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A Maori tobacco control advocate says if the Government can push through a law banning legal highs overnight, it should be able to get plain packaging legislation for tobacco passed before the election.
Boyd Broughton from ASH says he’s impressed with the progress the health select committee is making on the plain packaging bill.
He says ASH wants cigarettes packets to be a horrible olive colour with no logos and a series of pictorial health warnings.
It wants heavier fines for non-compliance in line with Australia, and for tobacco retailers to be registered, which will allow for better monitoring.
Mr Broughton says the law has to be strong enough to counter a determined and resource-rich tobacco industry.
"When you have these brightly-coloured packs, expensively designed, and they research to death to make sure they are advertising right on their packs, and when they have those packs sitting in their car, whenever they drive anywhere as a family and they go to weddings, funerals, birthdays, graduations, it also paints a false picture of normality, that part of what being Maori or being a New Zealander is having this packet of cigarettes, so it is trying to remove that positive stigma around a tobacco packet and replace it with a whole lot of negativity," he says.
Boyd Broughton says plain packaging will help efforts to stop young people taking up the habit.
FOR THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH BOYD BROUGHTON CLICK ON THE LINK
https://secure.zeald.com/uma/play_podcast?podlink=MTc5OTY=
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