Australia has become the first country in the world to introduce plain packaging for cigarettes, from now on all tobacco company logos and colours will be banned from the packaging.
They have all been replaced by a dreary, uniform, green/brown, colour accompanied by a raft of anti-smoking messages and photographs, with the only concession being the name of the brand and variant in small print at the bottom of the box.
Australia’s health minister, Tanya Plibersek declared“This is the last gasp of a dying industry.”
While I’m not a smoker, tried it didn’t like it, it seems to me that there is very little you can do to discourage people from smoking if they really want to, these measures might make occasional smokers think twice, but as for everyone else I can’t see it working.
As for the tobacco industry it’s hardly on its knees, it’s still a multi-billion pound global industry, and try as you might you’ll never put them out of business, all you’ll do is drive them to less regulated, developing parts of the world, that’s hardly a solution.
If people want to play Russian roulette with their lives and risk developing mouth, throat or lung cancer, let them.
The new packaging that shows photos of smokers with teeth missing and others that are meant to discourage people, that’s been tried and why not try that for other things, why not have a picture of a dead polar bear plastered across a petrol pump when you go to fill up, it’s the same principle.
While this campaign is being launched with the right intentions, it seems those behind it are being a bit short-sighted.
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