Vaping trumps plain packaging in getting young people to quit smoking
Australia’s plain packaging scheme shows attitudes on the policy are quite clear. The cigarette packs with no labelling are ugly and turn young people off smoking.
But somehow, despite that fact, rates of young people smoking have gone up.
Before plain packaging was introduced in late 2012, the smoking rates among 12 to 24-year-olds were going down from 16% to 12%, according to the Cancer Institute of New South Wales.
However, once plain cigarette packs hit the shelves in 2013, smoking rates for the same age group went back up to 16%. Does that mean that not doing anything would have actually caused fewer people to smoke?
Another study on teen smoking in Victoria revealed the same. Before plain packaging was introduced, the youth smoking rate in 2001 was at 16.1%. It fell to 14.7% once plain packaging came into effect, but rose to 15.4% in 2013.
It seems the legislation nudged young Aussies to smoke more, perhaps upsetting the downward trend that was already happening.
While the survey results may have shown that plain packaged cigarettes were less appealing to young people, it didn’t dissuade them from actually smoking.
Such evidence may require the South African government to recognise that something else must be done.
The market has created an alternative in electronic cigarettes, surely not all produced by Big Tobacco.
Across South Africa, thousands of vape shops are popping up around urban centres, and there’s reason to think these devices could be more successful than legislation in getting smokers to quit.
A 2014 article in the journal Therapeutic Advances in Drug Safety points to e-cigarettes as a useful combatant in the fight against smoking.
“Evidence indicates that electronic cigarettes are by far a less harmful alternative to smoking, and significant health benefits are expected in smokers who switch from tobacco to electronic cigarettes,” claim the authors.
“There is no tobacco and no combustion involved in EC use. Therefore, regular vapers may avoid several harmful toxic chemicals that are typically present in the smoke of tobacco cigarettes.”
That being said, governments and public health groups aren’t yet keen on e-cigarettes. The American FDA has cracked down on vaping shops.
On Thursday, the US Surgeon-General called e-cigarettes a “major public health concern”. But not all public health officials are ready to slam e-cigarettes.
In April last year, the Royal College of Physicians adopted this message as a health recommendation.
“This is the first genuinely new way of helping people stop smoking that has come along in decades,” said John Britton, director of the UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies at the University of Nottingham.
With such a body of evidence, it’s time the South African government heeds the warnings from both Australia and the UK. Plain packaging won’t reduce smoking, no matter how much the government tries. But market alternatives could achieve this without government intervention.
Yaël Ossowski is a Canadian journalist and senior development officer at Students For Liberty.