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Comment by quickthrower2 | Hacker News Reader

How are they sold? In Australia they have the gory death warnings, are sold in cabinets with no logos (just a plain font list of brand names) and are ridiculously expensive $40 for 20. Cigars might be an exception(?)

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The gory death warnings are the most useless counter measure I’ve seen. We have them all over in France and they have no effect. They have no effect because people still think it’s cool to smoke.

Yeah they are pretty useless. Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned it as I got downvoted. But the other points might make some difference.

The point of the gory death warnings is to stop new smokers from starting, to making smoking as unattractive as possible.

Smokers become desensitised to the warnings really quickly from looking at them every time they smoke.

It does not work.

It does work. https://www.who.int/fctc/text_download/en/ Try to gather evidence to pursue your claims

What Australia does that other countries don't do in terms of packaging is they completely block out the branding of a pack. So like in Thailand for instance you'll have a regular Marlboro pack with a picture on the back of diseased lungs or whatever. In Australia they block out the designs of packs branding so they're just dark brown with health warnings and in white text somewhere they'll say Marlboro lights or whatever they are.

> How are they sold? In Australia they have the gory death warnings

I was just in a vape shop in the American south for the first time a few days ago.

They are presented as technological marvels. No noticable gory death warnings.

There are several different vape models out in the store center plugged in for you to try out. Everything is extremely clean and shiny, it basically looks like an Apple store. The juice is kept behind the counter in bottles that are backlit with a pleasant blue light [1]. The store is also lit from above by those lightbulbs that have the vintage looking exposed thick filaments [2].

Everything about the store screams, "This is healthy, this is the future, this is cool"

The actual vapes available for sale are locked in a display cabinet, making it feel as if they are as valuable and desirable as jewelery. Behind the counter is a counterculture looking person with guages and tattoos and a laid-back but professional attitude.

Completely different from a typical tobacco store.

There are also ads out on the counter about CBD oil and how it's totally not illegal, so you should definitely give it a try.

I'd imagine the presentation is much the same in California.

[1]: https://s3-media2.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/YNiG2iB_3prcuo0araZY...

[2]: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0903/0788/products/Thomas_...

In Australia too - most people I know just buy undeclared cigarettes. Almost all international students that travel into the country bring a bunch of cartons with them and sell them at $10-$15/packet. It's a way for the international students to make a bit more money given how fucked over they are by the lack of working rights they have, coupled with the ridiculously high cost of living and expensive education costs.

All the price raising on tobacco has done is push revenue into the black market, invent crimes from nothing and turn otherwise honest people into criminals.

Increasing prices has (surprisingly, give it's price inelasticity) worked in decreasing smoking rates.

Here is the evidence of the public health meaures:

https://www.health.gov.au/internet/publications/publishing.n...

I'm not a data scientist, but that downwards slope started twenty years before the 2010 tobacco excise and continuing to fall is a culmination of years upon years of education.

Absolutely, there are many reasons for decreasing smoking rates, it's a combination of strategies that have seen the decrease but one of those is increasing the price.

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