YOUR BURGER IN A PLAIN PAPER BAG?
Cigarettes in plain packaging… good idea?
How about your wine, champagne or beer in plain bottles or casks?
Your hamburger and fries in a plain paper bag?
This, some argue, is the illogicality of the government’s proposed restriction on advertising of cigarettes which was supported in the High Court yesterday.
Global health champion? Former Health Minister, Attorney General Nicola Roxon.
After all, the burden on the health system from alcoholism and obesity has been estimated to be even greater than that of smoking.
Writing in the Herald Sun today, Patrick Carlyon says:
“One TV interview you’ll never hear with a police officer goes like this: ‘His friends say he smoked half a pack of Benson and Hedges Smooth before he got behind the wheel of his Commodore and drove into a pole.’
Or a TV court reporter saying: ‘The prosecution alleges that on the night in question, the man had been chaining Alpine menthol cigarettes before forcing himself on the victim.’
Yesterday, the Government repeated the oft-quoted ‘social and economic annual cost’ of smoking at $31.5 billion.
Many people assume this figure is based on the burden smokers place on the health system. It actually includes $19.5 billion for the ‘psychological costs of premature death’.
But what of the other everyday vices? If the Government is genuinely determined to save lives, why are we still awash in beer and spirits TV ads?
What about fast food? We can’t escape commercials depicting families gathered at the dinner table tucking into fried this or that.
After all, one study found that obesity cost Australia $58.2 billion a year, although that number too has been questioned.”
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39 Responses to this article
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Dirty Pierre August 16, 2012
Nonsense.
Let me say this slowly ok…. cigarettes are a drug and each cigarette kills you.
Alcohol is a drug but a glass of wine a day has some studies suggest beneficial health qualities.
Hamburgers and mince, bread and salad… human beings need to eat, and a hamburger is food…
now can you see why each is treated radically differently??
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Hooty August 16, 2012
This really is a trivial “victory”.
Just wait till the various cigarette companies start to release unique, branded cigarette cases. Will that be outlawed also?
There will be a proliferation of these, guaranteed, and they will be the new chic, cool accessory.
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Glenis August 16, 2012
I don’t know about your alcohol comment Dirty Pierre. My husband had a dreadful childhood. His father would come home drunk, hit his wife and more, abuse the kids, spend all of his money on drink and make everyones life miserable all the time. This was in the 1960′s so very little support at this time or help.
My husband tells me that he never, ever had a friend home because they did not know what state his father would be in. They often just stayed in their bedroom once the father came home sometimes as soon as they got home from school as they would get picked on for any little thing if he was drinking /drunk. I cannot even imagine how it must have been for his family for years.Drinking is a huge problem often a secret problem but I am glad that the government has tackled smoking, alcohol must be next..
Yes….smoking kills but alcohol does dreadful things too. Just look at the spate of alcohol related violence lately.
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The Huntress August 16, 2012
We have known that smoking, in even very small quantities, has a detrimental affect on health since the 1960′s. It is unquestionable that smoking is bad. Yes, I agree, alcohol can also have a very detrimental affect (I’ve been in relationships with hopeless alcoholics and spent many years in the Kimberley where alcohol abuse is rife), however we are yet to prove that alcohol, even in small quantities, is ALWAYS detrimental, like cigarettes.
Same goes for fast food – we know in large quantities it’s bad for you, but for the family that has it as a treat every so often it’s not having an adverse effect. This gradual shutting down of access to tobacco should be applauded and for those who are crying foul, come and work on an oncology ward for a bit. You come and wheel the patient outside, whilst on oxygen, remove the oxygen, let them light up a cigarette, monitor them while they suck it down, hook them back up to their O2 and listen to them wheeze and complain about not being able to breathe while you take them back to their room. It’s an eye-opener and the more people we can prevent from having the fate, the better.
Smoking is a proven killer time and time again. Roxon has been gutsy to take on the tobacco companies and win.
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Helen August 16, 2012
Plain packaging won’t make any differance to those who choose to smoke. I’ll just bring out my Marilyn Monroe tin and put them in that.
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Susan August 16, 2012
My husband thought smoking was cool-he doesn’t think emphysema is….. Fifty year later…
Neither is asbestos….. -
Christine August 16, 2012
Can not even compare smoking with drinking and junk food.
Thats clearly ridiculous!!! One cigarette can kill you one drink can not, one hambuger can not, even when driving.
