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SMOKING CURRENTLY COSTS the Irish taxpayer between €1 and €2 billion a year to provide health services to smokers. But behind the financial cost is the human cost, with an estimated 5,500 people a year dying from smoking-related diseases and many more suffering from conditions caused by smoking.
As one of his last acts as Health Minister, Dr James Reilly introduced the Public Health (Standardised Packaging of Tobacco) Bill, which will introduce standardised, plain cigarette packaging as part of his goal to make Ireland a smoke free country by 2025. A rather admirable albeit naïve objective. Although this lofty goal may not be reached, any measure to reduce the level of smoking in Ireland is most welcome.
Plain cigarette packaging has thus far only been introduced in one country worldwide, Australia, where cigarettes are now sold in plain, olive-coloured packaging, in same-size boxes with uniform typeface and large health warnings. Due to the limited application of plain packaging there is little concrete evidence to attest its efficacy.
Branding matters
However, there have been over two dozen peer-reviewed studies which suggest that branding encourages youth uptake of smoking. Experiments were also conducted with plain cigarette packaging and they yielded some interesting findings. Not only did smokers deem the packaging less attractive but they judged the taste to be inferior even though it was the same quality tobacco. Plain packaging also increased negative perceptions about smoking. Many resorted to hiding the packet and reduced their consumption while in public.
Cancer Council Australia comprehensively reviewed the evidence in relation to plain packaging:
The evidence indicates three primary benefits of plain packaging: increasing the effectiveness of health warnings, reducing false health beliefs about cigarettes, and reducing brand appeal especially among youth and young adults. Overall, the research to date suggests that ‘plain’ packaging regulations would be an effective tobacco control measure, particularly in jurisdictions with comprehensive restrictions on other forms of marketing.
Ireland is one such jurisdiction. Tobacco advertising is banned on TV, billboards and radio. Even in-store advertising and displays are no longer permitted. In such a heavily restricted environment, packaging becomes the sole vehicle for communicating brand image and to promote the product. By introducing plain packaging it denies tobacco companies their final avenue for advertisement.
The tobacco industry
Since the inauguration of Australia’s plain packaging laws, the tobacco industry has claimed its sale of cigarettes increased by 59 million sticks in the first year of the policy. This translates to a 0.3% increase in sales. Although 0.3% doesn’t sound significant, it comes after a 15.6% decrease in sales in the previous four years. However, these statistics emanate from the tobacco industry which obviously has a conflict of interest.
The tobacco industry has been putting up a ferocious fight to combat plain packaging, including media campaigns and legal challenges. A negative portrayal of plain packaging laws would be to its benefit, not only in terms of helping to repeal the Australian law but also in preventing others nation’s enacting similar legislation. Thus the report suggesting an increase in sales should be taken with a pinch of salt, especially since the report has not been made accessible to the public, preventing it from being independently verified. Also, if it were true that sales had increased then, surely, the tobacco industry would cease their fervent opposition to a policy which they claim they are profiting from.
Further eyebrows are raised as the Australian Bureau of Statistics national accounts show that the consumption of tobacco and cigarettes during the March quarter of 2014 is the lowest since records began in 1959. This has been corroborated by the National Drugs Strategy Household Survey which, in a recently released report, found that the daily smoking rate plunged from 15.1% to 12.8% between 2012 and 2013. More encouragingly it found that 95% of 12 to 17 year olds have never smoked.
Plain packaging will assist in the decline of cigarette consumption
The importance of evidence-based policy making, especially in regard to health, cannot be overstated. It is paramount that all decisions are based on accurate and meaningful information to ensure effective outcomes. Both the scientific studies and the data provided by the Australian Bureau of Statistics and National Drugs Strategy Household Survey suggest plain packaging, combined with previously established measures, aid in reducing the consumption of tobacco and cigarettes.
Although the policy is in its infancy and it will take a few years before definitive, longitudinal data can be extrapolated, based on the current available evidence the introduction of plain packaging will assist in the decline of cigarette consumption and the government should proceed with the policy.
