Poll: UK Standardized Smoking Packages Law in Final Stages

[zumbledum]

The UK is also in an awkward place in that the money generated in taxes, considerably outweighs the cost of treating smoking based illnesses at the NHS, so we're actually paying for ourselves and then some. This means that a ban is essentially out of the question in the UK because it's proping the economy up.

Now, this isn't about whether or not you like smoking or smokers. It's just about the research.

got any numbers to back that up? last i heard (and it was just that people talking on a radio show) the cost and taxes were roughly equal.
and your not figuring in the 21 years of education or the loss of future taxes in the equation , it might just be covering its costs of treatment but its no where near its total monetary cost and the idea its propping the economy up is a frankly ludicrous.

As to standard packaging its simply an extension of the no advertising/promoting rule, which i find sensible but am doubtful of it having much of an impact. so sure do it.

Banning, well i would be tempted to support that , i don't think there's a logical case to smoking, the danger is ofc the precedent, and issue with it is it the governments place to remove individual freedom. but then we banned guns and that didnt set one so i think our legal system is probably sound enough for that to not be a problem.

 

[Arshaq13]

Smoking's not something people just randomly decide to get into one day.

I'm a smoker, not a heavy one, you may call me a social smoker.
Been one for about 5 years, not cigs though, this local arabic tobacco you smoke in pipes called midwakh. (I live in Dubai)
The reason I started smoking was ermm.... I was at a party, met some new people over there and asked if I could try it to get this 'buzz' you get when you smoke from the pipe.

So yeah, it was just something I randomly decided to get into one day so to speak.

 

[Tuxedoman]

Well, its a tactic here in New Zealand. Its done in Aussie as well, and its done in quite a few other nations across the globe. Why? If I had to guess, the free healthcare costs outweigh the tax income that would be made from the cigarettes.

Does it work? Honestly, yes. Our smoking rate is at an all time low. Australia is the same I'm pretty sure, with less and less cigarettes being sold each year due to the public messaging as well as the prices increasing. Hell, they're going to be flat out banned here by 2020.

And you know what? I don't care. I'm for it actually, since all it does is cost you a shitlaod of money while feeding a physical addiction that is probably gonna kill you. If you still wanna smoke, you can. But it -does- bring some very extreme health risks with it. And in countries where said health risks are then covered by tax payers, well.

I can see the logic behind it.

Also, I feel like this is relevant.

 

[J Tyran]

How is it harassment? I mean I drink alcohol, even though I know it's bad for me. People tell you all the time how bad it is for you, but "health warnings" isn't harassment.

Anyway I don't see how people can smoke, the cost alone is insane.

I don't know about you, but some people - even smokers - rather not look at pale and blacken and mucous-y lung or mouth infested with white malignant tumor-thing(which incidentally looks like marshmallows)

I guess that could count as harassment, considering that it is restricting what smokers want to do.

No that wouldn't count as harassment at all.

So shoving offensive/disgusting images into someones face when they otherwise wouldn't want to see them isn't harrassment? Good, dick pics and gore pics for everyone then!

It isn't harassment after all!

 

[Lilani]

I feel like the packaging on cigarettes is not going to change how many adults buy, or how many people pick up the habit. My main concern regarding smoking is secondhand smoke, specifically the effects it has on children who grow up in the homes of smokers. I really don't know what to do about that problem which doesn't involve dictating what people can and can't do in their houses and cars (except perhaps making smoking with x distance of a child some form of abuse, or something to that effect), but if we're concerned about people's health and saving lives then that's where I'd be putting my money.

 

[K-lusive]

I started smoking pot, which then after prolonged use, led to me smoking regular cigarettes.

EDIT: removed link in quote I didn't see

I actually started with cigarettes in midschool, just so I could feel like I belonged to the group of smokers.
I later quit tobacco and started smoking pot (pure) which after a while was just.. too much. So now I use tobacco as filler. I still have not felt the need to smoke tobacco without weed in it for a good 3 years now though.
Plain packaging wouldn't "put me off", not by far as much as these ridiculous tax-raises over here do.

