Background: Thailand has one of the strongest tobacco advertising restrictions in the world, including a ban on point of sale advertising. Less comprehensive restrictions are present in Malaysia. This study aimed to examine the impact of tobacco advertising policy on smokers' awareness of tobacco promotion in these two Southeast Asian countries.

Method: Baseline data (early 2005) from the ITC Southeast Asia Survey (ITC-SEA) conducted face-to-face in Malaysia (n=2004) and Thailand (n=2000) were employed for the analyses.

Results: The results revealed that general awareness of any tobacco promotion was very low in Thailand (20%), with prompted recall (combination of 9 situations) being even lower (14%), but significantly higher in Malaysia (53%, OR=4.12, 95% CI=3.41, 4.97; prompted=84%, OR=37.44, 95% CI=29.14, 48.10). Looking at specific locations, as expected there was a marked difference in level of awareness of tobacco promotion between Malaysia and Thailand. Thai adult smokers generally reported very low recall of tobacco advertising where it was banned except at point of sale (range=0.8-7.5%). In contrast, Malaysian adult smokers reported significantly higher levels of awareness of tobacco advertising in many locations (range=18.1-59.2%) including where they are notionally banned (e.g., billboards).

Conclusions: Compared to Thailand, awareness of tobacco promotion is significantly higher in Malaysia attributable largely to a lack of political will and loopholes in existing legislation.

Implications: These findings demonstrate that comprehensive tobacco advertising legislation can lead to dramatic declines in awareness of tobacco promotion, thus supporting strong implementation of Article 13 of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.