Not only will it help reduce the level of consumption in current smokers but it will also discourage young people from adopting the habit. This will decrease the financial burden on the taxpayer but, more importantly, prevent many people from dying from smoking-related illnesses.
Decreasing the levels of smoking in Ireland is a worthy goal and plain cigarette packaging is demonstrable method of doing so, its introduction should be welcomed.
Peter Ferguson is a sceptic and a writer, he is a contributing author in the upcoming book 13 Reasons to Doubt, and he blogs at SkepticInk.com. Twitter @humanisticus
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Thank you for endeavouring to protect me from myself, god knows I can’t be trusted to do so so who better than some sanctimonious busybody to assume responsibility for me. Is my diet okay or would you also like to dictate what I can eat?
Smoke away. No one is trying to stop you. Do you need a nice shiney coloured packet to enjoy your smoke?
Plain packaging is more targeted at new smokers.
When will the government wake up & realise that smoking is an addiction. Smokers do not give a hoot what the packaging looks like. It would be more effective to put effective cigarette addiction support services into place rather than waste money on this nonsense. But then that might actually work….!
As ever government’s are happy to tinker round the edges as they don’t want to lose the tax take. Do something that works or really change people’s lives for the better when was the last time a government did that. These days it’s about maintaining there lifestyles by reducing what’s in your pocket.
I don’t think it’s to get the smokers to quit, I think it’s to discourage kids/teens to take up the habit.
If they made them taste like dog sh*t i would probably knock them on the head or grow my own. 52 plants would do me a year.
I don’t think it’s to get smokers to quit. I think it’s to discourage kids/teens to take up the habit.
This is a really lazy way of looking at it. This isn’t designed to make smokers give up smoking, it’s designed to completely release any effects of marketing or advertising on something that is basically a harmful, addictive product while still recognising that people should be able to make their own decisions.
This is exactly how legal marijuana is handled in America, I really don’t see how smokers could get offended by it.
This is a free country whether we like it or not.
That means we have to respect the decisions made by others whether we agree with them or not.
If someone chooses to smoke then that’s no one’s business but their own.
Is it really a valid argument that this decision should be taken away by those on a moral high horse using the argument that it costs the State so
X amount through the health service.
With the amount of taxes the people that smoke and drink pay, they own the Health Service and contribute more to it than anyone else so I don’t buy that argument.
Should we really be pushing our morals down people’s throats and punishing them with extra taxes when they don’t comply??
The amount of money the exchequer raises through tobacco taxes is prettym the cost of treating smokers and non smokers who are affected by second hand smoke.
I used to be a smoker and I know how hard it is to quit, but this isn’t really a nanny state move. It’s a public health move. The people who smoke already won’t really be affected by this. But it will probably stop people from taking it up. Smoking has to be stigmatized and the cool image needs to be removed.
Apologies, I posted too early. Surely you’d accept that a society that doesn’t smoke would be a better one?
None so pure as the reformed smoker!
Actually I find some ex smokers are far worse than people who never smoked for preaching to the unreformed, some think they were after saving the human race from extinction because they managed to kick the habit so sanctimonious they do sound.
I’m far from sanctimonious. Being able to quit doesn’t make you a better person. It just means you have perspective.
I personally don’t care if people smoke, as long as they don’t smoke around other people are suck up billions of Euro in preventable health care treatment. I would say the same to the morbidly obese. The state shouldn’t exist to subsidise poor lifestyle choices that you can’t afford. It’s the same as having the state go guarantor on your credit card bill after maxing it out and spending it on craps.
I think the anti smoking moral crusaders have done more than enough to stigmatize smoking Sean. they’ve won the war but still come back for more, its time they left well enough alone, enough is enough even lifetime non smokers are fed up of the constant moralizing nanny staters justifying their pious existence.
I’m trying to thin of all the benefits afforded mankind by smoking over the years—
not coming up with much.
Many of human kinds great brains were lifetime smokers Seamus, and often lived to a grand old age!
Try this for starters;
http://churchmousec.wordpress.com/2014/10/30/nicotine-benefits-the-brain-in-several-ways/
I’m a smoker, dirty filthy habit, we could save our youth from the same miserable death every smoker faces.
