Plain packaging works. It makes tobacco taste unpleasant. BMJ Tobacco Control blog

Will that heading bring some supporters of plain packaging here? I wonder.

The blog post in question still says 'No one has commented yet'. This isn't true because I commented already, but they don't like what I said, clearly.

A telephone poll taken in November and ending three days after the ban came into legal effect in Australia in December is the basis of this claim that plain packaging works. Five hundred and thirty-six smokers from Australia were telephoned (pop 23+ million with smoking rate estimated at 20 per cent). Three-quarters were smoking a plain pack and reportedly enjoyed their tobacco less and thought about quitting more than the quarter that smoked from a branded pack.

And that's it – that is what passes for research and evidence in pursuit of tobacco control.

The comment that they didn't publish:

This law was meant to be about protecting children, not adults. And why is a respected medical journal touting the 'proof' that a policy 'works' in less than a year of its implementation, when it depends on kids being attracted less to smoking and buying less tobacco. Don't tell me it takes less than a year to get reliable information on their perceptions and buying habits – bearing in mind that any purchases will be from illegal sources.

Arguments also can be found in The Guardian.

I like olive green

This piece from the Guardian speculates that plain packaging will backfire. Quite simply, some people like drab colours:

Source

The olive industry in Australia wasn't happy with the characterisation of olive green as drab.

The problem is that tobacco control does not understand the allure of tobacco. It also tries to objectify what is really subjective, and trying to persuade us that everyone has the same taste in colour is absurd as trying to persuade us that everyone perceives tobacco as having the same risks, or that everyone has the same attitude to risk.

The Guardian puts it like this:

But you know that's going to backfire, right? In an age where companies use social media to make "friends" with everyone under the sun and consumer loyalty can no longer be bought through traditional top-down, shouty shouty means, de-branding is branding. This is an age where the 90s culture-jamming strategies of Adbusters and No Logo, originally designed to subvert the power of mainstream advertising, have now been gracelessly co-opted and absorbed by … mainstream advertising. Olive green packaging? It's minimal, man. Puss-filled cancer eyeballs? Terror is so in right now.

The fact that people are not supposed to like drab olive green will be exploited to the full by marketing and advertising 'creatives'. They won't be able to resist it.

Still more battles to fight on plain packaging

In spite of the Australian judgement in favour of plain packaging, there are more battles to be fought.

The UK campaign goes on, as do battles in the World Trade Organization.

Simon Chapman, prime supporter in Sydney comments here (admitting the first result will be a price war, to which the government's response will be to raise the tax). He outlines outstanding challenges to the display ban in Australia, and interestingly describes these greedy capitalist tobacco corporations as 'global minnows' in their fight against plain packaging.

A branding expert Stephen Cheliotis, comments here, from the other side of the argument.

Both sides have comments below, as does the BBC report.

Views vary depending where you read them. Sadly there are people who feel that the opposition of tobacco companies to plain packaging must mean that the policy is sound and will have its desired effect. The less mannerly accuse anyone who disagrees with this position of being in bed with tobacco. This is ad hominem argument (usually quite without foundation) and doesn't really help anyone to understand the issue.

The Australian government's attempts to confiscate the intellectual property of branding should be illegal: they  have confiscated something of value without compensating the owners. Arguing that they are not actually using the branding doesn't cut it – especially now admitting that the Treasury expects to recoup extra tax revenue as a direct result of the change in law.

Plain packaging: acquiring commercial assets without compensation

It was announced recently that next Wednesday we will learn whether the tobacco companies' challenge to the Australian government on plain packaging has succeeded. The Australian government has been taken to task for preventing the use of brand packaging, which they regard as a breach of international law. The Australian government denies that there is any breach, claiming that it does not directly acquire the intellectual property that is constituted in the branding.