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hughesy August 16, 2012
Actually, Dirty Pierre, you are not quite correct there. Bugers – indeed most junk food, is full of excito-toxins to make dead, lifeless process food appear to have taste. It is not ‘naturally flavoured’ as the labels suggest, it contains a version of chemicals like MSG which, it has been shown, kills brain cells. So, really, yes. Junk food should be labelled as poisonous to the human immune system.
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Katie August 16, 2012
Good on Nicola. Bravely and cleverly done.
Now here’s hoping she can slay the next fiery dragon, and save Assange from a vengeful US. Hell hath no fury like a superpower in decline. -
Daphne Alaksa August 16, 2012
I would love to see plain packaging of cigarettes. When I was only 17 I started to have an occasional cigarette — you know, just trying to be cool. During pregnancies I was able to stop, but once I had stopped breast-feeding, although I had promised my self not to, I started smoking again. In those good old days just about everybody smoked. There were about five different occasions when I tried to give up, but they didn’t work. Thankfully the sixth time, when I was 47 years old , it took. On looking back I find it hard to believe that I suffered absolutely no problem from all that smoking. My husband also used to smoke,
but he stopped earlier than I did. We would have saved huge amounts of money if we hadn’t smoked, but that is far less important than having good health. When my 17 year old kid tried smoking I was as discouraging as I could be. It only lasted a short while, but she told me later she had only tried smoking because she wanted to be viewed as more adult when she socialised. I hope so much that the government puts its plain packaging legislation through. -
Aeron Winters August 16, 2012
I’m not sure whether the plain wrapper will have the desired affect. Personally, I wish they would outlaw ciggies altogether…just ban them. I also would have no problem with plain brown wrappers on alcohol or junk food. I wish they would ban all the ads for these too.
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sami August 16, 2012
Someone standing next to me with a beer or wine or chips in their hand does not affect me (except if the chips smell good- then I might want some too!). Someone standing next to me with a cigarette is damaging my health, and shows me that they are a selfish jerk. So yes, please legislate against it. Harming yourself? Go for gold. Harming others? Uncool.
I grew up with mum as a smoker, including while pregnant with my sister and I. We were lucky to be born without health issues but then spending 17 years in a smoke-filled house may have consequences down the line for us.
If there was plain packaging for booze I really couldn’t care less. As long as the relevant information was on it, it’s not important to me. As for burgers, well I’m vegetarian so again I don’t care. And once you are at a shop buying something who really would care what the wrapper was? You’ve already bought it. The idea behind plain packaging is to discourage kids from trying smoking in the first place and associating certain brands with being cool. No one goes and has a sneaky burger behind the bike shed… or are all the cool kids doing that these days?
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Janelle August 16, 2012
Plain packaging? I don’t think so. As a reformed smoker I can say that I promised I would give up smoking if cigarettes went up to $5 per pack. Many years later I was still smoking and paying nearly $20 per pack. I finally broke my addiction with help from my Doctor some 30 years later. Packaging has nothing to do with encouraging smokers to stop. People allow bad stuff into their bodies whether it be cigarettes, alcohol or too much food!
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Barbara August 16, 2012
I don’t believe the plain packaging will stop anyone from smoking who wishes to do so.
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Marnie August 16, 2012
Cigarettes are a drug of addiction. Does the way cannabis or heroin is packed stop users from buying it?
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Beth August 16, 2012
plain packaging is designed to stop teenagers taking up smoking (not stop people who are already addicted) and given the screaming from the cigarette companies clearly they are worried that it just might have some effect. I hope it works.
Then I would be happy to see the attention move onto alco pops and branded drinks but I doubt it will have quite the same effect. I suspect that drinking alcohol for teenagers is more about the effect than just the coolness of having a particular brand in your hand.It is definitely not going to work with food. lol.
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FerrelBerryl August 16, 2012
Making it hard to do one thing clearly makes all the other tenuously linked things hard to do also. Probably.
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Eddie August 16, 2012
Bring on plain packaging! In everything. So that shops sell quality, consumers think about what they are buying and are not tied to a brand – but to, i repeat, quality!
It’ll also cut down our consumption and packaging waste.
For those that want to fight to pay a premium for their brand… Such corporate activists! Brave warriors of corporate ideals. Cheers to you and thanks for contributing to the progress of society, x
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Ruth August 16, 2012
I think plain packaging is likely to make smoking less attractive to young people and thus help in the fight to stop them forming the dangerous habit. I doubt it will have an effect on those already addicted, but nevertheless it is an important step towards reducing smoking in the community and the resulting deaths. Nicola Roxon should be proud of this wonderful achievement. Maybe she could be our next Prime Minister!
