Another teen horror story

Another day another study suggesting that children are encouraged to smoke by brightly coloured packaging.

In the latest study, funded by Cancer Research UK:

Researchers at the University of Stirling examined the reactions of 1025 UK children aged 11-16 who had never tried smoking. They were given three different types of cigarette packs: regular, novelty and standardised packs.

Novelty packs were those with an unusual shape, colour or system of opening, and included a slim ‘perfume’ type pack and a pack in the shape of a giant lighter. Standardised packs were brown packs of a uniform shape with all branding removed apart from a brand name.

Children preferred the colourful and novelty packs – such as Silk Cut Superslim’s elegant and feminine slim pack shape, Marlborough Bright Leaf’s Zippo style flip-top opening, and Pall Mall’s bright pink pack.

According to CRUK the study "reveals for the first time (my emphasis) that glitzy and glamorous cigarette packaging makes children susceptible to smoking - tempting them in to a habit that kills half of all long term users".

For the first time?

We've heard little else for the last 18 months. Tobacco control campaigners in Australia, Ireland and the UK have produced a succession of reports alleging exactly the same thing, over and over again.

It doesn't justify legislation, of course, because these 'studies' aren't based on real-life scenarios.

Inevitably, if you show a child different types of cigarette packs - regular, 'novelty' and 'standardised' (the latter featuring graphic images of hideous and very rare diseases) - they will prefer the regular or 'novelty' pack. Who wouldn't?

It's a big leap, though, to suggest they're going to start smoking as a result of seeing those packs, or that they won't smoke if 'plain' (aka grotesque) packs are introduced.

After all, what children say and how they actually behave are two very different things.

Meanwhile, and for the first time, the outcome of a study funded by a tobacco control organisation and conducted by tobacco control campaigners is based on the subjective opinions of children including pre-teens.

Thankfully the UK Government hasn't fallen for this 'confidence trick'. Not yet, anyway.

And given the scant coverage in today's national media (to the best of my knowledge only the Mirror has reported it), perhaps journalists are beginning to see through this rubbish as well.

PS. The national media may have given the study a body swerve but the Press Association report has been well covered by local newspapers online.

To date we have been alerted to over 80 online reports with the headline Teens 'tempted' by novelty packs.

The good news is, they all include a quote from Forest.