New Zealand: Call for RYO Graphic Warnings

A recent study by the University of Otago that was published in the Drug and Alcohol Review recommended that the New Zealand government require that graphic (pictorial) health warnings be placed on packages of roll-your-own tobacco, reports the Otago Times Daily.

Users of roll-your-own tobacco comprise 40 percent of all adult smokers in New Zealand, according to the study. The study’s lead researcher, Mei-Ling Blank, a research fellow in the Otago Department of Preventive and Social Medicine, noted that the nation had an unusually high percentage of roll-your-own smokers compared with many other countries, who also tended to believe their cigarettes were superior and that some health warnings did not fully apply to them.

Blank noted that in New Zealand, many more additives were included in roll-your-own tobacco than in tobacco in machine-made cigarettes, a fact that was opposite what the study’s participants presupposed. Blank said the report suggested that “new, harder-hitting, user-specific themes on tobacco pouches” should be applied.