Australia's tobacco policy fight is one of the biggest legal battles in public health, recently gaining new opposition from two top academic lawyers. The legal experts presented their arguments at the Graduate Institute in Geneva, in an effort to overturn Australia's cigarette packaging law enacted last year.
Since the law was introduced, cigarette packages have been required to be uniformly dark brown, decorated in health warnings, and labeled with a standardized small product font with no color or logos. The anti-smoking effort is part of the government's strategy to reduce smoking rates to 10 percent by 2018.
Almost 70 percent of adult smokers start smoking before they turn 18 and most try a cigarette by the age of 11, according to the American Lung Association. Among the reasons are peer pressure, parental smoking, rebelling, and advertising.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics' National Health Survey, nearly 17.5 percent of men ages 18 and older consider themselves daily smokers, while 14.5 percent of the populations are female daily smokers.
"Smoking is known to cause harm to nearly every organ and system of your body. Many medical conditions caused by smoking can result in not just death, but in living for years of suffering with disabling health problems," said Health Minister Tanya Plibersek. "We want to let people know the health dangers associated with smoking and help to prevent hundreds of thousands of Australians from suffering as a result of smoking related diseases."
Información publicada originalmente en: http://www.medicaldaily.com/articles/17333/20130711/australia-anti-smoking-tobacco-industry-wto-case-cigarette-packaging-tobacco-control.htm
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