When it comes to choosing which cigarette to smoke, it seems the prettier the package, the less lethal the product appears to those buying it.
A study published in the Journal of Public Health found cigarette packages in lighter colours, bearing words like “smooth” and “filter,” have consumers convinced the product has fewer health risks.
“We probably shouldn’t have packaging that confuses people about whether some brands are less harmful than others. That’s essentially a lethal misperception,” said the study’s lead author David Hammond, a professor of health studies at the University of Waterloo.
The study—one in a series of papers on cigarette packaging—had more than 600 adults, smokers and non-smokers, rate a variety of fictitious cigarette packages.
Participants were asked to compare packages in pairs and say which they believed would taste smoother, deliver more tar and carry lower health risks.
Packages labelled “smooth” were believed to be less hazardous than the one labelled “regular,” by 80% of respondents.
A lighter blue box was also thought to carry a lower health risk than a darker one, while about 75% of respondents found a box with the picture of a charcoal filter likely to be less risky than one without the illustration.
With advertising restricted and words like light, mild and low-tar outlawed from use, the calculated design of a cigarette package is incredibly important to tobacco companies, said Hammond.
“The pack is now the most important marketing tool in Canada,” he said.
The researchers are calling for an expansion of the list of words banned from cigarette packaging and they are also pushing for the implementation of plain standardized packaging for all brands.
Plain packaging involves removing any brand imagery from a box so all packs look identical save for the brand name which would appear in a mandated size, font and position. The WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control already states that countries should consider plain packaging.
Health Canada, however, is not considering the concept at the moment, said spokeswoman Christelle Legault.
As public health officials deliberate, tobacco industries say their phrasing is only to describe a cigarette’s taste. But this is debatable, Hammond said.
“Consumers are using it as indicators of risk,” he said. “That helps reduce their guilt and [they] continue smoking.”
While cigarette brands compete against one another with references to filters or statistics, Hammond said no brand trumps another with lower health risks.
Roberta Ferrence, executive director of the Ontario Tobacco Research Unit, said the study highlighted how existing regulations on packaging were not having the impact they were supposed to as people still consider some cigarettes less risky than others.
“It’s misleading advertising, there are no healthier cigarettes,” she said, adding that certain phrasing and colouring on a package could encourage people to take up smoking.
