law against alcohol advertising on internet goes to Supreme Court

About two years ago the Knesset passed a law regulating the alcohol industry and their marketing capabilities. According to the new law, alcohol companies are no longer allowed to advertise on billboards and buses, along with being limited in various forms of media. At the time, in the committee sessions dealing with putting together the details of the law, it was decided not to include internet-based advertising in the law.

More recently, this past July, the committee included the Internet in its final set of details.

The law has now gone into effect, but the brewers and winemakers of Israel have been working to thwart it. They have been running a protest for the past couple of weeks. Now they, in coordination with a number of bodies and organizations, have filed an appeal with the Supreme Court to force Minister of Health Yael German to remove the Internet from the included list of regulated media for this law.

The appeal is based on the claim that German overreached by including the Internet in the list of regulation when she had only been empowered to regulate the advertising in other media, not including Internet. As well, the claim is that it hurts businesses, especially small breweries and wineries and boutique breweries. It also doe snot apply to foreign manufacturers who will still be able to market to the Israeli market, on the Internet, and will only hurt local business.

The following video was made to oppose the ban on Internet advertising..


Manufacturers will not be able to advertise their companies on Facebook, twitter, other social media nor advertise on websites. This will be very harmful to them. It will likely also harm the first Israeli whiskey distillery, Milk and Honey, though they already successfully raised their funding on Indiegogo - so at least that is not at risk.

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