Honestly, if I could find a cheaper alternative to fill a joint with, I'd not touch tobacco with a 10-foot pole anymore.

Which reminds me, didn't India change their packs to have graphic images of gory smoking-related diseases on them? Did India stop smoking yet?
Didn't think so.

 

[Ambitiousmould]

Those packets won't stop people smoking. If you really want people to stop smoking, design the packets with clip art and comic sans. Nobody's going to want to smoke anything that comes in a packet like that. Quality of design can go a long way.

 

[Smooth Operator]

We had that for almost 10 years now in my country and there is not a single person that gets put off by it, at best it is a conversation piece in the sense of "Look at these crazy health care dudes!". The only thing that did make people think twice was a rapid tax bump, which has been repeated several times now and we are around 400%+ tax on all cigarettes.

Prices along with "no public institution smoking" has made a major change, telling people shit is bad for them does nothing however, especially when it's something that has been sold as "cool and rebellious".

 

[J Tyran]

I mean you're effectively just crying over the fact that fags are bad for you and trying to blame others for telling you that you're killing yourself if you smoke them.

Not at all, anyone with half a brain knows that smoking is bad for you but people should have the right to avoid disgusting imagery if they want too. The imagery is deliberately chosen to provoke disgust, to be offensive and forcing it on to people is wrong.

Driving can cause horrible accidents, should every driver have disgusting gore pictures of car accidents splashed on the windscreen of a car before they drive? What about a 10 second video clip of someone having a caffeine overdose heart attack for every customer of Starbucks?

 

[Lord Garnaat]

Sounds good to me. Frankly, I support almost any measure that would reduce the usage of cigarettes, regardless of what that entails - if having these standardized packages has a detrimental effect on the effectiveness of cigarette advertising, then it is worthy of public approval. If smokers are made uncomfortable by it, perhaps they should have considered that before making the mistake of smoking. Perhaps that discomfort will cause them to rethink that mistake and choose to stop. Or perhaps not.

Well, its a tactic here in New Zealand. Its done in Aussie as well, and its done in quite a few other nations across the globe. Why? If I had to guess, the free healthcare costs outweigh the tax income that would be made from the cigarettes.

Does it work? Honestly, yes. Our smoking rate is at an all time low. Australia is the same I'm pretty sure, with less and less cigarettes being sold each year due to the public messaging as well as the prices increasing. Hell, they're going to be flat out banned here by 2020.

And you know what? I don't care. I'm for it actually, since all it does is cost you a shitlaod of money while feeding a physical addiction that is probably gonna kill you. If you still wanna smoke, you can. But it -does- bring some very extreme health risks with it. And in countries where said health risks are then covered by tax payers, well.

I can see the logic behind it.

Also, I feel like this is relevant.

Is that "banning by 2020"-idea a plan that's already in progress? Because that's an admirable measure, if it is. I've been hoping for a while that, once usage is curtailed and despised enough, people would be so disinclined to smoke that banning it would not be an issue. Good to hear that the effort is in motion - hopefully something similar will go into effect around here.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

I never found smoking attractive and everytime I had to spend time in a smoker's house, I would smell it everywhere. Then when I grew up, I imagined kissing that taste and it threw me off it even more.

The labels here just added to my resolve but they weren't the reason I didn't start.

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

I can quite honestly say I've never bought cigs based on the packaging. Flavour? Most definitely. Price? Yes, in leaner months. Coloured cardboard? Nope.

 

[J Tyran]

And yeah I'd be fine with the caffeine thing for Starbucks, and this is coming from someone who drinks about two cups of coffee a day.

Well you see the thing is what you're fine with doesn't really matter, other people should have the right to decide what happens to be acceptable to them or not.

