EU clamps down on tobacco
Member states of the European Union are backing plans for bigger and bolder health warnings on cigarette packs and bans on most flavourings such as menthol.
Under the new proposals, prominent health warnings would have to cover 65 percent of tobacco packaging and include graphic warnings.
“We have an opportunity today to step up to the mark, or we can walk away and fail our children,” said Irish Health Minister James Reilly.
EU Health Commissioner Tonio Borg said the crackdown was aimed at reducing smoking-related deaths, which stand at around 700 000 a year in the 27-nation bloc.
The new regulations aim to stop youngsters from being swayed into smoking by enticing packaging and flavours that could get them hooked.
Whatever the overall EU regulations contain in the end, individual member states would be allowed to impose even tougher rules as they please.
The blueprint was decided despite the opposition of four nations that are more lenient toward smoking: Poland, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Romania.
According to the European Commission, 28 percent of the EU’s 500 million citizens still smoke, and Borg said he hopes to get 2.4-million smokers to kick the habit in the next five years based on tougher regulations.
Tobacco companies increasingly rely on their packaging to build brand loyalty and grab consumers since it is one of the few advertising levers left to them.
“The main thrust is that tobacco should look like tobacco and not like perfume or a candy, and that tobacco should taste like tobacco,” said Borg.
Source: Bloomberg Businessweek
Author
-
Health-e News is South Africa's dedicated health news service and home to OurHealth citizen journalism. Follow us on Twitter @HealtheNews
View all posts
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Unless otherwise noted, you can republish our articles for free under a Creative Commons license. Here’s what you need to know:
-
You have to credit Health-e News. In the byline, we prefer “Author Name, Publication.” At the top of the text of your story, include a line that reads: “This story was originally published by Health-e News.” You must link the word “Health-e News” to the original URL of the story.
-
You must include all of the links from our story, including our newsletter sign up link.
-
If you use canonical metadata, please use the Health-e News URL. For more information about canonical metadata, click here.
-
You can’t edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week”)
-
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. Health-e News understands that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarise or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
-
You can’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
-
If you share republished stories on social media, we’d appreciate being tagged in your posts. You can find us on Twitter @HealthENews, Instagram @healthenews, and Facebook Health-e News Service.
You can grab HTML code for our stories easily. Click on the Creative Commons logo on our stories. You’ll find it with the other share buttons.
If you have any other questions, contact info@health-e.org.za.
EU clamps down on tobacco
by Health-e News, Health-e News
June 26, 2013