Last evening the conversation moved to the new legislation enforcing ‘plain’ cigarette packaging in Australia.
Plain packaging? How do retailers and customers distinguish the different brands we thought?
Well then, a little research this morning established that the boxes are anything but plain, they have graphic pictures and warnings on them (too shocking in my opinion to present to you on the main page here, but I’ve included a pic on the next page.)
It appears that the brand name is relegated to the lower ½ inch or so on the front of the pack.
A link to a picture of an actual pack would be much appreciated.
What does the 25 designate in the lower right corner? Quantity?
Boadicea's Chariot 
I suppose it does. I’ve seen Australian cigarette packages. Gruesome, really.
I think this is overkill (so to speak). In many supermarkets here buyers have to ask for their fags at the check-out. I’ve noticed that some addicts find that embarrassing. Isn’t that enough?
As a confirmed addict I couldn’t give a rat’s arse what any other shopper thinks. However anyone with any sense would merely decant them into a decent cigarette case or box at home.
I’d rather die of lung cancer than dripping with AIDS thank you very much!! Or drooling from every orifice in a wheelchair in the corner no longer knowing the day of the week or my own name!
Presumptuous nonsense well outside the remit of any government. If they are so bloody concerned why don’t they ban the product, make them illegal and forfeit the tax?
Not on your Nellie!
I have heard that certain young smokers compete to produce packages with the most gruesome pictures.I have little doubt that they will become collectors’ items.
I have never been a smoker and do not like the habit, but I defend smokers’ rights as long as they show some consideration.
25 = Quantity. They do things differently in Australia.
Watch for the drop in sales and tax take. Then notice that the number of smokers doesn’t seem to have dropped … welcome to counterfeiters’ paradise.
By the way, those two statements on the packs pictured are egregious lies. Smoking does not cause mouth cancer, nor does it cause blindness. Until 10 days ago, I was a smoker. I don’t have mouth cancer, nor am I blind.
Smoking does not cause lung cancer – I don’t have that either, nor do most other smokers.
Note that I am not advocating the smoking of tobacco. Nor do I contest the clinical evidence that demonstrates the vastly increased risk of contracting lung cancer if you smoke tobacco – but to say that smoking causes lung cancer is inaccurate.
Hello Soutie: I quit smoking when ciggies reached $6.00 per carton (200) that was 1981, now they are $6.00 per pack (20 here). I don’t care what labels they put on them, not on my shopping list. However using the same logic those 1500 calorie Big Macs should probably be packaged in cartons showing some of the more morbidly obese members of society and liquor bottles in cartons picturing skid row denizens lying in doorways etc.
Bravo: Someone who should know told me that up to 50% of the American cigarettes sold in China are counterfeit along with 90% of the CD’s and DVD’s.
You’re playing in my garden now, LW 🙂 Think about this: The most popular imported cigarette brand in China is State Express 555 with a market of around forty billion sticks, or more. Four billion are legitimate…
And it’s not just Fags and CDs. White goods, oils and lubricants, medicinal drugs , fashion wear – automotive and aircraft parts… think on those last two…
Bravo, I’ll sail to Blighty in future. Thanks. 🙂
Agreed janus, that is terrifying!
Bravo is there nothing to stop them? Who are the worst offending countries?
A couple of times I have been given substitute generic drugs for those I have taken for decades, blood pressure stuff, they obviously weren’t doing the job. and were probably knockoffs. Had to insist on the real thing. Always thought they were probably made of chalk with no active ingredients!
One thing killing the odd individual but aircraft parts?
Worst offenders: China, Belarus (Russian money), Indonesia, Paraguay. Worst in Europe, `Romania – not as a manufacturer, but a conduit into Western Europe. Think about the fact that a brand which costs 80 euro cents in Kiev sells for 7.50 in UK. If you counterfeit that brand, the cost of a pack is 30 euro cents.
