Ireland Bans Branded Cigarette Packets, Faces Wrath of Tobacco Lobby

By
Vandita
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14
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Irish parliament has taken a bold step to pass a law banning cigarette branding on packages becoming the first European nation and the second country in the world, after Australia, to pass legislation mandating cigarettes to be sold in plain packets.

Dr James Reilly, Ireland’s Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, who spearheaded the ban, said on the historic day, “The interests of public health will be served when children decide never to take up smoking in the first place and if smokers are persuaded to quit. We have a duty to prevent our children from being lured into a killer addiction. Standardised packaging will strip away the illusions created by shiny, colourful cigarette packets and replace them with shocking images showing the real consequences of smoking.”

According to the law, companies would be banned from producing branded tobacco products for the Irish market from May 2016 and would be banned from selling branded tobacco products in Ireland from May 2017. All tobacco products sold in Ireland will carry large health warnings and graphic photos of tobacco-related diseases. Brand names will be displayed in similar fonts on dark-coloured packets. Japan Tobacco International and Imperial Tobacco Group have said they would take legal action against the plan to ban the colourful logos used to sell tobacco brands.

In 2004, Ireland introduced a workplace smoking ban making it illegal to smoke in bars and restaurants. In 2013, Reilly, the then-Health Minister had published a plan to make the country tobacco-free by 2025. By tobacco-free he meant a state where less than 5% of the population smoked. His plan was aimed at reducing smoking over the next 12 years by making it expensive. More than 5,200 people die in Ireland each year from the effects of smoking and more than 1 billion euro (£730m) is spent by health services every year treating tobacco-related diseases. The new legislation is a step in the right direction – which more and more nations, including the United States, must follow.

In 1998, a landmark agreement was signed between 46 states and America’s five largest tobacco companies. The Master Settlement Agreement:

  • Forbids participating cigarette manufacturers from directly or indirectly targeting youth.
  • Imposes significant prohibitions or restrictions on advertising, marketing and promotional programs or activities.
  • Bans or restricts cartoons, transit advertising, most forms of outdoor advertising, including billboards, product placement in media, branded merchandise, free product samples (except in adult-only facilities) and most sponsorships.

This was an aggressive step but has failed to achieve its goal. According to a data gathered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 16 million Americans suffer from a disease caused by smoking. Cigarette smoking is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths per year in the United States, including an estimated 41,000 deaths resulting from second-hand smoke exposure. This is about one in five deaths annually, or 1,300 deaths every day. The United States has taken many steps to reduce tobacco advertising, but nothing has matched Ireland’s aggression.

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14 COMMENTS

  5. Pretty discriminatory. Seems like bullying. We should do something similar to all packages of meat. I suppose all the non smokers are very proud of themselves and wringing their hands in pleasure.

    Point is either sell cigarettes normally or don’t sell them. Wanting to be my nanny is ridiculous.

  6. I think this is actually a good thing. I dont think this is bad at all. Only problem is the kids might see the images too.

    • That’s the whole point. Kids are supposed to see these images. I’d rather my kid see these images and be turned off thinking they might start to smoke.

  7. Any word on evidence that is is going to have any positive effect at all? Because a policy like this without any evidence is just lunacy.

    • While I cant speak for statistical evidence, here in australia I have noticed a decrease in smoking in younger ages as I was nearly out of highschool when this law was passed here, and that is when most people start smoking. Hell, it sure stopped me starting when I was offered by some of my mates.

      • Eh, I beg to differ, I find here in Australia, all the plain packs really seem to do is make people gravitate towards the cheapest, there has been a steady decline of smokers over the years due to knowledge, not due to what they are doing about the packets, people know its bad, so less are choosing to smoke, the packets don’t really mean much, that and the constant tax increases on them means people are quitting because its just getting rediculously expensive to smoke.

  8. Good, next we can start dealing with unhealthy foods. Make sure everything we put in our bodies is known inside and out… especially the prescription drugs and junk food contents.

  9. If anyone really cared about trying to prevent cigarettes from killing people they would target the actual threat which is the poisons that are placed in cigarettes to “keep people addicted”. It isn’t the packeging thats killing people.

    When you smoke a cigarette, you breathe in some of the following:

    Tar, a black, sticky substance that contains many poisonous chemical such as: ammonia (found in floor and window cleaner), toluene (found in industrial solvents) and acetone (found in paint stripper and nail polish remover)
    nicotine, the addictive drug in tobacco, carbon monoxide, a poisonous gas that reduces the amount of oxygen taken up by a person’s red blood cells, hydrogen cyanide, the poison used in gas chambers during World War 2, metals, including lead, nickel, arsenic (white ant poison) and cadmium (used in car batteries) pesticides such as methoprene (found in flea powder). Other chemicals such as benzene (found in petrol) and naphthalene (found in mothballs) are also in tobacco smoke.

    The only way to truly protect people from cigerettes is to make the tobacco companies remove the poisons from their products. That way people could still smoke if they chose to but would not risk serious harm or death. You’d think it would be more of a benefit for the Tobacco companies, to would want to keep their customers alive so as they can keep buying their products.

    TOBACCO COMPANIES – REMOVE THE POISONS AND YOU WON’T HAVE SUCH A BACKLASH!!!

    • You don’t know what you’re talking about, really. First of all nicotine IS a poison and it’s addictive enough on its own. The other chemicals aren’t added just to make you addicted. They’re added for various reasons such as continuous burning, even burning etc. Removing all of these things you’d end up with unadulterated tobacco, which still causes cancer or “serious harm or death” as you call it. Pouch tobacco is just as bad as cigarettes but many people think it’s only cigarettes that are full of these chemicals. Burning almost any combustible matter, even weed, (even food!) produces carcinogens. Inhalation of smoke is what does it, not just the chemicals. Even smoking cigars – which aren’t inhaled – causes cancer. You can’t make the smoke healthy, Tommy.

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