If you're a smoker it's not something you generally want to publicise around the BHF. The clear links with heart disease mean it's an issue we campaign on regularly and vociferously.
But I don't mind admitting that when I was young and impressionable I once dabbled with tobacco, sneaking a puff from a friend's cigarette behind the bushes at the local 'rec' to make sure I looked 'cool'.
I knew smoking was bad for health in a very general sense but my curiosity to try it and fit in was far stronger.
Our latest report shows that children and young people react to smoking in the same way I did, unappreciative of the full extent of the health harms and charmed by image tobacco firms portray of smoking being trendy.
Packaging is a key component - and in fact the last bastion - of tobacco advertising in the UK. While more traditional adverts have been rightly banned, cigarette packs covered in attractive colours, branding and images still speak to young people.
With around 200,000 children and young people in England starting smoking each year, and more than two thirds of the UK's existing 10 million smokers started before they turned 18, it's critical we close this advertising loophole and protect our children and young people from getting hooked on a lifetime's addiction.
Proving the power of branding, more than a quarter of young regular smokers we surveyed thought one branded pack was less harmful than another based on the packet design alone. The reality is that all cigarettes contain harmful toxins, tar and carbon monoxide.
Our survey also showed that one in six young people would consider the pack design when deciding which cigarettes to buy while one in eight said they'd choose a brand because it was considered 'cool'.
We're campaigning for 'plain packaging', which has no colourful branding or logos and has larger health warnings.
A total of 87% of young people in our survey said plain packs were less attractive than branded packs, and more than three quarters said they thought selling cigarettes in plain packs would make them easier for people to smoke less or quit.
The Australian government has already said cigarettes will need to be sold in plain packs from the end of 2012, and our UK government will be launching a public consultation in the spring on whether we should do the same.
I'd urge anyone who wants to help protect the health of our future generations to support our campaign by signing our petition in support of plain packaging. If you need any further proof of the sway cigarette packs hold over young people, watch our short film to see the difference in their reactions to branded and plain packs.
Peter Sheridan: Plain Packaging Will Create a Fertile Ground for Tobacco Smuggling
Roy Ramm: Government Plans for Plain Packaging Will Boost Illicit Trade
Peter Kellner: Cigarette Packets: The Case for a New Law
69% of 16-24 year olds find cigarette packaging a form of advertising
Several States Support Graphic Cigarette Warning Labels
The results were surprising due to the psychological condition know as “Terror Managment,” from Ernest Becker who argues that “.. all human action is taken to ignore or avoid the inevitability of death.”
“A 2010 New York University study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (46,1) found that the anxiety evoked from the graphic images on cigarette packages could actually cause an increase in smoking…”
“…cigarette package images may cause people who already smoke to smoke more, as cigarette smoking is closely linked to one’s sense of self. Adolescents and young adults are particularly prone to coping in this manner. When presented with the threat of mortality, teens and young adults who already smoke may become more entrenched in their smoking habits in an attempt to bolster their fragile and developing sense of self.”
” Results suggest that to the degree that smoking is a source of self-esteem, later attitudes towards smoking become more positive if the warning message is mortality-salient. On the contrary, if the warning is terrifying but not mortality-salient and relates to the source of self-esteem, smoking attitudes become more negative with higher smoking-based self-esteem.”
http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=43740&cn=1310
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103109002285
. . . yeah, we know all about those.
87% of people are always going to prefer the packets designed by specialists to be pleasant when compared with the packets designed to scare the buyer from buying, this didn't need any research.
I'm also not convinced that warnings have as great an effect upon uptake rates of smoking.
I would imagine the biggest effect to stopping the uptake of smoking and increase of those who quit is the massive increase in the cost of smoking and the decrease of public spaces where people can smoke.
IF you really want to protect our younger generations from smoking legislate and ban it, but be prepared to pay for the shortfall in taxes.
I know full well I would have smoked no matter the packet they came in, and I have no doubt the primary reason I quit was because it had become far too costly to continue.
Which is also why I do not frequent pubs any longer, I buy my beer from a supermarket and invite friends to come round, the cost involved with smoking combined with the fact it has become social unacceptable now has had a great impact on rates of smoking, unless you make it illegal however people will always smoke, especially the young who know it's bad for them and want to rebel.
Another half hearted attampt to stop binge drinking announced this week is that Cameron intends to raise the prices of alcohol, mainly beer and Gin. Why Gin ? How many youngsters do you know who drink gin ? Who form the largest part of the street brawling etc through alcohol ? youngsters. Some of whom stoke up on VODKA before a night out so they are drunk before they leave their houses. He could actually stop supermarkets from selling very cheap booze, but he wont, he could enforce the old drunk and disorderly laws, but he wont. He could stop pubs, clubs etc from being open so long, but he wont. He could make late night clubs pay heavily for any Police action needed to clear up the drunken mess the clubs profit from, but he wont.
Maybe he will make alcohol in pretty bottles illegal, and hope nobody will buy it.
Damn, I did it again.
As the author of this piece said herself, she tried a cigarette to look cool. Did she look at the packet the cigarette came out of and decide that 'not only will I look cool but the design is trendy too'? The answer is no.
Peer pressure accounts for a massive percentage of people smoking. I don't smoke, never have, and neither does my Wife but both our children do and that's because because their friends did.