Comments on: Let’s do a controlled test of plain packaging

By: Seán

Seán — Wed, 09 May 2012 20:00:46 +0000

Sort of like how the teacher unions wanted National Standards to be trialled….

By: Steve (North Shore)

Steve (North Shore) — Wed, 09 May 2012 08:14:13 +0000

Keep branding, keep advertising, because it earns TAX dollars. The less people smoke, the more I pay in TAX.
And yes I’ve paid my share by smoking for more than 40 years. I stopped for a reason.
Now you may think otherwise but I say TAX to the hilt, it will not stop the smokers. Selfish? dam right I am

By: Luc Hansen

Luc Hansen — Wed, 09 May 2012 03:10:51 +0000

The Government should be pro-science and agree to trial it.

Trials are good, huh?

Except for National Standards.

By: Lance

Lance — Wed, 09 May 2012 00:31:57 +0000

I agree that secondhand smoke should not be inflicted on anyone other than the smoker but beyond that the legislation is ridiculous.
The bastards will come after alcohol next with fucked up warnings and plain packaging.

By: slijmbal

slijmbal — Tue, 08 May 2012 23:58:00 +0000

@WO

“We already have a plain packaging test in place, for at least 20 years in supermarkets with their store brands.

It is so successful that supermarkets now prefer to run store brand or plain packaging. It cuts costs on packaging, minimises advertising spend and most importantly increases profit. ”

The plain packaging is actually a brand in its own right deliberately so (they even call it a brand) and is why supermarket will have 2 types of house brands – the budget and signature brands in progressive’s case for instance. They spend a reasonable amount of advertising spending on the house brands and a surprising amount of branded spend is paid for by the vendors and not the supermarket – so it doesn’t make that much difference to advertising costs. They forego revenues by putting best selling house branded products in places that they might otherwise get paid for by the vendors.

The packaging pretty much costs the same whether plain or not as do many other costs and the main source of increased profit is they screw the vendor down as they buy the basic product by volume purchases.

So not comparable as is actually a branded sale that happens to have plain packaging.

By: Crampton

Crampton — Tue, 08 May 2012 23:40:53 +0000

I do not favour plain packaging. But if we’re stuck with it because MMP means National has to accommodate Tariana Turia’s religious obsession with tobacco, we could at least set it up such that we learn something about whether it does anything.

By: Andrei

Andrei — Tue, 08 May 2012 23:35:50 +0000

The biggest profiteers from tobacco is the Government itself – over a billion dollars per year.

The reason why they can get away with this is that middle class voters don’t as a rule smoke, while the poor do.

And being puritanical calvanists (though for the most part now secular) it tickles their fancy to deny the poor their pleasures

While the Government cynically fills it coffers.

By: RRM

RRM — Tue, 08 May 2012 23:35:12 +0000

The Government should be pro-science and agree to trial it.

No, the Govt should go further the other way, and refuse to enforce plain packaging.

If cigarettes need all these rules around them, then by rights my bottle of hawkes Bay Cab Merlot at home in the cupboard should have plain labelling with pictures of car crash victims and fetal alcohol syndrome babies all over it. I wonder how many MPs would be in favour of that…?

By: Scott Chris

Scott Chris — Tue, 08 May 2012 23:28:26 +0000

Yes either ban tobacco or leave it alone.

I disagree. Some substances are too powerful to be ignored and too valuable to be banned. (ignoring for the moment issues of personal freedom)

A plain packaging trial is an excellent idea except that manufacturing plain packaging specifically for our market may be problematic, especially for the niche brands.

By: gazzmaniac

gazzmaniac — Tue, 08 May 2012 23:26:34 +0000

I think that the country should do a scientific study on all lawyers, and that is to get rid of them entirely for three years and see if everyone survives without them. I think only lawyers would object to this, but there’s only one way to prove that hypothesis.

You could probably add politicians to the study too.

By: Graeme Edgeler

Graeme Edgeler — Tue, 08 May 2012 23:17:01 +0000

The New Zealand Law Society has recently proposed the adoption of new rules around mandatory continuing legal education.

I suggested they should impose them on a random selection of lawyers for two or three years, and see if anyone can tell the difference at the end (will such lawyers have fewer upheld complaints of incompetence, for example?)

By: KiwiGreg

KiwiGreg — Tue, 08 May 2012 23:13:54 +0000

Yes either ban tobacco or leave it alone.

By: kowtow

kowtow — Tue, 08 May 2012 23:08:15 +0000

This is not an excellent idea.

If the Apartheid Party wants a smoke free Aotearoa then let’s have legislation that Maori Party voters can’t buy ciggies.

National needs to grow a pair.

By: Whaleoil

Whaleoil — Tue, 08 May 2012 23:08:09 +0000

We already have a plain packaging test in place, for at least 20 years in supermarkets with their store brands.

It is so successful that supermarkets now prefer to run store brand or plain packaging. It cuts costs on packaging, minimises advertising spend and most importantly increases profit.

The cigarette companies should be embracing plain packaging, with great gusto, the surest way to kill off the proposal would be for them to welcome it.