NOTED / SMOKE AND MIRRORS

In this age of transparency, as companies rush to open themselves up to public scrutiny (or at least fake it convincingly), it's awfully hard when you're an advertiser who can't even identify yourself. During the Olympics, you may have seen a bland commercial for the anti-smoking site ItsCanadasTime.com. "This campaign is brought you to by one of Canada's leading research-based pharmaceutical companies," we're told. And who is that? A little digging reveals that the site is registered to Pfizer Canada, which, in addition to its line of nicotine-replacement therapies (including Nicorette gum), sells the smoking-cessation drug Champix. The site provides a stop-smoking brochure and a downloadable "checklist" of points to discuss with a doctor, which emphasizes that you should ask about "available treatment options." (Such as, we assume, Champix.) But because of regulations governing the marketing of drugs in Canada, Pfizer can't put its own name on the site or the TV commercial. Which prompts the question: Why should anyone take advice from a company that can't even acknowledge it is giving them advice?