Anyone born after the year 2000 should not have the ‘option’ to buy tobacco. This would help…
On the smokes and COD today Conor?
Yeah make tobacco illegal to buy. look how well it works for all the other illegal drugs.
the other illegal drugs get you high.
If I wanted to get high, I wouldn’t buy a carton of cigs.
Good to know……is there a relative point in that statement though?
Nobody born after 1996 has the option to buy tobacco.
The anti-smoker naivety displayed here is nothing less than astonishing. Prohibition for those born after 2000? Do you honestly believe this is feasible? Plain packs won’t encourage a thriving black market or strengthen organised crime? Really?
Or is this just a symptom of desperation and a realisation that the anti-smoker campaign is crumbling as more and more rational people are coming to the conclusion that anti-smokers (a different breed to smokers and normal non-smokers) are in cloud cuckoo land. You do realise that today more non smokers are dying of so-called ‘smoke related’ illness than smokers or that smoking has never been proven to cause ANY death? Tobacco prohibition by any other name is still prohibition, with all the adverse consequences associated with it. It has all been tried and failed before. You think it will be somehow different this time? Naivety doesn’t really cover it!
One headache less for the black market trade.
Ya agree the black market will open up even more, the only way to sort this out is to ban them and make them illegal, I know this will have a major effect on the back market but it’s the first real place to start, I smoke and it they where mad illegal I know I would not go looking for them on the black market, I am sure it would be that way also for a Hugh % of smokers
I actually like the idea of a nice white clean well packaged box. I might take up smoking.
Paul. They won’t actually be plain though. They will still have the ugly photos and the big “Smoking Kills” on them.
such crap. I dont think people start smoke cause they go ” jesus that package looks lovely mad for a smoke now”. people that smoke now dont want to give up or are have no will power to give up. People that start to smoke now are uneducated or are just idiots.
It would make you wonder why cigarette companies are fighting this so hard if it wasn’t going to make a difference!
Plain packs are easier to forge and pass off by criminal gangs.
Excellent. The nanny state knows best. People should not be allowed to think for themselves
Who is this fool?
Strike that – he’s only regurgitating the lazy spiel from the likes of Professor Senator Crowne:
“SMOKING CURRENTLY COSTS the Irish taxpayer between €1 and €2 billion a year to provide health services to smokers”
Smokers pay more than that in cig taxes every year.
” But behind the financial cost is the human cost, with an estimated 5,500 people a year dying from smoking-related diseases”
Glad to see that these 5500 people a year won’t die – from anything.
Pleease.
This is not going to make a difference. The state will still make money on taxes.
Saw an image somewhere that had cigarette packets with iPads, airplanes etc. on them, with the concept of showing smokers all the things they could have if they didn’t smoke. It was interesting. As an ex-smoker, I know that would definitely resonate more with me than plain packaging or horrible images.
The claim that plain packaging would reduce smoking in existing smokers seems a bit of a stretch, it is an addiction after all,
As 84% of cancers are NOT caused by smoking, when can we expect to see warnings on food, alcohol etc.
I feel I should clarify my first comment, I don’t want to live in a nanny state but I don’t suggest taking the choice to smoke from any adults today. Merely putting forward an idea to prevent children following us into the most regrettable choice of their lives. Its my own fault for starting, I don’t blame anyone else. I give up for a few weeks every year, but routinely buckle and start again. Maybe addiction centres… A fup it, if you need someone to explain the merits of preventing a generation from smoking you’ve got a more serious condition.
Yes it will. Well known scientific fact that plain packaging cures cancer.
I dosagree
Sorry about that. Finger slipped. I disagree wholeheartedly with plain packaging for cigarettes. It’s a band aid for an huge open sore. Tobacco should be phased out. Those who are smokers can be issued with prescriptions and cigarettes rationed out. The black market will undoubtably thrive but by and large less people will start smoking and this would be a far more practical and safer solution to this problem. Unlike any other drug, tobacco has little or no benefit but yet it remains legal and other more useful and less harmful ones are illegal or are controlled. It’s a crime that in this day and age that this scourge is allowed to continue to blight our society. Smoking is without doubt the worst thing I have ever gotten myself into. I would rejoice at making it illegal.
