Package Color Update
More Sharing Services Fight over cigarettes gets colorful
The war over cigarettes has a new battleground– colored packaging. Anti-smoking groups say using colors like gold and silver to show the difference between cigarette packages is deceiving. But, smokers say it would be deceiving to take those colors away. Fox 25’s Kisha Henry shows us the argument.
“It’s that kind of myth that: ‘This is healthier! This is safer! It’s gold, it’s silver!’ As if it’s not that regular, old cigarette,” says Nicki Largent, a member of the Oklahoma County Tobacco Use Prevention Coalition. She says Big Tobacco Companies are cheating the law by using colored packaging. “We just want them to tell the truth about what they’re selling,” she says.
In 2010, a ban was placed on cigarette companies– making them remove words like “light,” “mild,” or “ultra light” from their packaging. The tobacco companies said these cigarettes were healthier for you because they had a different type of ventillation in the filter, but the National Cancer Institute found that to be untrue. “Unfortunately, people put their mouths on the filters and their fingers, so they trap those toxins and those poisons in the filter, so it doesn’t help at all,” says Largent.
Since the words were banned, tobacco companies now differentiate their cigarettes by using colors. “Marlboro Light is now Marlboro Gold. Again, they’re implying that this cigarette is better and it’s just not,” says Largent.
“How is a smoker going to know if he is getting the product he wants to buy?” counters David Kuneman, the director of research for the Citizens’ Freedom Alliance. He says removing colored packaging would be a case of “unequal protection.” Aside from the health debate, he says there’s a taste difference.
“People have a right to know when they’re buying a product, how it’s going to taste before they pay for it,” says Kuneman. He compares the argument to light beer or light food. “Consumers of all of those products are still allowed to go into a store and read a lable that says light or regular, so that they know what they’re buing. Those products taste different, too. So, why can’t that be true of cigarettes?” he asks.
But, Largent says the colored packages are deceiving and give the impression that the cigarettes are healthier– something she says will never be true. “There’s no such thing as a safe cigarette,” she says.
