{"id":1185,"date":"2013-07-25T06:27:56","date_gmt":"2013-07-25T05:27:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/injury-prevention\/?p=1185"},"modified":"2013-07-25T06:27:56","modified_gmt":"2013-07-25T05:27:56","slug":"the-effects-of-plain-packaging-of-cigarettes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/injury-prevention\/2013\/07\/25\/the-effects-of-plain-packaging-of-cigarettes\/","title":{"rendered":"The effects of plain packaging of cigarettes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Following a 3-month rollout period, since\u00a01 December\u00a02012 all tobacco products manufactured and sold in Australia have had to be\u00a0in plain brown packaging. Seventy-five percent\u00a0of the front of the pack requires a graphic health warning, and the brand name is restricted to a set font and size (see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.comlaw.gov.au\/Details\/F2011L02644\">http:\/\/www.comlaw.gov.au\/Details\/F2011L02644<\/a>\u00a0for the packaging regulations). As noted on the Australian government website (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.health.gov.au\/internet\/main\/publishing.nsf\/Content\/tobacco-plain\">http:\/\/www.health.gov.au\/internet\/main\/publishing.nsf\/Content\/tobacco-plain<\/a>), this world first injury prevention effort aimed to<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>increase the noticeability, recall and impact of health warning messages;<\/li>\n<li>reduce the ability of packaging to mislead consumers to believe that some products may be less harmful than others; and<\/li>\n<li>reduce the attractiveness of the tobacco product, for both adults and children.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Wakefield, Hayes, Durkin and Borland evaluated the impact of this legislation in a project published online this month (see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC3710988\/\">http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC3710988\/<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>Analyses focused on comparing the perceptions and experiences of branded-packaging cigarette smokers with perceptions and experiences of plain-packaging cigarette smokers during the 3-month rollout period. Key findings\u00a0are that, in comparison to branded-packaging smokers, plain-packaging smokers<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>reported their cigarettes were of poorer quality and were less satisfying than cigarettes\u00a0were one year ago;<\/li>\n<li>were significantly more likely to have thought about quitting at least one a day in the past week; and<\/li>\n<li>rated quitting as a higher priority in their lives.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Perhaps unsurprisingly, plain-packaging smokers were also more likely to support the plain-packaging policy. Whilst the plain packaging with large, graphic images did not increase the frequency of thoughts about smoking-related harms, the considerable differences apparent already during the initial rollout period merit the practice and policy. I look forward to seeing further evalautions of the impact of this policy and practice change.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<!--TrendMD v2.4.8--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Following a 3-month rollout period, since\u00a01 December\u00a02012 all tobacco products manufactured and sold in Australia have had to be\u00a0in plain brown packaging. Seventy-five percent\u00a0of the front of the pack requires a graphic health warning, and the brand name is restricted to a set font and size (see http:\/\/www.comlaw.gov.au\/Details\/F2011L02644\u00a0for the packaging regulations). As noted on the [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/injury-prevention\/2013\/07\/25\/the-effects-of-plain-packaging-of-cigarettes\/\">Read More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2724,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-splinters-fragments","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/injury-prevention\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/injury-prevention\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/injury-prevention\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/injury-prevention\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/injury-prevention\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/injury-prevention\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1185\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/injury-prevention\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/injury-prevention\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/injury-prevention\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}