Battling the scourge of nicotine addiction through packaging and other measures

Posted on June 2, 2016 in Health Policy Context

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TheStar.com – Readers’ Letters – Plain packaging for tobacco products would help, but we need more regulation of the industry and more help with smoking cessation.
June 2, 2016.   Stan Shatenstein / Richard Coleman

No logo right for tobacco, editorial, June 1

Your editorial is a model of what a well-researched, well-written position on standardized packaging for tobacco products should be.

The only problem is that you recommend that tobacco manufacturers “should stand down on this issue because it’s the right thing to do.” When your business model involves selling an addictive product that kills more than half of long-term users, as well as a great many non-users, and sickens many of those it doesn’t kill, then ‘do the right thing’ simply does not enter the equation.

In its pre-emptive protest against Health Minister Jane Philpott’s announcement of the plain-packs consultation, Imperial Tobacco Canada noted, “The health risks associated with smoking have been known for decades.” But what are those risks, according to Imperial? Your editorial states them to tragic perfection. So, if a firm knows it has more than half the market share of a product killing 37,000 Canadians each and every year, what gives it the right to even comment on public health policy?

Do the right thing? They never will, which is why government has an important role to regulate the tobacco industry as stringently as possible.

Plain and ugly packs to tell the plain and ugly truth about a plain ugly product.

Stan Shatenstein, editor and publisher, STAN (Smoking and Tobacco Abstracts and News) Bulletin, Montreal
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“Studies have shown…”

I notice even the Star has fallen into using this simple phrase or variations on it to give validity to an argument whose usefulness is doubtful.

I would be classed in today’s world as a reluctant smoker. I’ve tried every method of quitting from gum to prescriptions to hypnosis. I stopped smoking in my house and car over 20 years ago, and now limit myself to about eight cigarettes a day, outside, and I stay well away from children and other non-smokers. I’m proud to say that of my five children and 10 grandchildren, none smokes.

The bottom line is I am addicted. Why? Because in high school, many of my friends smoked and I didn’t want to feel left out. That’s how it all started.

I don’t recall any of my friends saying “Oh, look at the pretty package; I think I will start smoking.”

And I’m not sure how packaging could entice young people to smoke, because with current laws they are not going to see the package until they’ve made the purchase, which seems a little late.

Rather than wasting money and time on legislation and court battles over packaging, use that money to subsidize smoking-cessation products. I’ve often wondered why mint gum is $1 a package and nicotine gum is $10.

After all, “studies have shown” that this would encourage more people to quit smoking.

Richard Coleman, Toronto

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