Legitimate tobacco companies spend a lot of money on anti-counterfeit devices on their packs that make it easy for Customs and Excise inspectors to identify the counterfeits. Make the packs plain…
PS. Yes, aircraft parts…
I think this packaging is quite disgusting, but the hypocrisy is even more so.
I am utterly fed up with governments telling us how we should live, or even how we should die.
Either make smoking, drinking, and etc., illegal or stop interfering.
Bravo, interesting that the Chinese are both the worst offenders and the worst victims. Re your earlier mention of 90% of State Express 555 imports being knockoffs! Why do the chinese govt allow it when it is deleterious to their trade? I can see that their fake exports undermine the West, but imports?
I really do fail to understand why these rogue countries are allowed to jeopardise the rest of the world’s trade. Why will the others take no serious action in concert to embargo their goods?
We seem to be able to do it to Iran with the marked exception of Russia and China. I have always failed to understand our inability or failure of political will to actually do anything about these two.
It irritates me beyond belief when nearly everything one wants to buy is made in china, sick to bloody death of it here in the USA. Note it is nowhere near as bad in the UK as you can generally still buy German if you are prepared to pay for it but not here. We have just had to replace our well pumping system and had to seek high and low to get one still made in the USA. Chink crap lasts about 6 months and our last one was original to the house, 1976! We finally found one made in Seneca NY for x4 the price but actually made of cast metal not the plastic crap purveyed by the chinks.
Nothing good ever came out of Romania, they ought to use it for bomb practice. And nothing good ever went into Paraguay either, re 1945!
Christina – top to bottom corruption. Same in Romania – and the other former communist states now in the EU and on the EU’s eastern borders…just look at the map of Romania, especially the N and NW ‘green’border. Belarus and the Kalinin enclave are mafiocracies. In addition, in China, the State tobacco monopoly is extremely inefficient and cannot service its market properly. The illicit traders are much more flexible and nimble in the market. Their lack of overheads helps. I recall an occasion when I was still head of security for an international tobacco company in China. We rolled out a new pack for one brand. Two years for us to get it into the market… the counterfeits were on the streets within six weeks!
A little anecdote. On the ‘green’ border in Romania, the locals make their deliveries by unguided donkey – load the beast up, give it a slap, and it walks its route by itself 🙂
Love it, probably the donkey is a blood relative!!!!
Thanks for the info.
The Chinese are several steps ahead of the rest of the world. Here in Zimbabwe there is an indigenisation program that requires all businesses of any remotely significant value to be 51% owned by an indigenous Zimbabwean, i.e a black. So, 3rd or 4th generation whites are not considered indigenous. However all Chinese are considered indigenous, even if they have never actually been to this country. They can do what they like. One has to admire them. Teach your children and grandchildren Mandarin Chinese. It is the language of the future.
One has only been able to get cigarettes at a separate counter for a couple of years now – usually one attached to the ‘fast check-out’. About a year ago all cigarettes had to be hidden away – so the poor staff have had to search through various drawers until they can find what they want – to label the drawers was deemed to be advertising!
A couple of months ago – the government decided to allow only 50 cigarettes to be brought into the country from overseas – duty-paid or unpaid. This latest has become law after a fairly long legal battle with the tobacco manufacturers.
What really got to me was the utter hypocrisy of the Minister spouting on about ‘protecting people. If the Oz government really wanted to stop people smoking they’d simply ban the sale of tobacco products – but they derive a huge income from them.
Hmmm, what were we saying? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/9717043/Thousands-of-fake-pants-seized-by-border-agents.html
Even as someone who hates ciggies and has never smoked, what you do with your health is your affair, just don’t blow it over me.
Besides if everyone stopped my tax would soar, so keep puffing friends.
Blimey who would want fake Paki knickers?
I have to admit that seeing fags cost x 3 in the UK compared with the price I pay on our local Indian reservation I always ‘take’ with me sufficient to last the trip, every suitcase is lined with packs of 200!
The last place in the world to buy fags is the duty free in Vancouver, they are twice the price I pay regularly.
