Following increased restrictions on traditional forms of tobacco advertising and promotion in Australia, the cigarette pack has become an increasingly important marketing tool and means of communicating brand quality and image to potential and current smokers.
Therefore, reforms to how tobacco products are promoted through packaging are essential to reducing the unacceptable level of death and disability caused by smoking in Australia.
Cigarette pack plain packaging as advocated by non-government tobacco control organisations. Image 1 - front of pack (90% health warning), image 2 - front of pack (75% health warning), image 3 - rear of pack.
Click here to download high resolution versions of these images.
This position statement outlines how the tobacco industry uses product packaging to attract new smokers and undermine health warnings. It also discusses Cancer Council Australia’s recommendations to reduce smoking prevalence through changes in tobacco promotion:
- A comprehensive ban on the advertising and promotion of tobacco products, including through the pack itself, is essential to reducing the harm caused by tobacco in Australia;
- The plain packaging of cigarettes would eliminate the tobacco industry’s ability to promote smoking and brand personality through the pack, would reduce rates of smoking initiation and consumption, enhance the effectiveness of pack warnings and remove the pack’s ability to mislead and deceive consumers;
- A survey of 3000 Victorian adults in 2006 found that more than half of the current, former and never smokers surveyed supported plain packaging;
- The Australian government should ban the display on packs of all trademarks, texts and logos, together with all colours and other attractive decorative or design features.
- Only prescribed information and graphics, such as brand names, product names, manufacturer details, the number of cigarettes in a pack, prescribed health warnings and any other government-mandated information for consumers, should be permitted to appear on packs in a prescribed size, font, colour and location.
- Packs should only be permitted to be made from a prescribed material in a standardized, dull colour and shape (inside and outside the pack). The permitted shapes and formats of packs should also be prescribed.
- The use of perfuming, audio chips and any other material not prescribed should be prohibited.
- The display of misleading descriptors and yield information on packs should be banned. Only product names that describe taste should be permitted.