New Zealand plans brand-free cigarette packs
The proposed plain-packaging law ‘will remove the last remaining vestige of glamour from these deadly products,’ said Tariana Turia, New Zealand’s associate Minister of Health.
Under the new law, logos on tobacco products will be replaced with graphic warnings.
Australia implemented the same law last year and is currently battling a case in the World Trade Organisation against several tobacco-growing countries. Last year tobacco companies lost a legal challenge opposing the law in Australia’s highest court.
The New Zealand government wants to minimise its legal exposure by waiting until the outcome of the Australian challenge, said Turia.
Many countries mandate that packages display photos or text describing smoking’s health effects, and some limit the size of the branding or ban certain slogans, but Australia’s dual approach is the strictest globally.
New Zealand has set itself a target of eliminating smoking altogether by 2025. Turia said the government would consider introducing further measures, such as banning smoking in cars and public places and further hiking taxes.
Source: Sapa
Author
Health-e News is South Africa's dedicated health news service and home to OurHealth citizen journalism. Follow us on Twitter @HealtheNews
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.
New Zealand plans brand-free cigarette packs
by Health-e News, Health-e News
February 25, 2013