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Dirty Pierre August 16, 2012
Sure let’s put everything in plain packaging …..
Julia Gillard is setting the trend…. plainest woman I’ve ever seen
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Dean August 16, 2012
Love is better than booze and cigarettes
Australians are such bogland!!!
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Dean August 16, 2012
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Dean August 16, 2012
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Dean August 16, 2012
Congrats the legal precedent has been set!!!
Go australia
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sue bell August 16, 2012
Dirty Pierre, how childish are you? to comment on someones looks adds nothing to a political debate, especially when we have no photo of you to make a comparison. The feminist movement has struggled for years to take women’s looks out of the political and social debate, men do not suffer the indignity of being judged by their looks, so what makes you think it is valid for you to do so. All it does is make you look trite and childish. It negates any valid political social commentary you may make.
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Sarah Boggs August 16, 2012
the Government will never out law cigarettes they get too much money from the taxes the same with alcohol.I gave up smoking 20 years haven’t saved a lot of money ’cause then I found out I liked chocolates so will they put sweets etc in plain packaging.
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mary August 16, 2012
Dont worry Timmy
Youre still a hot homcon for hire when corporates want you!!
Smirk
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Benison O'Reilly August 16, 2012
Totally in favour of plain packaging The public health experts are excited and they’re a pretty unexcitable lot. Thus we should be.
The efforts the tobacco lobby have gone to to fight this – ‘the scream test’ – is testament to how important they think this change is. How those tobacco company executives sleep at night is beyond me: emphysema, heart disease, lung cancer, vascular disease….. and they’ve known about and tried to hide the truth it for 50 years.
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jane August 16, 2012
Corporate psychopaths 0
Civility and democracy in the polity 1
Yeah!!
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Kate August 16, 2012
The packaging won’t be plain, it will have great big health warnings on it. So no, it won’t stop those that are already addicted. Hopefully, the sight of a gangrenous foot or blackened and rotting teeth, etc will take the cool factor out of it for a teen who is considering smoking. I’m an ex-smoker. Malboro and Alpine were cool for teens. B&H when I moved out of home. We could have bought our house years earlier if we hadn’t spent all that money on “ciggies”.
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carolyn August 16, 2012
Agreeing with Sarah. When there’s money to be made in the form of taxes from ciggies, alcohol etc, the Government doesn’t REALLY want to lose the huge $$$$’s involved. With their hands also in the pockets of the pharmas, why support experiments to cure cancer?? Agreeing to support the use of marijuana( THC) for cancer patients is just too hard- think of the $$$$’s tied up in medications/oncologists/hospitals for treatment.Serious concern for the health of Australians- I don’t think so!
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Kerrie August 16, 2012
Re Dirty Pierre: well said, sue bell. I agreed with his first comment but he lost me with his gratuitous dig at the PM
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jane August 16, 2012
https://mobile.twitter.com/timwilsoncomau/status/235669499477622784
follow tim wilsons twitter conversation here about this issue
lol!!
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tania August 17, 2012
Mr Wilson inhibits narcissism watching that video
sad
#funlovinglibgonecrazy
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john August 17, 2012
The nasty personal attacks on Ms Roxon has been ignored in the media
The extent to which corporations go to ,to win their case is repugnant
If you want an insidious corporation to do your dirty work just get the ipa to do it for you!
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amd August 17, 2012
Great news If it won’t change anything, what are people worried about and why did the tobacco industry fight so hard to stop this? Plain package whatever you want, don’t care.
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tania August 18, 2012
Fascist Wilson is really “special”
Watching interviews with him is akin to seeing a posh version of Golden Dawn
WTF?
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Ruben December 29, 2012
Personally I know the effects of alcohol violence does to a family and the person with the issue, people who think this substance is not addictive need their heads read maybe spend a night with a police patrol… It also is one of the leading causes of road death and accidental injury.. fast food well look at the news every other day of the week to see what effects its having on health and medical cost bottom lines.. ever heard of Diabetes?? Im a smoker I admit it Im not happy that I smoke but I enjoy it I also know I pay a Lot of Tax more tax than most for my choice! If the Government is looking for a fast easy win thats fine what I dont appreciate and what many here have lost sight of is the HYPOCRICY!! The government wants to tell me where I can when I can and How I must but Gladly take my money!! But dont worry about the ranting on one person.. when they start telling us with more authority on what we can and cant do in general perhaps then you might wake up!!
