Plain packs push more smokers to quit attempts

A comprehensive evaluation of Australia’s standardized tobacco packaging legislation is said to have found that the proportion of smokers who attempted to quit increased from about 20 percent before the packaging was imposed to nearly 27 percent afterwards, according to an Aap Newsfeed story relayed by the TMA.

Standardized packaging was found to be associated with more persistent thoughts of quitting and quit attempts, while the larger health warnings were found to increase adult smokers’ motivation to quit.

And the combination of standardized packaging and prominent health warnings was said to have made cigarettes less appealing among teenagers.

The evaluation, which was carried out by the Cancer Council Victoria (CCV), involved interviews with more than 5,000 Australian adult smokers before and after the standard packaging legislation was introduced in December 2012. And it involved also a separate survey of 6,000 high school students.

The results of the evaluation were presented to the World Conference on Tobacco or Health, currently being staged in Abu Dhabi.

CCV CEO Todd Harper was quoted as saying that the evaluation would confirm the tobacco industry’s worst fears about the effectiveness of standardized packaging. “What we can expect now is the tobacco industry will increase their efforts globally to try and persuade government to try and not introduce plain packaging,” he said.