Canada is like Australia have their head up their arse whistling Dixie to their prostrate! (Likewise the booze prices.) I’ve never had any confiscated, all they ever took was a pound of homemade raspberry jam!!!
Obviously a killer!
Thank God for the Indians, their Sovereign Territory laws and no Federal Tax! Whooppee.
I knew I never fancied Australia, thank God I never have to go there, may their lungs rot in peace!
About time people there grew their own tobacco, the climate is more than suitable.
Christina, they do. While I was there in 2004, there were a lot of problems with Vietnamese ‘entrepreneurs’ making the tobacco farmers offers they couldn’t refuse. No idea what the situation is now.
PS. I’m still annoyed about 2004. I couldn’t get to Australia for the RWC in 2003 – I was there the week after grrrr! Then I was seconded to Oz for the whole of 2004, bugrit!
Funny bravo, re your visit, always sod’s law isn’t it? Grim spending a year there I hope they made it worth your while fiscally! All that beer and those dreadful tin roofs!
As you know I hate and detest travelling but just love to hear stories about all these places, especially the loony joints you end up in. Then I can shudder and thank God that I have never got to go there also splendidly reinforces my original opinion that I would have hated it anyway and I have saved the effort and expense of finding out for myself! (Thus equalling more plants and bigger greenhouses.)
Actually the fag situation has become so ludicrous one can hardly blame anyone for buying knockoffs and smuggled goods as long as they are smokeable. Likewise booze. Governments have only themselves to blame, last spring in the UK fags were £7.00 per pack, ridiculous. Most people I know buy illegal smuggled in from France, even respectable well heeled people do it now I have noticed, you can only push people so far. I’m quite sure the threshold of diminishing returns has been well overtopped.
But, and it’s a big but, knockoff Paki knickers is quite a different matter. Quite gives one the squirms to think about it. Purple, Calvin Kline knickers for men made by ragheads! Yukk! any normal woman would run screaming! I have to admit that an awful lot of Welshmen don’t wear knickers at all! Especially the farming fraternity. One tried not to comment. But seemingly that is to be preferred to purple faggot knockoff knickers.
One has to get this all in proportion, fags, booze and gas are all the staff of life, knickers of any variety ain’t!
I wish I could show you some of the videos of illegal cigarette factories. You would never buy illicit products again. Vermin droppings, fertiliser, kitchen waste, household chemicals, solid and liquid excreta… you never know what you might be burning under your nose. Having been in the trade, at least I knew exactly what was in the legitimate stuff I used to smoke up until ten days ago.
Smuggled genuine product is not quite as bad, but since it spends time outside the legitimate supply chain, you cannot control the conditions under which it is stored and transported. Tobacco beetle is a serious problem, as is mould and even lichens. Plus, I have seen consignments of smuggled genuine product up to three years old… So, best to buy from a reputable outlet 🙂
Fortunately I do! I always check the State seals on individual packs. The Indians make their own these days and are subject to the Health and Safety, they are additive free and much better than commercial brands. I always avoid the knockoffs, have tasted a few over the years in Wales and they are quite disgusting, I am not surprised at all at your list of horrors they taste like it. I once made a girlfriend take back to the dealer some Golden Virginia, it didn’t even bear the nearest resemblance to tobacco, she normally had smuggled from him. I asked her years later and she said after returning the product he never tried to palm it off on her again and she had good tasting ‘real’ smuggled! There really is a huge industry in it in West Wales.
I’m not surprised you gave up at £7.00/packet!
Now we have not only counterfeit parts, but counterfeit pilots, too.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/9729303/Pakistan-airline-sacks-pilots-over-fake-qualifications.html
For the life of me I cannot understand why the West has not decided to use Pakistan for nuclear testing!
With all immigrants being repatriated first!
Christina – Much as I agree with it I do not think that comment would go down well on The Grauniad.
OZ
Perhaps they might just be marginally miffed! God rot them.
Maybe they’ll get theirs on Dec 21st, the PC Grauniadstas and the Pakis both! Bugger, I’d have to set foot in a church, it could be nothing less than divine intervention!