Apart from the smoking ban, Mr. Duterte was also urged to support the worldwide push for the use of plain and standardized packaging, which prohibits the use of logos, colors, brand images, or promotional information on packaging.
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The World Health Organization’s World No Tobacco Day 2016 campaign, called “Get Ready for Plain Packaging“, has also seized upon the same theme, similarly describing it as an “important demand reduction measure”. WHO Director-General Margaret Chan, quoted in the release, said, “It kills the glamour, which is appropriate for a product that kills people”.
World No Tobacco Day is upon us again and this year the World Health Organisation is pushing the importance of plain packaging.
Australia became the first country to implement the measures in December 2012, while a British court recently overruled a challenge by four tobacco companies and upheld rules that make cigarette cartons a uniform olive green. In the Philippines, 240 Filipinos die every day because of major tobacco-related diseases.
“I don’t believe tobacco companies should be allowed to build brand loyalty with children for a product that could kill them”, Philpott told reporters. “Tobacco’s impact goes beyond public health, stymieing the growth prospects of developing economies and burdening taxpayers and health systems whose finite resources could be better used elsewhere”, she said. Such measure also decreases misleading information and boosts the effectiveness of health warnings. Graphic health warnings and pictures still appear, but the rest of the package is a standard colour for all brands, such as the drab brown required in Australia.
World No Tobacco Day is observed every year on May 31.
The Maori Party, which first proposed plain packaging in New Zealand, said smoking rates among the indigenous population were well above average and the ban was long overdue.
Such policies have already passed in Australia, France, the United Kingdom and Ireland, and many more countries will soon reduce the tobacco industry’s ability to market to its customers.
That equates to more than 108,000 people quitting, not relapsing or not starting to smoke during the period, said the report, citing Australian statistics.
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Plain packaging prohibits brand colours, logos and graphics on tobacco packages.