 

[Prince of Ales]

Nah, can't see it making a blind bit of difference. I'm a proper skeptic when it comes to advertising generally though. I don't think it's anywhere near as effective as people think.

Sometimes I see an advert on TV and I'm amazed both at how much money must have gone into making the thing, and at how uninspired I am to actually purchase the related - or often completely unrelated - product. That's if I've got the faintest idea what they're trying to sell me. They do these mini series things where if you've missed the first part (and I don't watch much TV at all, so this happens a lot) the rest of it doesn't make sense. Like there's this one going on at the moment with these little robot things in a scrapyard, and I haven't got a fucking clue what it's supposed to be advertising. My favourite, I saw this on a billboard, and apparently it's in line with a TV commercial which I hadn't seen - maybe it'd make more sense if I had - but anyway the caption says something like "Proud that all our call-centres are based in the UK", and that's written on a backdrop of a night time cityscape, and superimposed onto that is a picture of an orangutan. What in the actual fuck has an orangutan got to do with call-centres?

So yeah, anyway. I don't think the colour of the packaging is going to make me stop smoking.

 

[busterkeatonrules]

I think the biggest problem with this sort of proposal is that its obvious solution, on the part of smokers who want to see the practice as 'cool', would be a revival of the cigarette case.

Spoiler

Sleek, shiny silver(colored) cases, often with some kind of personalization. These things have traditionally been given as gifts to commemorate anything from graduation to promotions, meaning that they would often hold some special significance to their owners.

Pulling out an opulent cigarette case and offering someone a smoke is easily one of the classiest tobacco-related acts popularized by vintage Hollywood productions. Sure, this would still achieve the desired effect of minimalizing the public's tendency of identifying with specific brands - but the CONCEPT of smoking might well be an altogether different matter!

EDIT: Just clicked the poll. Surprise, surprise - NOBODY has ticked the 'Yes (smoker)' - option yet!

 

[Silverbane7]

i dont smoke, infact the only time i even did was when my mother caught me (at about age 6 or 7 i am told) picking her dead dog-ends (the fused filter tips) up out of her ashtray and pretending to smoke them (as she did)
apparently she made me smoke a whole one, inhale and all. it made me so sick i never touched one ever again and developed an aversion to those who do smoke, smell of smoke ect.

so disgusting packaging makes no difference to me, from a buying point of view.
however it DOES affect me as a person. because i see them littered all over the place. you can not walk down any shortcut without seeing them in the bushes, in the hedgerows, on the edges of your paths. litterbugs drop them all over. dogs and hungry wild things dig through your trash and spill them all over, and the wind takes them everywhere. and most people cant be arsed. when thay had the plain packaging with verbal warning but no gross images, it was not as bad. but now? the sort of images that are reserved for medical students are being blown about all over and seeing them sickens me. and i am not even the intended victims.

and the worst part? those the images ARE intended for....dont even give a rats arse to be frank. most humans these days go about their daily lives, totaly damned oblivious to this stuff. most smokers wont notice after their initial purchase. they might notice a change in image if its a new picture but its like background noise to them i think.
and most of the time, its the full time, many packs a week type smokers they are aiming at.
its kind of the same as the constant 'drink aware' stuff plastered on every advert for alcohol these days.
we, who are not alcoholics, allready KNOW that too much is bad for us. the bottle a week crowd know too much is bad. the bottle or 3 a day people dont care, and those are the ones that need help. not someone who drinks maybe a glass of wine once a year at the holidays...but again the admonishment that by drinking at all, you are a bad bad person...sits there poking you.

if these things are such bad, evilness. they should just finaly go all demolition man and ban everyhting. salt, spicy food, meat...anything that is bad for you, and just GET IT OVER WITH ALREADY!
then our childrens generation can sit there in their flannelett pajams, drinking brocoli shakes and singing old advertisement jingles and we can all get it damnwell over with (lol)