Tobacco companies would be forced to use plain, logo-free packaging on their cigarettes in a bid to make them less attractive to smokers under legislation introduced yesterday by Australia’s government, which dubbed the move a world-first.
The rules, which would take effect on July 1, 2012, would ban tobacco companies from including logos, promotional text or colorful images on cigarette packages. Graphic health warnings would be prominently displayed instead, with the brand name relegated to tiny, generic font at the bottom.
“The new branding for cigarettes will be the most hard-line regime in the world and cigarette companies will hate it,” Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said.
The government also announced it would increase the cigarette tax by 25 percent, driving up the price of a pack of 30 cigarettes by about A$2.16 (US$2). The tax was to go into effect yesterday.
Tobacco companies immediately blasted the packaging crackdown, and vowed to fight it in court.
“Introducing plain packaging just takes away the ability of a consumer to identify our brand from another brand and that’s of value to us,” Imperial Tobacco Australia spokeswoman Cathie Keogh told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio, adding that the company plans to take legal action.
Retailers said the tax hike would hurt their businesses and bolster the cigarette black market.
“It’s a lazy policy response being pushed by some health advocates,” Mick Daly, National Chairman of Australian supermarket chain IGA, said in a statement. “That amounts to a direct attack on approximately 16 percent of Australians who have made legal and legitimate lifestyle choices.”
Tim Wilson, director of intellectual property and free trade at Australia’s Institute of Public Affairs, said taxpayers could end up paying around A$3 billion a year in compensation to tobacco companies.
“Under Australia’s Constitution, if the government basically takes someone’s property rights including intellectual property such as trademarks, or devalues them to a significant extent, they have to provide compensation,” Wilson said. “I’d be shocked if they didn’t [pursue compensation], because if it happens here, it’ll happen all over the world.”
Opposition leader Tony Abbott dismissed the tax hike as a cash grab, and said he wanted evidence that changing the packaging would reduce smoking.
“I’m not in the business of defending smoking, I want to make that absolutely clear. But I also want to make absolutely clear that this is not a health policy — this is a tax grab,” Abbott said.
Australia has banned tobacco ads from print, television and radio for years. The new proposal would also restrict Internet advertising.
MORE VISITORS: The Tourism Administration said that it is seeing positive prospects in its efforts to expand the tourism market in North America and Europe Taiwan has been ranked as the cheapest place in the world to travel to this year, based on a list recommended by NerdWallet. The San Francisco-based personal finance company said that Taiwan topped the list of 16 nations it chose for budget travelers because US tourists do not need visas and travelers can easily have a good meal for less than US$10. A bus ride in Taipei costs just under US$0.50, while subway rides start at US$0.60, the firm said, adding that public transportation in Taiwan is easy to navigate. The firm also called Taiwan a “food lover’s paradise,” citing inexpensive breakfast stalls
US PUBLICATION: The results indicated a change in attitude after a 2023 survey showed 55 percent supported full-scale war to achieve unification, the report said More than half of Chinese were against the use of force to unify with Taiwan under any circumstances, a survey conducted by the Atlanta, Georgia-based Carter Center and Emory University found. The survey results, which were released on Wednesday in a report titled “Sovereignty, Security, & US-China Relations: Chinese Public Opinion,” showed that 55.1 percent of respondents agreed or somewhat agreed that “the Taiwan problem should not be resolved using force under any circumstances,” while 24.5 percent “strongly” or “somewhat” disagreed with the statement. The results indicated a change in attitude after a survey published in “Assessing Public Support for (Non)Peaceful Unification
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
Four former Hong Kong opposition lawmakers jailed in the territory’s largest national security case were released yesterday after more than four years in prison, the first among dozens convicted last year to regain their freedom. Former legislators Claudia Mo (毛孟靜), Jeremy Tam (譚文豪), Kwok Ka-ki (郭家麒) and Gary Fan (范國威) were part of a group of 47 public figures — including some of Hong Kong’s best-known democracy advocates — who were charged with subversion in 2021 for holding an informal primary election. The case fell under a National Security Law imposed on the territory by Beijng, and drew international condemnation and warnings
RSS