OPINIONISTA: Plain packaging for cigarettes is a bad idea By Ivo Vegter IvoVegter
): “Unfortunately, in 2016, official sales of cigarettes increased in France: the neutral package did not reduce the official sale of tobacco.”In 2012, the Australian Government introduced plain packaging to ‘curb smoking’. Three years later, publicly available data reveal that plain packaging has not reduced smoking rates or tobacco consumption.
The failure of plain packaging in other countries not only indicates that South Africa should abandon the project to introduce the measure here. It also suggests that one cannot simply dismiss the arguments against plain packaging as being trumped by public health concerns. Among these arguments is the destruction of brand assets. Intellectual property is well-recognised in law, and often constitutes a large share of a company’s value. Depriving companies of their brand assets is an extreme measure, which can only be justified by overwhelming evidence that doing so is in the public interest.
INTA also points to the correlation between plain packaging and counterfeiting. It says plain packaging laws “will facilitate the spread of counterfeit tobacco products by making them easier to produce and more difficult to detect”.rose from 11.5% when plain packaging was introduced in 2012 to over 14% three years later. The proportion of smokers admitting to buying unbranded illicit cigarettes soared from 14.2% in 2012 to 21.3% by the end of 2015.
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