Picture: Kym Smith Source: News Limited
TOBACCO companies have been smacked down for the second time over their lack of compliance with new plain-packaging rules just days before the law takes effect.
Health Minister Tanya Plibersek is demanding two industry giants - Imperial Tobacco and British American Tobacco (BAT) - remove ringed watermarking from their cigarette paper that appear to make them look more sophisticated.
The new rules require plain paper.
And she has also told BAT to stop inserting apparent travel destination references in the batch coding on their cigarettes.
The coding on its cigarettes read LDN, NYC, AUS or OZ in a way the minister says was designed to make smokers think of the "glamour of travel".
"There is a clear set of rules about what is allowed and if we start allowing variations then the tobacco companies will push the boundaries," she told News Limited.
Its just one of a series of methods tobacco companies have been using to subvert the new rules that from Saturday require all cigarettes be sold in drab packaging with health warnings covering 75 per cent of the front of the pack.
Ms Plibersek attacked tobacco companies in September for perpetrating a "sick Joke" when they began issuing new plain packs that claimed "It's what's on the inside that counts."
Meanwhile, anti-tobacco lobby group Action on Smoking and Health says Imperial Tobacco has this month been issuing roll-your-own smokers with free tins stamped with the old branded packaging name "Champion".
And two weeks before plain packaging started, a new brand of cigarette has been launched called "Ice" - the name of an illicit drug, according to ASH chief executive Anne Jones.
Imperial Tobacco denied JPS Ice was a drug reference, with a spokesman saying it "is a mint flavoured cigarette and the term `Ice' is a common descriptor used by the industry to distinguish similarly flavoured cigarettes."
The minister has also accused Philip Morris of "deliberately trying to create chaos" around the introduction of plain packaging by refusing to swap branded packs held by small businesses for plain packaged packs.
Domenico Greco from the Combined and Mixed Business Association said the company was not swapping packs if small businesses purchased fewer than 4000 cigarettes a week.
This would leave many businesses with $2000-$20,000 worth of dead stock "at the busiest time of the year" and he is calling on the government to allow businesses another eight weeks to sell old branded packs.
The company did not address the association's accusation head-on, but spokeman Chris Argent said: "Philip Morris has been working with the federal government and retailers to ensure a smooth transition to plain packaging."
The minster said her main target is the tobacco companies and that small-business shopkeepers who breach the new cigarette plain packaging laws that take effect from Saturday are more likely to be "educated" than fined up to $1 million for selling branded tobacco.
"If we had a large chain deliberately flouting the rules selling tobacco imported from overseas with all the wrong markings, then we would go for a maximum penalty," she said.
"If we've got a small mum-and-dad shopkeeper who have got a little bit of old stock they've sold two days after the deadline, we'd take education as the first step," she said.
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