Australia: the healthiest country by 2020
National Preventative Health Strategy – the roadmap for action
Key action area 5: Regulate manufacturing and further regulate packaging and supply of tobacco products
- Chair's Foreword
Chapter 1: Building preventative health in Australian communities- Chapter 2: Obesity in Australia: A need for urgent action
Chapter 3: Tobacco: Towards world’s best practice in tobacco control- The case for prevention
- Targets
- Key action areas
- Key action area 1: Make tobacco products more expensive
- Key action area 2: Increase the frequency, reach and intensity of social marketing campaigns
- Key action area 3: End all forms of advertising and promotion of tobacco products
- Key action area 4: Eliminate exposure to second-hand smoke in public places
- Key action area 5: Regulate manufacturing and further regulate packaging and supply of tobacco products
- Key action area 6: Ensure all smokers in contact with health services are encouraged and supported to quit, with particular efforts to reach pregnant women and those with chronic health problems
- Key action area 7: Work in partnership with Indigenous groups to boost efforts to reduce smoking and exposure to passive smoking among Indigenous Australians
- Key action area 8: Boost efforts to discourage smoking among people in other highly disadvantaged groups
- Key action area 9: Assist parents and educators to discourage use of tobacco and to protect young people from second-hand smoke
- Key action area 10: Ensure that the public, media, politicians and other opinion leaders remain aware of the need for sustained and vigorous action to discourage tobacco use
- Key action area 11: Ensure implementation and measure progress against and towards targets
- Summary Tables
- References
- Chapter 4: Alcohol: Reshaping the drinking culture in Australia
- Appendices
Unlike poisons, firearms and pharmaceutical products, there are relatively few controls in Australia on the ways in which tobacco products are manufactured, packaged and supplied to consumers. Several major deficiencies and loopholes should be addressed.
Supply of tobacco products
Legislation pertaining to the sale of tobacco products in retail outlets has been introduced at different times in different states and territories. All retailers should be licensed to aid communication of government regulations and as a means of ensuring enforcement of those regulations. The cost of the licence should be sufficient to cover the costs of education, compliance testing and investigation of prosecutions at levels necessary to ensure universal compliance. Any retailer who knowingly sells tobacco products to minors is unfit to hold a licence. Sales to minors could be minimised across the country if states and territories all moved to best practice concerning allowable retail outlets, provisions for checking proof of age, enforcement and penalties.
Action 5.1
Tighten and enforce legislation to eliminate sales to minors and any form of promotion of tobacco at the retail level.
Consumer product information
The previous four sets of health warnings required on cigarettes in Australia have been introduced only after protracted reviews and with extremely lengthy phase-in periods. During the 14 years it took to upgrade the 1973 warnings, the eight years it took to upgrade the 1987 warnings, and the 10 years it took to upgrade the 1994 warnings, extensive new evidence about the health effects of smoking became available, including much information about which consumers to this day still have not been warned. Consumers need to be warned about all the risks posed by smoking in a clear, systematic and much more timely manner.
The Department of Health and Ageing’s evaluation of graphic health warnings introduced in 2006 showed that while smokers strongly approved of the graphic form, and the tone and style of warnings, unaided recall of health information declined from 98% in 2000 to 91% in 2008.[124] Smokers interviewed confirmed the importance of the front of the pack for conveying health information, with many smokers commenting that the current warnings were too small and made less prominent by placement on the lid. The evaluation also indicated some wear-out of current warnings, and provided evidence that colours and other design features of cigarette packaging were competing with and reducing the impact of warnings.
Plain packaging increases the prominence of warnings; see 3.4 above. In addition, research by Health Canada indicates that graphic health warnings are most effective if they cover almost the entire surface of cigarette packages. Based on analysis of 38 different indicators, researchers concluded that warnings needed to increase to 90% if they are to ‘connect with emotions of various styles of young smokers’ and ‘make cigarette packs less attractive’.
Australia is now well behind when it comes to the potency of warnings.
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Figure 3.3:
Examples of health warnings required on cigarettes in Singapore (neck cancer) and in Thailand (throat cancer)
Action 5.2
Improve consumer information related to tobacco products, including through the mandating of substantially larger front-of-pack health warnings, more regular reviews of health warnings and a more timely system of warning consumers of new and emerging risks.
Manufacturing of tobacco products – reduced fire-risk cigarettes
Nearly one-quarter of all fire deaths in Australia in 2004–05 occurred in fires started by cigarettes or matches. The total economic impact of these fires is conservatively estimated at $81 million each year.[13] New regulations requiring cigarettes to be produced to a standard that ensures they are quickly extinguished are due to come into force in March 2010, but the deadline for implementation has recently been brought forward by six months (from March 2011 to September 2010) so that all cigarettes on the market should be reduced fire-risk cigarettes prior to the commencement of the 2010–11 summer fire season.
Action 5.3
Ensure compliance with new regulations regarding reduced fire-risk.
Design, content and emissions
Cigarettes can be designed in ways that affect the emission of particular toxins. While it is not clear whether cigarettes can be manufactured to create any less harm to consumers, governments should consider the potential benefits of enforcing requirements for product modifications or reduced emissions with at least some prospect of reducing risk. A crucial element of such regulation would be to prevent any sort of communication with consumers by manufacturers that might provide false reassurance. It would also be essential to ensure that information was collected (in the form of monitoring of biomarkers and disease surveillance) to assess whether in fact any reduction in harm actually did eventuate.
No legislation currently exists enabling the government to mandate requirements regarding the contents or performance of Australian tobacco products; thus the government would currently not be able to mandate any modifications to cigarettes such as those recommended by the WHO’s expert advisory group, TobReg.[125] Further, no legislation currently mandates the provision of information that would be required to assess the impact on consumers. Detailed requirements for such reporting are likely to be incorporated in guidelines currently being developed by an expert group reporting to the WHO’s Conference of the Parties to the FCTC.
Action 5.4
Establish or nominate a body with the power to regulate the design, contents and maximum emissions for all tobacco products (and any alternative nicotine delivery devices that may be allowed onto the market), and with responsibility for specifying required disclosure to government, labelling and any other communication to consumers.
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Legal action
Tobacco products cause the premature death of one in every two regular users, resulting in enormous social costs to the entire community, and unquantifiable misery to individuals and families. The continuing sale of such products through tens of thousands of retail outlets across the country raises important legal questions.
Action 5.5
Investigate the feasibility of legal action by governments and others against tobacco companies with a view to recovering health and other costs.