Cigarette packaging still 'misleading'
Cigarette packaging misleading consumers over risks to their health of smoking
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By inthenews. |  |
Tuesday, 28, Jul 2009 12:03
Cigarette packaging is still misleading consumers over health hazards and tougher regulations are required, according to new research out today.
In the Journal of Public Health, Canadian researchers found the majority of consumers still believed cigarettes are less hazardous when a cigarette pack displays words such as "silver or smooth", lower numbers incorporated into the brand name, lighter colours or pictures of filters.
The researchers have called for the list of words banned from packaging to be expanded, and suggested other design elements may need to be banned to prevent consumers from believing one brand is less harmful than another.
David Hammond, a professor of health studies at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, said: "An important function of tobacco marketing has been to reassure consumers about the product's risks and a central feature of the strategy has been to promote the perception that some cigarettes are less hazardous than others, so that health-concerned smokers are encouraged to switch brands rather than quit.
"We've seen research described in internal tobacco industry documents indicating that reference to filters and the use of lighter colours conveys that message successfully, but now we have independent confirmation, plus evidence on other words in widespread use.
"The truth is that all cigarettes are equally hazardous, regardless of the filter type, what colour the pack is or what words appear on it. These tactics are giving consumers a false sense of reassurance that simply does not exist."
Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable death worldwide. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates it kills more than five million people a year. Globally, use of tobacco products is increasing.
The researchers studied the perceptions of 312 smokers and 291 non-smokers recruited in a shopping mall in Ontario using nine pairs of fictitious cigarette packet replicas incorporating words and design elements commonly used by leading international brands.
A total of 80 per cent said they believed the package labelled smooth would be less hazardous than the one labelled regular. Similar results were found for the words mild, light and ultra-light, consistent with previous research.