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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/9713249/Australias-new-plain-packaging-makes-cigarettes-taste-worse.html

Australia’s new plain packaging ‘makes cigarettes taste worse’

Australia’s new plain packaging for cigarettes – which becomes mandatory from Saturday – have been branded “disgusting” by smokers who say they make the cigarettes taste worse.

By Jonathan Pearlman, Sydney

6:43AM GMT 30 Nov 2012

The new packets, which are blank aside from gruesome health warnings, have been filling shelves for the past two months as part of the toughest anti-tobacco measures in the world.

Despite legal battles and claims of “dirty tricks” by tobacco companies, all cigarettes in Australia must now be sold in drab olive packets featuring macabre images of sick babies, dying cancer sufferers and diseased feet, eyeballs and lungs. Smokers’ advice groups have reported being inundated with calls from angry smokers who say their cigarettes now taste “pathetic” and “sickening”.

Joe Xia, who owns a busy convenience store just outside Sydney’s Chinatown, said the packets are “disgusting” and have been annoying customers who dislike the new warnings.

“People still smoke – now they also complain,” he told the Daily Telegraph.

“Nothing will stop them from smoking. But it is hard at night-time. People come from the pub and they see these packets and they get irritated.”

The claims that the taste of cigarettes has worsened prompted tobacco firms to deny the product has changed.

A spokesman for Imperial Tobacco Australia, said people who smoked its cigarettes “can be assured that our high quality products will remain the same”.

“Packaging has never been identified as the reason people choose or continue to smoke,” she said.

The measures, if successful, are tipped to trigger an “olive revolution”, with similar laws being considered in Britain, Canada, New Zealand, China, France, India, South Africa, Norway and Uruguay.

But tobacco firms have fought hard to try to combat the changes, including pursuing various legal actions and declaring the new measures will increase the black market.

The Gillard Government has staved off a High Court challenge and accused the firms of using various tricks to try to flout the laws.

The health minister, Tanya Plibersek, said two manufacturers had tried to make the cigarettes appear more “sophisticated” by stamping the paper with watermarks featuring travel destination codes such as AUS, LDN and NYC. The firms have reportedly agreed to remove the watermarking.

Health experts believe the changes will help to save lives and reduce smoking rates. Studies have shown people, particularly youths, are less likely to take up smoking when the packets are not shiny or colourful.

Professor Simon Chapman, from the University of Sydney, said the packets were designed to prevent smoking among future generations who will never have seen “lovely packaging”. He has called for further measures, including requiring smokers to be issued with licences which would cost an annual fee and restrict people to 50 cigarettes every two weeks.

But the new packets have confused shopkeepers who can barely find the small writing on the packets to distinguish between different brands.

Othman Moussa, who has run a tobacconist in Sydney’s Darling Harbour for 24 years, said he knows the layout of his cigarettes shelf and can still find specific packets. But he says if he takes on new staff “it will be a real mess”.

“The main problem for me now is that it is very hard to sort out the deliveries,” he told the Daily Telegraph. “It takes three or four hours to read each brand and separate them – it used to take ten minutes.”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20559585

Asia

1 December 2012 Last updated at 01:08 GMT

Australia smokers given plain packs

By Duncan Kennedy BBC News, Sydney

Grim health warnings like this are replacing the branding on cigarette packets in Australia

Australia has become the first country in the world to introduce plain packaging for cigarettes.

From now, all tobacco company logos and colours will be banned from packets.

They have been replaced by a dreary, uniform, green/brown, colour accompanied by a raft of anti-smoking messages and photographs.

The only concession to the tobacco companies is their name and the name of the brand variant in small print at the bottom of the box.

“This is the last gasp of a dying industry,” declared Australia’s Health Minister Tanya Plibersek.

Anne Jones of the anti-smoking group Ash (Action on Smoking and Health) agrees.

“Plain packaging has taken the personality away from the pack”, she says.

“Once you take away all the colour coding and imagery and everything is standardised with massive health warnings, you really do de-glamorise the product.”

Cigarette packets were practically the last platform for tobacco companies to advertise themselves.

Commercials on Australian television and radio were banned in 1976. Newspapers followed in 1989.

Targets set

Tobacco sponsorship of sport and cultural events was prohibited in 1992.

That left the packets themselves, which became a target for the current Labor government.

The government’s efforts were led by then-Health Minister Nicola Roxon whose own father, Jack, died from a smoking-related illness when she was 10.

“Start Quote

Plain packaging is here to stay in Australia. We now plan to go after the ingredients contained in cigarettes”

End Quote Anne Jones of Ash

The government argued that with 15,000 smokers dying each year at a cost to society of AU$30bn (£19bn) it had a duty to act.

It set the target of reducing smoking levels from 16% of the population in 2007, to less than 10% by 2018.

In May 2011, Cancer Council Australia released a review of the evidence surrounding the introduction of plain packaging. The review suggested that packaging plays an important part in encouraging young people to try cigarettes.

That was followed by a telling video, released by anti-smoking campaigners, showing children discussing existing cigarette packets.

One boy says the red on one packet reminds him of his favourite car, a girl admires the pink on another packet, while another boy talks about the “heavenly” colours on his box.

The combined messages about the efficacy of logos and colours in selling cigarettes, helped prompt the government to begin its legislative push to introduce plain packaging.

Not surprisingly, the tobacco industry resisted.

A consortium of major companies, including Phillip Morris, Imperial Tobacco and British American Tobacco (BAT) came together to plan a counter punch.

That included an extensive media campaign to try to persuade the public and government of the shortcomings of plain packaging.

Tobacco companies say removing the branding from cigarettes will not stop people smoking

BAT’s spokesman, Scott McIntyre, says: “Plain packaging has always been misleading and won’t stop smoking because branded cigarettes will be smuggled in and because tobacco companies will have to respond to that by cutting prices to stay competitive.”

Despite those arguments, last August Australia’s High Court ruled in favour of the government.

It threw out technical arguments by the tobacco companies that the government was trying to “acquire” their intellectual property rights by removing logos.

“Plain packaging is a game changer,” says Anne Jones, a veteran of anti-smoking campaigns.

“It means that you can take on big tobacco and win.”

It’s known that Britain, France, Norway, India and New Zealand have been among those following the Australian court case closely, to see if there are any lessons for similar plain packaging measures in their countries.

Rare legal set back

But Scott McIntyre of BAT says it is not that straightforward, arguing that the Australian government only won because of the peculiarities of Australian constitutional law.

But there is no doubt that tobacco companies have suffered a rare legal set back, although there could still be further action by them at the World Trade Organization.

“We don’t fear that,” says Anne Jones of Ash.

“Plain packaging is here to stay in Australia. We now plan to go after the ingredients contained in cigarettes.”

Anti-smoking lobbyists like Anne Jones know that packaging changes alone wont significantly curb smoking, especially among established smokers.

Price, availability, information campaigns and health messages play an equally important role.

But cigarette packets will no longer be mini, mobile advertising boards and, for those working to reduce smoking levels, plain packaging is an important stage in the shift to a smoking-free society.

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