The packs of cigarettes should not be attractive and should be sold in less visible places where only the grownups have access. Such proposals were formulated by children who took part in the qualitative study “Publicity and promotion of cigarettes at retail outlets” that was carried out among children from primary education institutions. The study results were presented in a news conference at IPN.
Ghenadie Turcanu, project coordinator at the Center for Health Policies and Studies (PAS Center), said all the cigarette promotion techniques are aimed at the children and teens so as to make them smokers from an earlier age and the smoking industry has consumers for a longer period of time.
According to the study, the children consider the cigarettes in stores should be placed near the shelves with alcoholic beverages or should not be in visible places or at least should be put on the shelves near the cash register. They would replace the cigarettes from shelves with books, candies, soft drinks, ice-create, toys, etc.
Other children said cigarettes should not be sold at all as they are dangerous and expensive. In order to reduce smoking, they suggested increasing the price of cigarettes so that these are inaccessible, reducing the number of cigarettes, allowing smoking from the age of 25-30 and banning smoking in public places.
The parents who accompanied the children when these were surveyed consider harsher punishments should be instituted for those who sell cigarettes to minors. Some of the parents expressed their skepticism about the results of the measures taken to reduce the use of tobacco because ‘the cigarettes are promoted by politicians and these will not give up this business’.
According to the parents, social campaigns to sensitize the children and the grownups to the dangers posed by smoking are needed. “My father stropped smoking when he saw a TV video clip showing a girl stifling because of cigarette smoke even if her father was smoking on the balcony,” said a ten-year-old girl.
According to international surveys, half of the smoking students start to smoke before they turn 10.
