Is blue the new green? Repackaging menthol cigarettes in response to a flavour ban in Ontario, Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: As of 1 January 2017, the Canadian province of Ontario banned the distribution and sale of menthol tobacco products. There is limited knowledge about how tobacco companies will adapt their packaging in response to a menthol ban. METHODS: We conducted a content analysis of preban traditional menthol (no capsule) and menthol capsule cigarette packs and their postban replacements. Preban and postban packs were matched using tobacco company descriptions of replacement brands in business-to-business marketing materials, advertising on cigarette pack cellophane and a tobacco company website. RESULTS: A total of 63 menthol (n=30) and 'non-menthol alternative' (n=33) cigarette packs were included in the analysis. Approximately half of the preban packs were menthol capsule cigarettes and half traditional menthol cigarettes. While some postban brands continued to convey menthol-like qualities via the colour and/or brand descriptor 'green', 'blue' was the most common colour and brand descriptor postban. Packs shifted from using 'menthol' and/or 'fresh' as taste descriptor preban to using 'smooth' postban; some postban packs had 'non-menthol alternative' or 'without menthol/capsules' written on their cellophane. The presence of innovative filter technologies continued in the postban samples. CONCLUSION: Results suggest that tobacco companies attempted to maintain menthol smokers in Ontario by aggressive preban promotion of menthol capsule cigarettes, continued promotion of innovative filter technologies and by directing smokers to non-menthol alternatives whose packaging both in text and in colour connoted menthol-like qualities (eg, green) and reduced harshness or harm (eg, blue, white, silver, smooth taste).
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".