also includes a product “display” whose purpose or effect is to promote a NVP. The word “advertisement” is not defined and bears its ordinary meaning. A wide definition of “published” is provided to make clear that this term covers any way of making an advertisement available to the public in Scotland; it is, for example, not limited to print media and can cover electronic and audio-visual media.
