Fancy colours and lettering on cigarette packs should become a thing of the past to discourage smoking, local concern groups said yesterday to promote today's World No Tobacco Day.
The Hong Kong Council on Smoking and Health, along with University of Hong Kong academics and public experts, joined forces yesterday to call for plain packaging 'in order to prohibit tobacco companies from promoting sales through fancy designs on cigarette packs'. World No Tobacco Day is promoted by the World Health Organisation.
Tobacco advertising is illegal in Hong Kong. At least half of every cigarette pack's front and back side must be used for a pictorial health warning, but the tobacco firms can design the rest of the box.
Plain packaging would prevent tobacco brands from displaying trademarks, graphics and logos, and require at least 75 per cent of the box to be used for a shocking pictorial health warning. The hotline for a service to help kick the habit would be prominently displayed, font styles and sizes for all brands would be identical, and the background would be the same, drab colour: Australia chose a dull, unappealing green.
So far, Australia is the only country to have adopted plain packaging, which it will enforce starting in December. The tobacco industry has launched several legal actions against the measure.
Hong Kong could expect the same legal challenges if it adopted a similar law, said Lisa Lau Man-man, chairman of the non-profit Council on Smoking and Health. Industry retaliation would not be low-key, she said, but this only proved that it recognised the threat of plain packaging to its business.