Analysis Of Ugly Is The New Look For Cigarette Packs By Tina Rosenberg

In Tina Rosenberg’s article, “Ugly is the New Look for Cigarette Packs”, the main issue focuses mainly on how packaging is used to both dissuade and persuade people when purchasing the product. More specifically, smoking is a product, with the ability to sell based heavily on how its customers portray the product. The argument on how to dissuade people from purchasing cigarettes is discussed heavily, and Rosenberg includes many examples used by various countries to succeed in decreasing in cigarette sales. On the other hand, the discussion on what is used to persuade customers into buying the cigarettes is section of her article that shows how easily people are swayed into purchasing a specific brand of cigarette. By mentioning how cigarette companies persuade customers, it also provides a secondary issue in the article, about whether or not it is ethical to persuade customers in this manner. While she doesn’t heavily discuss this in her article, there is an implied issue about whether the government should take away the packaging-rights of cigarette companies.

The first side to the argument is that they should be portrayed negatively to decrease smoking. The second side, which is less talked about in the article, is allowing cigarette companies to keep branding their products in order to retain their customers. The second issue in her article (about how to specifically package cigarettes) has a couple of different sides. In one case, both the British and Australian government portray deceased tissue on the face of the packaging, along with coloring the backs of the packaging an “unappealing green-brown”. Another side to this argument is that the packaging should remain plain, as to not make a “statement” about the