I do very much welcome the move by England’s Health Secretary to ban the open display of tobacco in shops across Wales and England. It should hopefully make smoking less accessible to youngsters.
Research shows that point of sale displays does encourage youngsters to take up the deadly habit.
I do however also understand that plans for an outright ban on tobacco vending machines and branding on cigarette packets have been scrapped, which is somewhat disappointing. I would have liked the Department for Health to have gone a step further, by scrapping the sale of packs of 10 cigarettes and getting completely rid of tobacco vending machines.
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I see that your blog doesn't get many comments. So I thought that I would be your first on this subject.
ReplyDeleteIf you think for one minute that the banning of vending machines for cigarettes and stopping packets of 10 will stop youngsters smoking, you must be either blind or stupid, or both.
Do you honestly think youngsters buy many cigarettes from vending machines ? Get real, they buy them from people that they know, who know people that bring in millions of cigarettes from outside the EEC. Profits are enormous as the poisonous Chinese cigarettes are pennies to buy.
Every town in the country has a supplier. As for banning packets of 10's. How stupid !! The kids will just steal a bit more cash or do a bit more shoplifting to buy a pack of 20 if their local 'black market' supplier runs short.
Your plans will encourage more kids to turn to the poisonous cigarettes and will probably die.
Well done,
Are you serious? Good grief man, how can you possibly believe that hiding the tobacco in shops will do anything to discourage 'youngsters'. There are ALREADY laws that prohibit the sale of tobacco products to those under the age of 18, so how do you figure that the said products are accessible just because they are on display? What 'research' is it that you are refering to? It wouldn't have been undertaken on behalf of ASH would it? What has branding on cigarette packets got to do with anything? The packets are already defaced with huge 'health' warnings and silly graphics and still you think that the packs are somehow 'attractive' to young people? I cannot understand the reasoning behind your disappointment that the DOH has not scrapped 10 packs and got rid of vending machines either. Forcing people to buy 20 packs instead of 10s is a stupid idea unless you are really after getting people to smoke more. The vending machine issue can be easily resolved by the use of tokens or the machines could be switched on/off by remote control operated by bar staff. There really is no need for this 'ban this, ban that' attitude because it just makes the situation worse. I see that the smoking rates are up in the UK, despite the severe restrictions (or maybe because of them.
ReplyDeleteBKI
"Research shows that point of sale displays does encourage youngsters to take up the deadly habit."
ReplyDeleteDo you have any proof of this please as I'd love to debunk it for you.