“On this World No Tobacco Day, I call on governments around the world to get ready for plain packaging“, said the secretary-general. According to WHO and the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control Secretariat, plain packaging would restrict, or even prohibit, the use of colors, logos, brand images and promotional information.
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He said: “The evidence from Australia is damning – plain packaging as a measure itself has been proven not to work and has made no impact on long-term smoking trends”. Several other countries around the world are discussing legislation along such lines as well.
“It is encouraging to see more and more countries defy the industry’s tactics and implement plain packaging to reduce demand for tobacco products and put the health of their populations first”, he said.
A University of IL study found both smokers and non-smokers were offended by packaging that included graphic messages and images on cigarette packs, with some claiming they felt it was an affront to their freedom of choice, suggesting plain packs may be less offensive but just as effective.
He explained that according to the 2013 Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS) about 4.5 million Nigeria adults now use tobacco products. “We need to help our people understand that cigarette smoke is very risky”, Mr. Dorotheo said. Package dimensions are standardized, eliminating slim and superslim packs as well as other attractive package formats recently introduced by tobacco companies. It kills the glamour, which is appropriate for a product that kills people. It is recommended that plain packaging be used as part of a comprehensive multisectoral approach to tobacco control, ” the statement by Margaret Chan further asserted.
“So if you had plain packaging, although the health warnings would stay on the package, the rest of the package would be an unattractive brown for all brands”, said Cunningham. He said many countries already had some form of packaging and labelling policy in place – whether in text or picture form.
In Britain, the High Court also framed the issue as a “moral” one, rejecting the argument by four tobacco giants that plain packaging would make the packages indistinguishable and harm their intellectual property rights, as the Christian Science Monitor’s Lucy Schouten reported.
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Australia, in December 2012, became the first country in the world to implement fully tobacco plain packaging.
