World No Tobacco Day 2016: Plain-packaging to protect our youth: “Progress made, challenges ahead”

The European Respiratory Society hosted a World No Tobacco Day event Plain-packaging to protect our youth: “Progress made, challenges ahead” in collaboration with the European Network for Smoking Prevention (ENSP) to highlight the research-backed benefits of plain packaging on tobacco products and to celebrate the countries who have led the way – hoping to encourage remaining countries to follow their lead.

The event took place at the European Parliament in Brussels on 31 May, 2016 and supports the theme announced by the World Health Organisation (WHO) for this year’s World No Tobacco Day campaign, which is: “Get ready for plain-packaging”. It is also timely alongside the introduction of plain packaging on tobacco products in the U.K, Ireland and France.

World No Tobacco Day 31 May 2016: Get ready for plain packaging

Tobacco packaging is a mobile billboard promoting consumption of tobacco products. If you strip back the decoration, gloss and misleading elements of tobacco packaging, you are left with little more than a box of deadly, addictive products that kill approximately 6 million people a year and harm the health of many more. Plain packaging helps reveal the grim reality of tobacco products.
For World No Tobacco Day on 31 May 2016, WHO and the Secretariat of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control are calling on countries to get ready for plain (also called standardized) packaging of tobacco products. 

The aims of plain packaging are to:

• reduce the attractiveness of tobacco products;
• eliminate the effect of tobacco packaging as a form of advertising and promotion;
• eliminate package design techniques that may suggest that some products are less harmful than others; and
• increase the noticeability and effectiveness of health warnings.

The results of experimental studies, surveys and focus-group studies show that plain packaging achieves its objectives. WHO recommends that plain packaging be used as part of a comprehensive approach to tobacco control, which also includes comprehensive bans on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship and other tobacco packaging and labelling measures, such as health warnings.

World No Tobacco Day 2016: WHO study Group on tobacco Product regulation (tobreg): banning menthol in tobacco products

Menthol is a flavouring agent commonly used in cigarettes and other tobacco products. Menthol cigarettes are used more frequently by younger smokers, women and ethnic minorities, and their use facilitates both initiation and continued smoking, leading to addiction. These issues have raised global concern. 

To address this public health issue, the WHO Study Group on Tobacco Product Regulation (TobReg) has prepared this advisory note on menthol, which synthesizes recent studies on the prevalence and health effects of menthol in tobacco products. It provides evidence-based conclusions and recommendations for policy-makers and regulators, including a ban on menthol (and its analogues, derivatives and precursors) in cigarettes.

Full text:

http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/205928/1/9789241510332_eng.pdf?ua=1