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OTTAWA–Revived tobacco advertising campaigns and contraband cigarettes could reverse a trend toward lower smoking rates among teenagers, warns the Canadian Cancer Society.

Statistics Canada says teens, especially girls, are smoking less.

Smoking rates among 15- to 19-year-olds declined to 15 per cent last year, according to a survey conducted by the agency last February to December. The 2006 rate marks a substantial drop from 1999, when 28 per cent of teens surveyed said they were smoking.

The decline is "a step in the right direction," said Rob Cunningham, a policy analyst with the society

"Higher tobacco taxes, the larger picture-based package warnings, restrictions on where people can smoke including teenagers, better education and mass media campaigns" have helped, said Cunningham.

Most worrisome to anti-smoking advocates is an expected onslaught of tobacco advertising following a Supreme Court of Canada ruling that maintained limits on such ads.

The court last month unanimously upheld a decade-old federal law setting strict limits on advertising by tobacco companies in the name of safeguarding public health.

The legislation had been challenged by three leading cigarette manufacturers: Imperial Tobacco, JTI Macdonald, and Rothmans Benson and Hedges.

The 1997 Tobacco Act allowed cigarette makers to advertise in adult-oriented publications, in bars and pubs, and by direct mail.

The tobacco companies hadn't run such ads during the court challenge.

But with the ruling out of the way, Cunningham believes the advertising will resume, particularly now that the companies have a potentially huge new medium that was not as prevalent a decade ago as it is today – the Internet.

"We're concerned about that," said Cunningham.

Another concern is contraband cigarettes.

"The presence of contraband at very cheap prices is undermining other measures to reduce smoking among the Canadian population as a whole," Cunningham said.