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Guest blog: Make cigarettes less attractive to children

44 replies

JessMumsnet · 27/08/2013 11:04

*Every year 207,000 children aged 11-15 start smoking in the UK. [[http://www.mumsnet.com/campaigns/links-to-other-organisations
Evidence]] shows that putting tobacco in standard packs makes cigarettes less attractive. However, proposals to introduce plain packaging for all tobacco products were recently dismissed by the government. *

Elizabeth Bailey, an Ambassador for Cancer Research UK, explains why changing the way cigarettes are marketed could make a difference - and what we can do to give our children the best chance for a healthy future.

Let us have your thoughts on the thread - and if you blog on this issue, don't forget to post your URL. Also, please do share on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.

Hello, I'm Elizabeth: 48 year-old mother of two girls, a local council worker, postgrad student, and breast cancer survivor. I've written this guest post because something has happened over my girls' summer holiday that has frustrated me beyond belief.

That thing is David Cameron's decision to shelve proposals to introduce standardised, (or 'plain') packaging for cigarettes. It's a decision I find incomprehensible.

Under the proposed plans, all tobacco products and cigarettes would be packaged in a standard shape without branding, design or logo and with clear health warnings. The evidence is clear: today's tobacco packaging attracts children, but standardised packs with picture health warnings are a turn off. Removing the glitz and glam packaging that tobacco companies use to lure new consumers would give children one less reason to start smoking.

I dare say you've already read about the campaign in the news, and perhaps picked up on the suggestion that the PM's adviser, Lynton Crosby, who has strong links with the tobacco industry might somehow be involved in the turnaround. Maybe, who knows? What I do know is - that decision was plain wrong.

Let me tell you something else about myself. As a child, I was poisoned by my neighbours. Yes, you read that right. I don't blame them - they didn't mean to do it. As it happens, they were being poisoned themselves, and had been since they were children, too.

I often found myself sitting in rooms with yellow walls; hacking coughs were just part of the background sound. Each day, twice a day, I travelled back and forth in a smoke-filled box called a corporation bus. I was just a child - to me, arsenic and cyanide belonged in the murder mysteries I watched on the TV. I had no idea I was breathing them in every day: no-one told me, and no-one asked me if I was happy with that.

People who didn't grow up in a working-class town in the 1970s like I did maybe don't appreciate the huge improvements in all of our lives brought about by laws on tobacco. Our kids breathe much cleaner air than I did - and that's because people like us bothered to make a stand.

My message to you is this: don't take it for granted. We've moved on since the 70s, but 567 children are still taking up smoking each day in the UK. It's a shocking statistic, but there are things we can do to stop it - and taking glamorous branding off cigarette packs is one of those things.

Please think about it. I can't be certain if my own cancer, or the cancer my dad Eric, a smoker since his teens, died from were linked to smoke. I can be fairly confident the heart disease Dad suffered for the last 25 year of his life was. We just thought it was one of those things middle-aged people got - his own dad, a docker who smoked a respectable, manly brand, he thought, died of a heart attack. That's what happened to a lot of working men.

Why did they get caught up with this rubbish? The answer is simple: they were reeled in as teenagers, with promises of sophistication - only to find themselves unable to escape a highly addictive drug.

And you know what, advertising and branding did make a difference. It mattered what brand you smoked. In the 70s, Navy Cut were considered a bit more gentlemanly than Wills Woodbines; Embassy and Regal were great working man's fags - and of course, Silk Cut were for ladies. Then the 80s came, and people took up Camels, or American brands like Marlboro or, the very height of cool, Lucky Strike. And those days aren't over - nowadays it's all about girls being targeted by brands like Vogue and Glamour.

Some people might think standardised packaging won't work, and that kids starting smoking is entirely down to peer pressure. I don't think so. You just need to look at the video Cancer Research UK did of children discussing brands on cigarette packs. And as mums and dads, you know already know that children respond to branding - those of us who've tried to persuade our children to accept the 'unbranded' version of a particular toy or product know full well how wedded children and teens are to particular brands. Tobacco companies spend lots of money on pack design for a reason - and it's not because they want to make our lives more colourful. It's because, by their own admission, it's one of the only marketing tools left to them - and it works.

Listen up, ladies and gents. I have had a cancer diagnosis. I have sat outside the hospital screening unit in the pouring rain howling with grief because I thought I would not see my two beautiful daughters grow up. You do not want your children to experience that. So you don't want them enticed by clever, insidious marketing techniques to take up a habit that is not only more addictive than class A drugs, but is the biggest preventable cause of cancer.

I don't want cigarettes banned; I don't want to get at smokers, or even people holding down a job in the tobacco industry. I just want my children to have dangerous products packaged appropriately.

One last thing - if you're thinking 'the government won't do this because they need the tax' - that's a pub myth. If it were true, successive governments would not have introduced the controls they already have. In fact, it is estimated that the annual cost to the public purse is a third again above the money brought in by tobacco tax.

That's a big cost to us all. But nothing compared to the health of your children. Signing up to Cancer Research's campaign could really make a difference.

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minipie · 29/08/2013 16:49

longdistance your post reminded me of why I never smoked (bar the usual first one or two tries) - I was heavily influenced by my mum's oft stated opinion that it was 'incredibly stupid' to smoke.

I would not have been influenced by her banning smoking, or threatening to cut off my allowance - in fact these approaches might have encouraged me - but I really didn't want to be 'stupid'. will be taking a similar approach with my own DD (assuming she has a similar personality).