Many shop owners are advertising their tobacco products outdoors, despite legal prohibitions on the practice in most states, including Utah.
Kim Hall, a Weber-Morgan community health education specialist, said merchants are violating the law by hanging placards or using stands to advertise cigarettes.It is legal for stores to have a generic sign advertising, for example, "Cigarettes $1.89." But banners, placards, push-pull signs, A-frames and other such advertisements are prohibited.
Utah's ban on such advertising dates back to 1929; the law was updated and reworded a decade ago.
Specifically, the statute bans any advertisement of "cigarettes, cigarette papers, cigars, chewing tobacco or smoking tobacco or any disguise or substitute of either."
Weber County Attorney Mark DeCaria said stores can put up signs that say they sell cigarettes, but they cannot advertise brand names or use manufacturer-supplied signs.
Signs hung outside the store or placed near the street are blatantly illegal. However, he said, signs that are posted inside a store's window but that can be seen from the outside also violate the law.
"Citizens should not be able to discern that that store is selling a certain brand name of cigarettes," DeCaria said.
So far, no one has been cited. Hall said that when stores were informed they were violating the law, most took the signs down.