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Plain cigarettes
Posted: Wed Apr 28, 2010 10:13 pm
by Gob
THE Rudd goverment will launch a twin assault on smoking today by announcing steep increases in tobacco excise and laws requiring cigarettes and other tobacco products to be sold in plain packaging from 2012.
The excise increase, which will help fund the government's health reforms, will be short of that required to lift the price of a packet of cigarettes to $20, as recommended by the government's Preventative Health Taskforce.
There was speculation last night that the excise increase would add at least $2-$3 to a pack of 25.
How the generic pack of cigarettes will look.
How the generic pack of cigarettes will look.
In what the Rudd government is hailing as a world first, it will also announce legislation to mandate standard packaging for all tobacco products, a move likely to incense the $9-billion tobacco industry. From January 1, 2012, all brands of cigarettes will be sold in plain boxes. The boxes will be the same colour and carry large, graphic health warnings. The brand of the cigarette will appear in a small font. The font style and size, as well as the position of the brand will be uniform.
The laws will ban the use of any colours, logos, brand imagery or promotional text that would in any way distinguish one brand of cigarettes from the other.
http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/wellbei ... .html#poll
Re: Plain cigarettes
Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2010 2:45 pm
by @meric@nwom@n
Actually smoking does not always cause lung cancer. If that were a fact I am sure more folks would give them up. Now they have traced it to a gene that they believe causes the smokers to get lung cancer. Smoking plus the gene equals lung cancer. Smoking does however assure you of some time of hideous COPD. You get to die a nice smothery death.
I hate the stench of cigarettes and the smell smokers have in their clothes and hair. Tax away I say. Call it the stink tax.
Re: Plain cigarettes
Posted: Thu Apr 29, 2010 3:28 pm
by Big RR
@W--from personal experience, coming from a large family of smokers, I can tell you that it appears COPD is not a certainty either. My grandmother was a 2-3 pack a day smoker who lived well into her 80s with no appreciable health problems, e.g., and my extended family has a lot of those. It may be that the obstruction is not always a given, or it may be that some tolerate the obstructions without problems/symptoms better than others, but the results are not a given. On the other side of the coin, my friends father was an occasional smoker (a pack a month or less) and developed emphysema in his late 50s. With varying genetic makeups of each of us, not to mention the other things we are exposed to in the general environment, I think it's difficult to trace any disease to a single cause. I full well concede, however, that there is no evidence (at least none I have seen) that smoking ever does anyone any good healthwise.
BTW, if you want a "stink tax" I'd like to see it placed on beans and cabbage as well.