I'm hesitant to use the phrase smoke and mirrors here, but the overall effect of plain packaging of cigarette packs will be little more than that. One of the great problems with modern age public policy is the need to do something. Anything. Hey, this is something, lets do it.
Will it have a drastic cut in current smoking habits? Unlikely. Will it reduce the uptake of smokers? At the margins, maybe. But nothing so drastic that requires this waste of so much time and energy on the policy. And potentially this could cost the public tens of millions if the tobacco companies take the Feds to court, even if they lose. Billions if they win.
What has been lost in this big debate is regular old common sense. The media have cottoned on to this notion that Big Tobacco as they call them (who is small tobacco?), are against the move because it will impact sales due to a reduction in smoking. No, I'm not sure that is their reason. They are against it because it will potentially affect their sales due to brand recognition.
That's not to say that people will actually stop smoking. The fear will be that smokers who were brand conscious, or conscious of being seen to smoke a particular brand may just smoke a cheaper brand cigarette. And those cheaper brand products are something that "Big Tobacco" usually don't control. Potentially too, they may be even more harmful than those offered by the majors.
There is often a reason for a cheaper price. While I'm a big fan of home brand products, there is no doubt that many of them are inferior in quality than the well known established labels. The same may be said for home brand style cigarettes. And since the tobacco tax increases in 2010, these cheaper labels have been booming. (So too has chop chop - under the counter, untaxed raw tobacco)
But seriously, do people who smoke do so because of the colorful packaging in their hands? Only the idiots on the margins. If people were going to be put off from smoking because of the packaging then they would have long since left the arena thanks to the disgusting health warning photos introduced many years ago.
An olive plain packet? People don't smoke the pack. They smoke the cigarettes. They don't really care whats on the outside. They have an addiction and they cant give up. Or they enjoy it too much to want to. In most cases thanks to restrictions everywhere they go, smokers are pariahs anyway. You think they will give a toss because the pack is a different color?
Anyway, it will be up to some clever individual to come up with a set of stickers for each brand which covers up the olive green pack. Although perhaps the government can ban them too.
If the government were serious about reducing smoking and not just being seen to be doing something, then they should commission a study into the potential benefits of electronic cigarettes versus regular tobacco. Oh i forgot, real tobacco which we know is harmful is a legal product. Taxed heavily but legal nevertheless. Nicotine based electronic cigarettes (with no passive smoking side effects) are banned for sale in Australia because we don't know if they are bad. Go figure.
About Just Grumpy
1 comments
plain packing of cigarettes will not stop smokers. It is a waste of public money. So stop your silly arguments and leave cigarette packets alone.
A non smoker
Post a Comment