If you want to stop smoking, it is up to YOU.
Relying on someone to ration them out to you will only reinforce addictive behaviour, as you can abdicate your personal responsibility.
To quit, you need to make an internal decision and stick to it. Full stop.
Not so. There has not been an increase in counterfeit cigarettes in Australia and they introduced plain cigarette packaging a few years ago.
has it decreased the number of sales. or new smokers.
I still think that the only reason young people start smoking is because they see others smoking ,nothing to do with what the package looks like .
I think we all agree that smoking = bad but that if people want to smoke then they can (and they can also pay the extra taxes to cover the expense to the taxpayer for their ill-health).
I think the question here is whether or not cigarette companies should be allowed to advertise at us. Advertising clearly works or companies would not spend so much on it. Why should we allow private companies (that already make lots of money) to advertise in an attempt to increase their sales and profits at the expense of our health?
There is no such person who can be described as an intelligent smoker.
But there is such a thing as a judgemental conor hicky.
You mean like Einstein for instance.
Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Robert Oppenheimer, Edwin Hubble, Sigmund Freud, Winston Churchill, Bill Clinton, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Barack Obama, George Orwell, Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, Albert Camus.
I could go on but it’s lunchtime.
Dirty filthy and should be like most addictive drugs illegal…
Yay
I’m sure you think you are an intelligent person yet you, and many like you, naively believe the smoking issue is all so black and white – no questions need to be asked – the ‘experts’ say it is so therefore it must be so!
Do you honestly believe that those who disagree with anti-smoker rhetoric/propaganda are ALL ‘filthy addicts’ or tobacco company shills? Has it never crossed your mind that you may have been lied to by those whom you trust implicitly and have abrogated all responsibility to? Has it not crossed your mind that there are implications that might affect you and your family, whether you smoke or not?
It drives me mad that no one in our government will grow a pair and just push stuff like this through and say feck the revenue etc this makes sense !?!? It’s like the junk food vending machines in schools !?!? Put a hologram thing like a match ticket to help beat the black market on them . How can we be so good in one way ie plastic bags and indoor smoking and so silly in others ??? It’s all a bit irish !!
If you are stupid enough to start smoking, or even be a smoker. I don’t care less about its implications on you.
Nobody in my family smokes, so that’s all I care about. Bring on the red thumbs
Progress I suppose.Will printing ….’Smokers stink ,their clothes stink,their breath smells awful and they are going to die a horrible death’ …be the next step,or have we to wait a while for that to appear?
If the government was really worried about saving lives …designate cigarettes as an A class drug and therefore ilegal
lol
If the end results of smoking could be physically observed, there would be no smoking ever! However due to a patient’s dignity and right to privacy this will never and should never happen. I applaud the government on one of the few measures that are for the ‘best’ for the nation. They’ve taken this measure to save us from ourselves. ‘Youth is wasted on the young’ and we make many mistakes in our youth..such as beginning one of the most deadly addictions ever. I for one,wish that we had been protected by such a law when children, and are not now suffering a harrowing and devastating and yes, unnecessary end of life.
When it comes to worrying about a choice between ‘nanny state’/healthy state’, and right of choice, people who suffer from smoking diseases at this point of their lives, would definitely vote for the former NOW. However it’s two late when they realise it.
Plain packaging is such a small step, in saving lives. Its efficacy can be reviewed as results appear. Allow this tiny step to be taken, please.
It should read, ‘too late’
They always refer to how much smokers cost the state every year with disregard to how much taxes smokers actually pay! We fund our own health services
“More encouragingly it found that 95% of 12 to 17 year olds have never smoked”
Wow, way to cherry-pick a stat. The same statistics you plucked that from also showed a whopping 36% increase in regular daily smoking by 12-17 year olds a year after plain packaging was introduced. But you didn’t want to tell anyone that, now did you?
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