Cancer Council Australia has congratulated the government of France for announcing its intention to introduce legislation for the plain packaging of tobacco products next year, to become effective in 2016.
Chair of Cancer Council’s Tobacco Issues Committee, Kylie Lindorff, said France would now become the third country, after Australia and Ireland, to eliminate the use of packaging as a way to advertise tobacco products.
“The tobacco industry will continue to kick and scream and claim that plain packaging won’t work, which only further demonstrates how important glossy packaging is to the promotion of the product,” Ms Lindorff said.
“The French Ministry of Health and the Government should be congratulated for putting the health of its citizens ahead of the commercial interests of big tobacco companies.”
Ms Lindorff said an increasing number of countries were looking at the compelling evidence that packaging is an important form of tobacco advertising, particularly for luring and addicting young people.
“Global tobacco-caused deaths since the introduction of mass-marketed tobacco products are expected to reach one billion this century,” Ms Lindorff said. “The sooner we see better controls around the advertising of these products, the sooner we can reverse the trends in preventable deaths globally.”
Plain packaging has been mandatory in Australian since December 2012.
The most recent Australian smoking prevalence data, released in July this year, showed the largest single drop in tobacco use since the figures have been collected, with unprecedented reductions in the number of young Australians using tobacco products.
Source: Cancer Council Australia
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