No sweet flavor for NSW smokers

In South East part of Australia will be prohibited sweet and fruit tastes for cigs as this flavors are most attractive for teenagers.

This news comes from New South Wales (abbreviated as NSW) - Australia’s most populous state.

NSW government is looking for sooner banning of these cigs as number of smoking teens grows and these smoking tastes can serve as stimulator factor for that.

“These confectionery cigarettes we believe are aimed at targeting young people,” NSW Assistant Health Minister Verity Firth said to reporters in Sydney.

“They are brightly-colored and they taste like fruit and confectionery and as we all know smoking is still the major cause of cancer-related death in NSW.”

This addiction constitutes big trouble for NSW, as according to News Ltd 145,000 school children aged between 12 and 17 smoked at least once a week.

“As I think we all know teenagers still do manage to get cigarettes and we just don’t want products that are attractive to teenagers in a way that they are not necessarily attractive to other people,” she said.

“We definitely don’t want big tobacco companies to be using this as a tricky marketing way to get out of their obligations under existing law in terms of graphic packaging.

“So yes this about saying to big tobacco companies ’if you want to sell this product in NSW you are not welcome’.”

Flavored cigarettes are produced by Hong Kong and Netherlands. In Austria these tobacco products are distributed by Trojan Trading Company. All packets have warnings about effects of smoking, but they are still lighted up. Also, studies show what smoking prevails mostly among girls.

The NSW Australian Medical Association (AMA) hopes that government will introduce ban on import of cigarettes too.

“Marketing cigarettes as a form of confectionery will not alter the effects of smoking,” Dr Keegan said. “There are strong similarities to the sweet alcoholic drinks aimed at the youth market.”

“The packaging and flavors of these cigarettes using pastel colors and fruit flavors appear to target young women in particular,” said AMA (NSW) president Andrew Keegan. “Death from lung cancer is the second most common cause of cancer death among women.”