Ex-smoker.
This would have had no effect on stopping me from smoking at all. I think the hope is that it will stop new smokers, but I doubt it will work for that either.
I didn’t vote, as I don’t think it’s a *good *idea, but I don’t think it’ll do any harm. I don’t remember to buy cigarettes because I see them there; I know I need them because I ran out. I’m much more likely to impulse buy something else when I went to the shop just for cigarettes, than the other way round, by some considerable distance.
Thinking back to when I was a teenager and first started smoking, I can honestly say that fancy packaging and displays in shops had no bearing whatsoever on my decisions. None. There were various reasons why I started smoking. Seeing cigarettes in shops wasn’t one of them.
I just think all the smoking displays look stupid, and always have. As long as it wouldn’t make things worse, I’d be all for it.
Of course, that isn’t an option on the poll.
I think it’s a fairly good idea - I could see it helping in the early stages of quitting, in a kind of lack of temptation way. And I do think it will help cut numbers of people (particularly kids) starting to smoke - if they don’t see any adverts and don’t see the packets themselves, they are less likely to know what to ask for, at the very least.
While I don’t have any evidence that this will work, I suspect tobacco companies do - they spend money on branding and packet design, after all. They wouldn’t do that if it didn’t make a difference to consumers.
The only time the cig display behind the counter had any bearing on me buying cigs was before I actually smoked, and I was getting some to rip open and use the tabbaco in a joint. I didn’t know any names of brands off the top of my head and scouted out the display for names and cheapest price.
When I did start smoking, I ‘crashed’ (bummed in US vernacular, I suppose?) a Marlboro red off a friend. The taste of these cigs versus others I crashed, before I started buying my own, was what made Marlboro red ‘my brand’, not any packaging. I doubt many people start smoking by going into a shop and choosing a brand, they tend to start by getting 1 cig at a time from friends.
I think the only major effect it will have is stopping impulse buying of one brand over another when cheaper prices are advertised on the packs.
Yeah, I quit three or four weeks ago, so I guess still trying to quit, technically, and this would have had zero impact on my smoking. Maybe for people who smoke a few a day, but for a chain smoker to some degree like most self-identified smokers seem to be, I can’t see any merit to this proposal.