World: Analysis - US draws closer to tobacco ad ban after Senate approves bill.

Trade bodies fear the ruling may extend to cover TV and food, James Hamilton says.

In passing a 'Buy Out' bill making sweeping changes to corporate taxation by 78 votes to 15, the US Senate may have paved the way for a de facto ban on tobacco advertising in the US.

The bill will enable US manufacturers to avoid a tariff imposed on some US goods under a World Trade Organisation ruling. Tobacco farmers are just one of the groups that will receive a windfall - in their case, dollars 12 billion - to compensate for tax-break losses.

But this will come at a cost: there is pressure in Washington to bring tobacco under the Food and Drug Administration's jurisdiction, effectively reclassifying it as a drug.

Since 1964, when a report from the US Surgeon General's office on smoking and health found a causal link between tobacco and lung cancer, among other diseases, the US government and the tobacco industry have waged a bitter war that has been played out in the nation's courtrooms.

Cigarette advertising and its role in recruiting new smokers has always played an important part in the battle between what politicians see as essential reforms to protect the nation's health, and what tobacco manufacturers (and, by extension, their ad agencies) see as a test of the government's will to uphold the First Amendment protection for commercial speech.

The government claimed a major victory in 1999 when, under the terms of the Master Settlement Agreement, the culmination of a 15-year battle, the tobacco industry agreed to a ban on cartoon characters in cigarette advertising, a reduction of brand-name sponsorship of events with a significant youth audience, a ban on youth access to free samples and the establishment of a Public Education Fund into which dollars 1.45 billion was poured between 2002 and 2003.