The government has no direct use for the branding and design of tobacco packaging. However it does acquire selling and marketing space by depriving tobacco companies of the use of their intellectual property in the shape of branding, and of the actual boxes and packaging in which they sell their tobacco. The hope is to prevent young people from smoking 'by encouraging them to pay more attention to the health warnings'. (See this debate.) This is a key selling point of the policy: removing the clutter of branding from the pack face in order to make health warnings more prominent. Not only are they rendering worthless the branding assets of companies, on which billions have been invested over time, but they expect packaging to dissuade the purchaser from buying the product – and the prominence of the health warnings are central to this idea.

The government does not acquire the branding directly via a plain packaging policy but it does acquire powers to control what goes on the wrapper, in this case to stipulate that health warnings advertising smoking cessation services are prominent. Clearly the aim is to stop smokers spending money on tobacco and encourage them to become clients of stop smoking services and smoking cessation medication. It is entirely right that tobacco companies (and others) should object to this daylight robbery, which is no less robbery because tobacco branding is not employed directly by the government.

Plain packaging: ruling expected next week

Look for an announcement Wednesday, says the Sydney Morning Herald. A detailed judgement will not be available immediately but we will know in essence whether the legal challenge has won the day.

One rule for tobacco

In a bizarre piece of reporting, The Age suggests that the adage 'smoking kills' implies that considerations of intellectual property do not apply to tobacco products.

As far as I understand the argument, the government denies that there is any issue that requires compensating tobacco companies, as the government is not seeking to acquire intellectual property belonging to tobacco companies, but to do away with it. There must be some reason that the argument is about acquiring intellectual property rather than depriving somebody of it. Why should the government be able to deprive anyone of assets, material or intellectual, for whatever reason, without proving that such a person or company has forfeited their goods by lawbreaking?

The government's legal team says 'it would be "incongruous" for the government to compensate a company for requiring a measure that had as its purpose the prevention of harm to the public'. Hm. (Let's not dwell on the absence of any evidence that the legislation will stop children smoking.) It then goes into absurdities: 

To liken it to the aim of the plain packaging measures, Mr Gageler said it would be inconceivable for rat poison companies to be paid compensation if they were prohibited from making the product package appealing to children. [emphasis added].

The scenario is absurd. Rat poison is not a product aimed at the general consumer. It has a very specific application. I am sure that anyone who had it in for rat poison manufacturers would be able to convince a judge that they had gone out of their way to make the packaging attractive to children.

  

(Okay, some of the tobacco packs are red, blue or green.) I still find it hard to believe that most people in the tobacco industry actively wish to entice children to smoke. All industries have unscrupulous mavericks who care only for corporate balance sheets. I see nothing in most tobacco packaging that is designed to entice children. The things are designed to entice people, and people start out by being children and grow to adulthood, trying things out as they go. Blaming tobacco companies for the curiosity of children is as ridiculous as it gets. Expecting them to create stuff that is unattractive to people is a fool's errand.


However the central point is the question put by Justice French to the prosecuting counsel:

Justice French put it to leading counsel Bret Walker, SC, who had referred to cases dating back to the 1870s in the United States, that none related to a product on the market that carried the risk of serious or fatal disease to all who used it.

Surely this is not relevant. Laws affecting branding and intellectual property apply to anything in the consumer market, and it is not for the courts to allow a new law to override such matters simply by flinging up its hands and declaring a product to be too dangerous. That's like saying that free speech shouldn't apply to dangerous people. The principle of free speech wouldn't be needed if we didn't have dangerous people. It wasn't invented because nobody was dangerous, it was invented in order to manage conflicts of interest.


We await the verdict in Australia with great interest.

Plain packaging moves across the world

In Australia the case opens in court as the tobacco companies defend their intellectual property against the plain packaging laws. The Australian government is confident of victory, arguing that it will not gain directly by confiscating tobacco brand markings.

The Commonwealth argues that even if big tobacco could prove the government was acquiring their property rights the manufacturers still wouldn't win in court.   

That's because the purpose of the plain packaging legislation - namely to improve public health - is within the scope of the Commonwealth's legislative power under the constitution's commerce, trade and external affairs powers.

This sounds like a blank cheque book: claim health grounds and you have a legal basis for any action. Even if the result were certain to be as the government claim, would this over-ride the legitimate requirements of traders to be able to legally brand their goods?

