Tobacco products might be dyed brown or green to help people give up smoking.
Leading a significant government assessment on smoking, Dr Javed Khan stated he would be keeping an eye out for the suggestion in Rishi Sunak’s new smoking laws. As of right now, the much-awaited Tobacco and Vaping Bill prohibits anybody born on or after January 1, 2009, from ever purchasing tobacco products. To combat the rising number of kids developing the habit, it was also declared last week that disposable vapes will be prohibited.
In his address to the Health and Social Care Committee of the House of Commons, Dr Khan enumerated his suggestions that he hoped ministers would “embrace” in the Bill. “Cigarette sticks themselves should have writing on them telling them that they’ve just lost 20 minutes of their life from the last puff they’ve had,” he stated.
“Any one thing is not going to be enough but it’s a collective approach. Changing the colour of cigarettes, changing them to brown and green, they are far less attractive. I wasn’t aware of that, why those two colours, but that’s what the research shows. I think we need to learn from that and I think we need to embrace as much of that as possible.”
Speaking about cigarette packets, he added: “I’m saying the packet should be changed. We should have inserts within them that help people understand the effect, that refer them to stop smoking services and to websites that give them more information.”
Dr Khan’s report, which reviewed the Government’s ambition to make England smoke-free by 2030, said there was a need “to reduce the appeal of smoking”. His recommendations included: “Mandating anti-smoking messages on cigarette sticks, such as the number of ‘minutes of life lost’ per cigarette [and] using dissuasive colours (like green or brown) on individual cigarette sticks or hand-rolling papers.”
In August of last year, Canada became the first nation to put warning statements directly on cigarettes. Labels including statements like “Poison in every puff” and “Cigarettes cause cancer” are placed on each cigarette in the new package.
Dr Khan told MPs that “nothing should be off the table” in helping England become smoke-free by 2030 – achieved when adult smoking prevalence falls to 5 per cent or less. He suggested smoking should be banned in all public areas, from hospitals to public beaches, and that smoking on TV should be banned before the watershed at 9 pm. “Some people think this is going too far but I think it’s part of the cultural journey we want to shift to as a country to be able to celebrate that we’re going to be a smoke-free country,” he said.
Although Dr Khan applauded the government’s plans to outlaw disposable vapes, he emphasised the need to strike a “balance” between preventing minors from vaping and giving adult smokers access to vaping as a quitting technique, given that vaping is around 95% safer than smoking cigarettes.
Changing the colour is going to make no difference whatsoever. If people want to smoke, they will smoke no matter what colour it’s changed to.
It’s just colour, what do the government think that it’s not going to go with their dress ensemble?
There are no hideous colours, just some colours appeal to some people and others don’t, and this is a ridiculous reason for changing the colour of cigarettes. It will cost the taxpayer a fortune and it will probably make the government a profit because the government never do anything without a reason behind it and that’s to make more money.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 