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The British Government
has released a consultation paper on the
idea. Morgan Stanley advised its clients
recently that "homogenous packaging"
would "significantly restrict the
industry's ability to promote their
products". Tobacco Journal
International, the industry's main trade
journal, had as its latest cover story a
warning: "Plain packaging can kill your
business." That's the whole idea, ladies
and gentlemen.
The World Health Organisation's
Framework Convention on Tobacco Control,
now ratified by 160 nations, is rapidly
accelerating a long overdue regulation
of the tobacco industry. Plain packaging
has not happened in any nation yet, but
the race is on. Here is why it is the
most important next step in reducing
Australia's leading cause of death.
When you take a
doctor's prescription to a pharmacy for
a drug designed to prolong life, relieve
pain or symptoms or in some way promote
health, radically different things
happen than when you buy a packet of
cigarettes.
First, the
pharmaceutical company making the drug
will have spent a small fortune
trialling it to see if it does what it
is meant to do - such as act as an
effective contraceptive or lower blood
pressure - and that it does not cause
adverse reactions that are so severe as
to radically alter the cost-benefit
ratio of the drug (for example,
chemotherapy for cancer often causes
nausea but may prolong life).
Tobacco companies, by
contrast, have to meet no standards for
their products and can add any legal
substance that will, for example, get
nicotine to your brain faster or mask
the astringent, choking sensation of
smoke. While Philip Morris once withdrew
its salmonella-contaminated Kraft peanut
butter from shops because it might have
harmed customers, it is relaxed and
comfortable about half of its best
customers dying from using its tobacco
products in the intended way.
Next, your
prescription will be made up by a
pharmacist with a minimum four-year
university degree, while your cigarettes
will be handed to you by someone who may
have left school at 15. You will get a
limited supply from the pharmacist and
have to go back to your doctor if you
want a repeat prescription.
With cigarettes, you
can buy as many as you like. If a
pharmacist supplied drugs to someone
without a prescription, they would be
fined, perhaps jailed and almost
certainly struck off the register. If a
store supplies cigarettes to a child,
hell would freeze over before they were
caught or any serious action taken n the
pharmacy, prescribed drugs are not on
open display but stored in the
dispensary. Until now, cigarettes have
been on open display, sending the
message that they are profoundly
ordinary products, no different from
sweets, soft drinks and groceries.
Verity Firth, when she
was the minister for cancer, prepared a
raft of reforms that will have their
final reading in State Parliament on
Friday. The most important "denormalising"
proposal will see all tobacco products
stored out of site, as occurs in Canada,
Thailand and Iceland.
The final difference
between tobacco and prescribed drugs is
packaging. When you pick up your next
prescription, check out the plain, dull
box. It is not designed to express the
product's "personality" or to confer
prestige or some other desirable
attribute in the user. It simply states
the drug's name, dosage and any
contraindications. Tobacco products, by
contrast, are the result of ongoing
market testing to ensure they are as
attractive and beguiling as possible,
particularly to what the industry
euphemistically calls "starters" or
"young adult smokers".
Research released this
week by Professor Melanie Wakefield,
from the Cancer Council Victoria, shows
how smokers feel about plain packaged
cigarettes. When shown regular packaged
brands and the dull, generic packs, the
813 smokers rated the dull packs as much
less attractive and popular, and those
who would smoke them as much less
stylish, outgoing and mature than
smokers of the original pack. They
inferred that cigarettes from the plain
packs would be less satisfying and of
lower quality.
The federal Health
Minister, Nicola Roxon, has repeatedly
put prevention front and centre of
national health policy. By making
Australia lead the world - by taking a
step that the history of tobacco control
suggests is inevitable - she could start
global dominoes tumbling, and save
millions of lives. If the tobacco
industry thinks plain packaging will
kill its business, no stronger
recommendation is available. |