The legal arguments are beyond me but this link shows that opposition to the plain packaging proposals is shared with many bodies such as the US Chamber of Commerce. The Express has also opposed the policy. This link from Brand Republic gives a number of views including one from its own industry – not heard enough:

"Just focusing on the connection between branding and smoking behaviour may be a distorted way of looking at the way of branding. 

"Branding on pack is about differentiating product and competition on the basis of quality, reputation and price but if all the packs look the same you move very quickly towards a generic commoditised market place and that is typified by price competition. 

"It means there is a loss of incentive for companies to invest in quality and reputations because they have no way to communicate that to consumers. While I’m sure the familiar brands will continue, if you were to launch a new product into the market it can only be a price fighting product and if that is a means of reducing prices to consumers then actually it may result in more people smoking rather than less because it becomes a very price sensitive market.

Here the government consultation on plain packaging has opened: coordinated by the Department of Health to cover all the legislative assemblies as well as England. (It's worth responding: the EC had to publish responses to its Consultation on revising the Tobacco Products 2001 Directive. The public didn't like its proposals and this showed up in the consultation responses. It also showed that the tobacco company was not alone in opposing an extension to tobacco control. The more embarrassment they get the better.)

Simon Clark says in his blog that Andrew Lansley promised an independent review* of the evidence on plain packaging. I haven't read this review yet, but since it is co-authored by a team including Gerard Hastings, Linda Bauld and Crawfood Moodie (refer to front page of the report for their affiliations), it cannot be described as independent. As Simon says, 'there is not a single marketing, communications or branding expert on the panel'. Perhaps they would have been considered vested interests?

*yes he really did! Jesus, they surpass themselves. 'The Department of Health has ... commissioned an independent academic review of the existing evidence on the effects of plain packaging'. Said independent review is authored by a team of ten people, affiliated with the University of Nottingham, the Cancer Research UK Centre for Tobacco Control Research at the Institute of Social Marketing at Stirling University, and the UK Centre for Tobacco Control Studies. I've said this before: Cancer Research includes in its funding conditions for tobacco-related research the provision that research 'support current UK policy priorities', including plain packaging. How the {censored} does he get off with calling this an independent academic review?

h/tip Simon Clark for the link

Honduras joins Ukraine in WTO protest against plain packaging

So far only two countries have decided to challenge Australia's plain packaging law.

"Australia's plain packaging requirements would defeat the basic function of a trademark, which is to allow consumers to distinguish between products of different companies," Castillo [Honduras WTO ambassador] said in a statement.

May the movement grow. Trademarks and brand design are essential to regulated trade. If authorities can make one excuse to ban them, they can come up with further excuses.

Australians won't pay tobacco levy

The World Health Organisation has proposed a tobacco levy known as the Solidarity Tobacco Campaign to be added by wealthier countries to support tobacco control efforts in developing countries.

This is the latest of a number of ideas, which have included levies raised on currency transactions and airline seats, in order to raise funds for tobacco control.

Article 26 of the Framework Convention for Tobacco Control provides for these fund-raising efforts.

Article 26 of the WHO FCTC expressly relates to the generation of funds "for the development and strengthening of multisectoral comprehensive tobacco control programmes" of developing countries. Furthermore, a study developed by the WHO Secretariat in accordance with Article 26.5(c) of the treaty and submitted to the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the WHO FCTC in 2006 indicated that tobacco taxation is a sustainable, stable means to generate funds for tobacco control and other public health initiatives. The COP gave “full support to the prioritization of resource mobilization for tobacco control at the national and international levels”.

It is interesting that they call this fund a 'solidarity' fund. Solidarity implies voluntarism. It's also interesting that they regard tobacco taxation in developed countries as 'sustainable', but perhaps paradoxical to want health programmes to rely for their funding on tobacco sales. They get off with it because it supports their goal to make tobacco as expensive as they possibly can.

