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To achieve the New Zealand Government's Smokefree Nation Goal of 2025, the country probably needs major strategies that go beyond business-as-usual (as suggested by recent modelling work1).
These strategies could include higher tobacco tax increases every year to 2025, or various other tobacco endgame strategies (e.g. a nicotine phase-down,2 a sinking lid on supply,3 or a smoker's license4). But supplementary initiatives such as plain packaging of tobacco products are also likely to help achieve the nation's smokefree goal--and these are supported by New Zealand5 and international evidence.6,7
However, we suggest that any new plain packaging law for New Zealand should also incorporate the design of cigarettes itself. To illustrate this need, Figure 1 shows a recent addition to the New Zealand cigarette market. The cigarette contains a compressible capsule of menthol within the filter that releases menthol into the cigarette upon crushing it (see arrow, Figure 1 and Figure 2).
Figure 1. Cigarette pack and sample cigarette obtained on the New Zealand market with both extra foil and menthol switching capacity (the top arrow indicates the detachable piece of foil that can be used to cover the pictorial health warning, the lower arrow indicates where the cigarette filter is pressed to crush the internal menthol capsule)
[Image omitted. See PDF]
Figure 2. Cut-away detail of the "menthol switch" style cigarette shown in Figure 1, revealing the menthol capsule (the arrow indicates the compressible menthol capsule inside the filter)
[Image omitted. See PDF]
This gives the smoker the option of "switching" from non-menthol to menthol on a per cigarette basis. Such...