Anti-Smoking campaigners have welcomed a ban on cigarette packet logos. It’s said that tougher controls including plain packaging and a ban on the advertising of cigarette papers are under consideration by the Department of Health.
According to reports the Government has announced measures including minimum pack sizes of 20 to stop young people who can only afford packs of 10 from buying cigarettes and removing products from public display.
Its said that around 200,000 under 16s start smoking each year and are three times more likely to die of cancer than someone who starts in their mid-20s.Public Health Minister Dawn Primarolo said that “Protecting children from smoking is a Government priority and taking away temptation is one way to do this. If banning brightly-coloured packets, removing cigarettes from display and removing the cheap option of a pack of ten helps save lives, then that is what we should do, but we want to hear everyone’s views first. Smoking-related disease kills 87,000 people a year, the equivalent to the entire population of a major city such as Durham. Despite much progress over the past 10 years with 1.9 million fewer smokers since 1998, smoking is still the biggest killer in England.”
Dr Vivienne Nathanson who is the head of science and ethics at the British Medical Association, said that “It is essential that cigarettes are made more inaccessible to children and one way to do this is to ban 10 packs of cigarettes and to get rid of tobacco vending machines.”
Simon Clark who is the director of the smokers’ lobby group Forest, said: “The best way to tackle youth smoking is through education and proper enforcement of the legal age limit. Banning point of sale display will make smoking even more attractive to teenagers. Worse, it will drive many smokers towards cheaper counterfeit and smuggled cigarettes.”
A new NHS Smoke free advertising campaign aimed at parents who smoke begins on Monday.
What do you think?
1 response so far ↓
1 David // Jun 2, 2008 at 8:00 am
Yeah, bright flashy packaging got me to start smoking. I think this is outrageous that anybody should be allowed to take that away from a private business. I mean if you really truly are concerned with people you don’t know or think about, don’t do anything that would affect them in anyway. Why pick on cigarette companies so much? If you don’t want kids to smoke, pass the blame onto parents, if anything make the parents responsible for what their kids do. Why must everyone point the blame on cigarette makers? If they really are dumb enough to start, let them. I wish I never had, but I don’t go around blaming other people and trying to have cig companies put out of business, which will never happen, because everyone knows the government really doesnt care about people’s health when there is a buck to be made. Yeah sure, taxing the hell out of cigarettes is going to help, what do they do with this money? Nothing that helps prevent kids from smoking, they use it for whatever they want while making the consumers suffer. If smoking is so horrible, why not ban tobacco altogether? Oh man thats right, then where would the government benefit in that? Lets tax it some more and tell everyone not to smoke when really local governments need you to smoke more to survive. Driving kills, let’s stop letting car companies advertise their product on tv and radio. Lets put warning labels covering the entire hood so people know its dangerous to drive. Let’s hike taxes on……gas, oh wait nevermind, cars are next. If anybody is truly concerned about flashy cool packs selling themselves to kids, lets thoroughly enforce selling to minors and be strict with parents who either allow it to happen. Let’s spend the money generated by the tobacco co.s to educate and try to dissuade the youth from smoking as much as we can, in the end it really is their decision to do it or not. And I highly doubt packaging or branding has that large of effect on potential buyers as you’d think. If anyone starts to smoke based on that, then you won’t have to worry, the dumb ones will kill themselves off in due time. Who comes up with this crap? Just because you don’t agree with a company’s products doesnt give you the power to decide that they can no longer advertise, package their products as they’d like, or make it almost impossible for someone to buy. Im not advocating smoking, but there are much bigger problems in this world than this and you could be passing the legislature for something that actually affects people’s lives and solve real problems. Im pretty sure the tobacco companies have a strong interest in people smoking, but probably not as big as governments. Easy money for other people’s misery.
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