Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 25 May 2017
183. Deputy Billy Kelleher asked the Minister for Health the steps he will take to address the use of disposable tins by tobacco companies to bypass upcoming plain packaging laws; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [25202/17]
View answerThe Public Health (Standardised Packaging of Tobacco) Act 2015 provides that cigarette packets must be made of carton or soft material. This particular provision is transposed from the EU Tobacco Products Directive (2014/40/EU) and was commenced on 20th May 2016. The legislation permitted non-compliant packages to be sold until 20 May 2017. Therefore, cigarette packs for retail sale since 20 May 2017 must be made from carton or soft material.
The remaining provisions of the Public Health (Standardised Packaging of Tobacco) Act 2015 will commence in September, 2017. From that time all retail packaging for tobacco products manufactured for retail sale must comply with the Act, for example, all packaging will have the same colour and the use of images, logos or text on packs, except health warnings and brand names, will be prohibited.
The Deputy raises the issue of the possible reuse of non-compliant tins by smokers to hide or disguise the standardised packaging and the newly increased sized health warnings. Research has shown that where smokers displayed such behaviours in terms of efforts to hide the warnings using a case, these smokers were just as likely as others to subsequently attempt to quit smoking and report benefits from health warnings. The study goes on the state that " avoidance behaviour might be more reasonably interpreted as a measure of effectiveness: if the warnings were ineffective in communicating the threatening consequences of smoking there would be no reason to avoid them".
Specifically in relation to standardised packaging, a study in Australia found that after the introduction of standardised or plain packaging, there was a slight increase in the use of external cigarette cases for a short period of time before returning to pre-standardised packaging levels.
