Ad description
A website, beirutnights.co, the restaurant and shisha lounge Beirut Nights, seen on 23 April 2018, featured a page which included a menu for their shisha products. The page was titled “The BEST SHISHA IN LONDON”. Text on the page stated “Beirut Nights in Park Royal offers the best Shisha in London. With high quality and authentic Al Fakher and Starbuzz tobacco with heated outdoor seating, ideal for the perfect night out with friends or family. Enjoy the culinary delights of the best Lebanese restaurant in London and finish your meal with a relaxing smoke of high quality flavoured tobacco in a relaxed, ambient environment. We offer the following range of Shisha flavours”. Alongside the text were images of people smoking shisha. The rest of the page listed the different flavours of shisha and prices.
Issue
The complainant challenged whether the ad breached the Code because it promoted tobacco products.
Response
Beirut Nights said the purpose of their website was to promote their business rather than advertise tobacco products.
Assessment
Upheld
The CAP Code reflected the statutory prohibition on the advertising of tobacco products. Under the Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Act 2002 (TAPA), advertisements where the purpose, or one of the purposes, or effect of which was to promote a tobacco product were prohibited, subject to certain exceptions as set out in TAPA and related regulations. We understood shisha was a tobacco product as defined by TAPA.
The website featured prominent photos of people smoking shisha at the restaurant alongside the text “Enjoy the culinary delights of the best Lebanese restaurant in London and finish your meal with a relaxing smoke of high quality flavoured tobacco”. The rest of the web page included a menu for different types of shisha such as “Al Fakher” and “Starbuzz”. We considered that the website promoted shisha as an attraction of visiting their restaurant.
We noted that TAPA and the related regulations set out certain exclusions from the prohibitions: for example, some tobacco content was permitted where tobacco products were offered for sale or where the content and context might be considered as a response to a consumer’s specific request for information about a tobacco product.
However, we noted that shisha could not be purchased via the Beirut Nights website and we did not consider that a restaurant website, which was in any case likely to attract an audience beyond those seeking tobacco products, constituted a response to a consumer’s request for information.
Because the ad promoted shisha, a tobacco product, and did not fall within the exclusions of the relevant legislation, we concluded that the ad breached the Code.
The ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rule 21.1 21.1 Tobacco products may not be advertised to the public. (Tobacco products).
Action
The ad must not appear again in the form complained of. We told Beirut Nights to ensure that future ads for the restaurant did not advertise, for example, tobacco-containing shisha, by removing the shisha menu, the images of customers smoking shisha and the claim “finish your meal with a relaxing smoke of high quality flavoured tobacco”.
