Cancer charity calls for smoking brand ban

Cancer Research UK is urging people to sign a petition to ban branding as it publishes a report revealing how young people and women are targeted by tobacco giants.

It has also launched an online film in which children aged between six and 11 discuss unprompted what attracts them to brightly-coloured cigarette packaging.

Professor Robert West, the charity’s director of tobacco research, said: “The research evidence is compelling that cigarette packaging is attractive to young people.

“Of course we can’t be sure how big an effect preventing tobacco companies from using packaging to attract smokers will have, but smoking is so dangerous that even a very small effect would save hundreds if not thousands of lives each year.

“When the tobacco companies complain about freedom to promote their ‘legal’ products, let’s remember that if those deadly and addictive products were to be invented today there is no country in the world that would permit them to be sold at all.”

Nicki Embleton, spokeswoman for the charity in Yorkshire, said: “This footage provides us with a chilling insight into how powerful branding and marketing can be. Children are drawn to the colourful and slick designs without having a full understanding of how deadly the product is inside the pack.

“Our research shows the value attached to packaging by the tobacco industry. Parents will know first-hand that children are affected by marketing and branding.”

The report also shows that some brands of cigarettes are packaged to appeal specifically to women and others to men. Packs targeting women are often designed to be long and slender, with pale or pastel colours indicating femininity, style, sophistication and attractiveness.

Smoking causes about four in five cases of lung cancer which claims 3,400 lives a year in Yorkshire. Latest figures show 1,900 women in the region are diagnosed each year with the condition, up more than 70 per cent in the last 25 years. About 2,300 men develop the illness although rates are falling.

Anyone who would like to sign the petition can go to www.theanswerisplain.org.