Scotland to follow Australia on packaging

Scotland is aiming to become the second country after Australia to impose standardized packaging requirements on tobacco manufacturers, according to Ria Patel, writing in TopNews.

Since Dec. 1, Australia has required that all tobacco products be sold in packaging designed on behalf of the previous Labor government to be as ugly as possible. Packs are hugely dominated by graphic health warnings, are otherwise a standard olive color, have no logos or other design features, and have brand and variant names in a standardized font and position.

The Scottish government has announced that regulations requiring standardized packaging will be in place by 2014–2015.

“To build a generation free from tobacco, it is necessary to restrict the imagery and design that tobacco companies use to pull in another generation to use these addictive and lethal products,” said Public Health Minister Michael Matheson.

Matheson said that, in the meantime, the government would monitor what was happening in Australia in order to gather evidence about the effects of standardized packaging.

This, he said, would help the government initiate a consultation procedure in Scotland.