Up in smoke

There has been a lot around lately about smoking and the proposed new Labor plan to introduce plain packets to deter people from buying them.

I am not a smoker and I really have to question the effectiveness of such a plan. Would someone who has smoked for 30 years give up just because their smokes come in a plain packet?

With several Coalition MPs backing Labor’s move, which the government says will cut smoking rates and improve public health, there have now been calls for the government to go further and ban donations from tobacco companies to parties.

In the Courier Mail, WA Liberal senator Chris Back was quoted as saying he didn’t believe plain packaging would cut smoking rates.

"If the product is so bad that companies can't use their own brand to actually sell it then the government ought to ... say, should it be legal in the first place?'" he said.

Federal health minister Nicola Roxon admits that although the move to remove advertising on cigarette packages may not reduce smoking rates, that it would bring about a change in how the tobacco companies operated.

Have you all seen the recent $61 million campaign based around lung cancer and smoker’s cough on television and billboards? I saw an ad on the back of a taxi, with a man coughing up blood and the slogan saying The cost of his cigarettes isn’t the only thing he will cough up. Clever words from a PR standpoint but I am not sure of the overall impact… 

We have all seen those graphic ads on TV where they cut the chest of a smoker open to reveal blackened lungs and clogged arteries… I think that it’s unnecessary for people to have to see this kind of thing. I don’t condone smoking and I am aware of the health risks, but you can’t force people to quit by implementing shock and awe tactics.

People know smoking is bad for them and still decide to smoke; I don’t believe that a new multi-million dollar campaign or selling blank cigarette packs is going to change that.

I feel like this will be a never-ending battle until smoking is eventually made illegal, which seems unlikely to happen.

Lung cancer is one of the leading causes of preventable death and disease in Australia. It kills 15,000 people and costs taxpayers $31.5 billion a year.

Currently, 16 per cent of Australians are smokers. That equates to 3,618,888 Australians.