Advertisement

We need your help now

Support from readers like you keeps The Journal open.

You are visiting us because we have something you value. Independent, unbiased news that tells the truth. Advertising revenue goes some way to support our mission, but this year it has not been enough.

If you've seen value in our reporting, please contribute what you can, so we can continue to produce accurate and meaningful journalism. For everyone who needs it.

A mock package of cigarettes at the European Commission. (AP Photo/Yves Logghe)

EU cracks down on tobacco branding

Banning flavoured cigarettes and images of rotting lungs are all part of the plan.

WITH MENTHOL CIGARETTES to be banned and cigarette packs sold with repulsive images of rotting lungs, the European Union have released new anti-tobacco proposals, the first in over a decade.

“Tobacco kills half of its users and is highly addictive,” said EU Health Commissioner Tonio Borg, himself a former smoker. “We’re not forbidding smoking, we’re aiming to make it less attractive.

Almost 700,000 Europeans die from tobacco-related illnesses each year, equal to the population of Frankfurt or Palermo, and Borg hopes to cut the bloc’s 27 per cent of smokers by two percentage points in five years.

With the habit most often acquired before the age of 25, the proposed legislation particularly targets the young, hence a ban on flavoured cigarettes, roll-your-own, or smokeless tobacco products.

Plain packaging

“Tobacco products should look and taste like tobacco products,” said Borg, adding that flavours such as menthol, chocolate or vanilla were often popular with young people.

On packaging, images of camels along with other well-known cigarette logos will be gone in three to four years, the time it will take the 27 EU states and the European parliament to approve the package of new rules.

They will notably force tobacco companies to cover 75 per cent of packets back and front with graphic health warnings and gruesome pictures of diseased body parts.

The size of packs will be standardised and boxes of 10 banned “to ensure the full visibility of pictorial warnings”.

But the proposals fall short of demands by many health campaigners for a total ban on company branding and logos on packets, along the lines of the plain packaging enforced this month in Australia.

Should Australia win an appeal currently at the World Trade Organization against its plain packets, “it will open the way for others to follow suit,” said Borg. The proposals state that “member states remain free to introduce plain packaging in duly justified cases.”

Pipes and cigars however were largely left out of the loop.

“They are on the decline and don’t attract youths,” Borg said.

- © AFP, 2012

Read: How to make a hangover even worse? Smoke >

Author
View 48 comments
Close
48 Comments
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute shellakybooky
    Favourite shellakybooky
    Report
    Jul 26th 2018, 11:56 AM

    Gardai never done anything to stop the scourge that family put on dunmore. Bunch of tramps robbing and terrorising the village. It takes now for someone to get killed to put an end to this. Blood is on the gards hands. May that man rip what a horrible tragedy again. Life seems to have no value these days

    108
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute James O Carroll
    Favourite James O Carroll
    Report
    Jul 26th 2018, 10:04 AM

    so many young people these days committing crimes. and most victims are men too. men need to make their own movements say that enough is enough

    66
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Ole dan tucker
    Favourite Ole dan tucker
    Report
    Jul 26th 2018, 10:19 AM

    Rough part of the town

    39
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Martina Mc Carthy
    Favourite Martina Mc Carthy
    Report
    Jul 26th 2018, 11:39 AM

    This photo is not shanakiel please remove

    26
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Ronan Sexton
    Favourite Ronan Sexton
    Report
    Jul 26th 2018, 12:52 PM

    Meanwhile, you have Michael Clifford over on The Examiner cribbing about the guards stopping and searching scrotes. The never ending, utter stupidity of the PC half wits never ceases to amaze me.

    67
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Martina Mc Carthy
    Favourite Martina Mc Carthy
    Report
    Jul 26th 2018, 11:35 AM

    That photo is not shanakiel remove please

    24
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute francie brady
    Favourite francie brady
    Report
    Jul 26th 2018, 6:04 PM

    He will be the 5th teenager arrested/ charged with murder this summer – it’s out of control folks.

    21
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Eadaoin Cummings
    Favourite Eadaoin Cummings
    Report
    Jul 26th 2018, 11:45 AM

    What the actual f%ck.. Do kids not know how to go out and enjoy themselves nowadays!! Never in my life have I carried a weapon.. I’m a worried parent, not because of my son, but because of the absolute idiots who can’t use their fists.. Disgusting a life gone and for what??

    51
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Lynda Jones
    Favourite Lynda Jones
    Report
    Jul 26th 2018, 9:48 PM

    @Eadaoin Cummings: fists can kill, too. And have done.

    4
Submit a report
Please help us understand how this comment violates our community guidelines.
Thank you for the feedback
Your feedback has been sent to our team for review.
JournalTv
News in 60 seconds