NZ and Norway to ban tobacco packet branding
Print Edition
NEW Zealand and Norway yesterday became the latest countries to announce they will remove branding from cigarette packets, in a move hailed by the WHO as an effective way to cut smoking rates.
The announcements, which coincide with World No Tobacco Day, mean cigarettes must be sold in drab boxes plastered with health warnings and gruesome pictures of smoking-related diseases.
“Plans by New Zealand and Norway to introduce plain packaging to reduce demand for tobacco send a powerful signal that this initiative works,” said Oleg Chestnov, the World Health Organization assistant director-general for noncommunicable diseases.
Plain packaging, which removes what is seen as a powerful tool used to get young people hooked on tobacco, “will save lives,” he said.
According to the WHO, one person dies from tobacco-caused disease every six seconds, amounting to nearly six million people each year — a number expected to rise to more than eight million by 2030.
In New Zealand, Associate Health Minister Sam Lotu-Iiga pointed out that “12 New Zealanders die prematurely every day from smoking-related illnesses.
“Each of these deaths is preventable,” he stressed.
The WHO said data from Australia, the first country to introduce plain packaging four years ago, showed the measure had a clear impact on the number of habitual smokers in the country.
With similar laws taking effect earlier this month in Britain and France, and a range of other countries discussing following suit, the WHO voiced hope the push to remove logos and distinctive colors from cigarette packs is “going global,” despite strong opposition from the tobacco industry.
“Plain packaging reduces the attractiveness of tobacco products,” WHO chief Margaret Chan said.
Imposing neutral cigarette packs, she said, “kills the glamor, which is appropriate for a product that kills people.”
Smoking in Australia has been steadily declining for years, but the WHO said 0.55 points out of a total 2.0-percentage point drop in the three years after the law was introduced in December 2012 could be directly attributed to the neutral packaging.
That equates to more than 108,000 people quitting, not relapsing or not starting to smoke during the period, said a WHO report, citing Australian statistics.
Intentionally ugly
The WHO said it hoped the data would help inspire more countries to climb aboard.
The new packs sold in Australia, and being phased in in Britain and France are intentionally ugly, covered with graphic health warnings, with no promotional information allowed and brand and product names displayed in standard color and font size.
Plain packaging is only one of many tactics called for in the WHO’s 2005 Framework Convention for Tobacco Control aimed at reducing tobacco consumption, alongside protecting people from exposure to tobacco smoke, banning tobacco advertising and sales to minors, and requiring health warnings on all products.
The tobacco industry fought particularly hard to block the introduction of plain packets, and has mounted numerous legal challenges against countries seeking to impose them.
New Zealand first proposed plain packaging in 2013, but it was put on hold pending the outcome of tobacco giant Philip Morris’ legal action against the Australian government’s introduction of the packets a year earlier.
That lawsuit failed last December.
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