Cigarette Companies' New Low: Fruity Flavored Cigarettes Targeting Kids in South America
Addiction Economy Thought for Today - Wow. Cigarette companies reach a new low. Why on earth can't we stop them?
At the same time as the mealy mouthed bllx they are giving us about saving smokers with vapes and saying how shocked they are about child friendly packaging in the UK Philip Morris and BAT are making CIGARETTES in fruity flavours with flashy packaging and funky names to sell in South America where sales are booming, particularly among children and lobbying and corruption is stopping regulation everywhere.
These 'click cigarettes', which I think are like the heated tobacco products you can buy here, come with cigarette branding - Marlborough Summer Zest, Kent Neo Tropic and Pall Mall Sunrise Mix with flavours of berries, melon and a RedBull flavour rip off Lucky Strike Charged. Unbelievable, how do they live with themselves.
Thanks to Mira Osinibi for the heads up.
Also, yesterday was the second reading of the Tobacco and Vapes Bill in parliament which didn't feature much on Vapes with it being such a landmark piece of regulation on cigs.
A few things struck us:
* Greater Manchester Testing and Research on Emergent NewDrugs Survey found that 76% of young people vaped in the last year - that's more like the figure we are seeing and hearing about. Haven't found the study yet to see how their methodology differs from ASH/Smoking Toolkit Study.
* Nice to see Streeting and others in response to the Nanny State stuff from the Tories and more surprisingly Lib Dems say that 'Addiction is not freedom, apart from that first cigarette smoking is never a choice'. We would argue, certainly with vapes, that the first one isn't a choice either, but the result of an orchestrated addictive environment which means free choice is already gone.
* Refillable vapes are being used for other substances, notably Spice, with young people badly affected.
* Police can't confiscate vapes from kids even tho they are illegal, though they can cigarettes. Moves to make that possible mooted.
* No-one mentioned our idea of phasing out vapes with cigarettes - which will give the real signal that this is what they are for, and stop vapes becoming an 'acceptable' addiction like alcohol and cigs were.
Great expose here in The Examination and article in BMJ
https://lnkd.in/e9eG3uwu