NEW ZEALAND
Shop owners are saying the move away from branded cigarettes to plain packaging that only shows graphic images of smokers’ lungs and body parts will not change customer habits and instead is just an inconvenience to shop workers who have to struggle to find the correct pack.
Shop owner Richard Green said, “We haven’t seen any major decline [in people purchasing] with the packaging going the way it is. It’s made it harder for us to receive the product and for the manufacture to send the product. They all look the same. We are a lot slower at serving at the moment. It’s costing us time and time is money. The government didn’t take that into account when they made the law.”