I was thinking aboyut this and wouldn't it be easier to just make the smoking age 18 as it is now. Then if you don't have a driver's lisance or over 18 card, that means if your born after 1992 you can't buy cigaretts. So next year even if you are 18 you still can't buy cigaretts because your born after 1992.Australia to Ban Cigarette Package Advertising in World First
Share Business ExchangeTwitterFacebook| Email | Print | A A A By Gemma Daley
April 29 (Bloomberg) -- Australia plans to become the first nation in the world to ban advertising on cigarette packaging as it bids to combat the biggest preventable cause of disease and premature death, Health Minister Nicola Roxon said.
Laws to mandate plain packaging, which prevent the use of company logos, brand imagery or promotional text, will be introduced in the next 18 months, Roxon said in a statement issued today. The packets will display only health warnings and basic product information for retailers, she said.
“This will reduce the attractiveness and potential of packaging to mislead the public,” Roxon said. “The government will develop and test package design that would make it less appealing, particularly for young people.”
Smoking kills some 15,000 Australians a year and the government aims to cut the rate of smokers to 10 percent or less of the adult population from 16.6 percent, Roxon said.
Edit to say Now I can roll a smoke and contemplat their own brillance
Companies like Philip Morris International Inc. may gain as much as A$3 billion ($2.8 billion) in compensation because the laws may mean they lose their trademark, the Melbourne-based Institute of Public Affairs said in a report released this week.
Tobacco companies were banned from marketing to people aged under 18 in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s first moves in a decade to regulate the $80 billion industry. The restrictions, announced last month, prohibit cigarette makers from distributing branded merchandise such as T-shirts.
The FDA has said it will appeal a U.S. court ruling that overturned part of the law. In January, a federal judge in Kentucky ruled that some provisions violated advertisers’ free- speech rights by barring tobacco companies from using color and graphics to market their products.
To contact the reporter on this story: Gemma Daley in Canberra at gdaley@bloomberg.net
"I am a smoker and would be a lot happier if I didn't" Now if our goverment is really interested in stopping young people smoking then just make imosppible to buy them. Then instead of fining the shop owners who sell to underage smokers let's put the presure on the people buying the cigaretts. If you have smokes and your underage then you must be using someone else's identity, that is identity frurd.
So to put my idea simply. The legal age to smoke is 18 so if your not 18 you don't smoke legaly and there for this wont bother you.
If your not born before 1992 your to young to smoke.
Is this a smipler solution or not?