The World Health Organisation seems to focus quite a bit of attention to getting money out of countries – a variable voluntary contribution is levied on all countries, poor as well as rich, and some of them seem to be having trouble keeping up with payments. In fact its financial difficulties are long-standing, and it cites financial difficulties as an impediment to tobacco control in poorer countries.

The World Health Organisation tries to persuade governments to tax tobacco heavily to fight tobacco-related harm in their own countries. In addition it wishes to encourage a solidarity fund, for helping other countries:  

Concerning international assistance for health, for decades, a key principle underlying provision of such assistance has been solidarity, whereby richer countries assist developing countries ...

It is heartening to see that Australia has rejected this suggestion. In spite of a heavily anti-smoking policy stance, it has stated that it will not be implementing an additional levy: it announced a $700,000 donation following the conference last month on non-communicable diseases. Perhaps it has begun to notice the insatiable nature of global tobacco control efforts:  

... The spread of some diseases across countries also requires collective action based on solidarity to address global public health needs. To further support global solidarity and strengthen health‐development investments, Member States could decide to contribute a part of their tobacco taxe revenues for international purposes.

Oh aye! 

In acknowledging the precarious state of Framework Convention finances the Framework Convention Alliance says this: 

FCTC Parties must now face the reality that existing international funding systems have failed tobacco control. And the world is paying the price – NCDs have been ranked as one of the most serious threats to global stability.

Ranked by whom? The World Economic Foundation, based in Geneva. (Aren't fuel and resource shortages more likely to cause instability?) The referenced work is called Global Risk Factors 2011 and no url is provided. This report, on the other hand, is entitled Global Risks 2011. It's hair-raising (discussing cyber security, resource security and WMDs among other issues), but gives no more than a passing nod at non-communicable diseases. 

Good for Australia – now drop the plain packaging proposal and put life back into perspective.

Bad news day for Australian government

The Australian government failed to bring the plain packaging through the Australian Senate (upper house) when the Conservative opposition forced the vote to be postponed. This throws into question the  Government's timetable for implementing the legislation. The vote will now take place in November.

There is, as frequently happens in the world of tobacco control, a sense of shock: how could the opposition 'play into the hands of the tobacco companies': we have international obligations:

Australia says the new laws reflect its obligations under the World Health Organization's 2005 framework against tobacco, which urges states to consider plain packaging laws. 

Voices like this seek to exclude the tobacco industry from national debate, and marginalise people in society who don't subscribe to the WHO's wild guesses about how many people die from tobacco consumption and their ideas about what to do about this.

Concern about the plain packaging is not limited to the Australian opposition. Indeed it is international, reflected both by the US Chamber of Commerce and tobacco growers:

The laws have angered tobacco producers who have threatened a High Court challenge, while the governments of Nicaragua and Ukraine said the new measures breached international trade rules and would be challenged in the World Trade Organization.

Tobacco companies are also threatening legal action against the legislation. Yesterday Sheila Duffy of ASH Scotland expressed her eagerness to see this legislation enacted. She will be sadly disappointed by today's non-result in Australia – but she was over-optimistic in believing that today's vote would  'see the end of a bitter and protracted struggle in Australian politics'.  Not only the tobacco companies will resist this policy fad of tobacco control.

Flaws in Australian plain packaging law threaten its validity

This interesting report speculates that plain packaging law in is present state is unconstitutional would not survive court action.

According to this, branding is worth up to half the value of a 7 to 8 billion dollar business. The Australian Government relies on the idea that, because it will derive no benefit from the trade mark rights that it is stripping from tobacco companies, they will not have grounds to sue it. Its Constitution gives it powers to expunge or otherwise regulate trade marks, and compensation only applies if it actually acquires these trade marks.

I have no idea what precedents exist but for the Government to wipe out trade marks on such a scale without the prospect of material benefit from the move seems such a whacky notion I am not surprised that there is no constitutional provision for it.

Writer Crispin Hull is anxious for the legislation to succeed, and the flaw he points out is in the wording regarding the Minister's powers to make regulations:  

The new legislation provides the minister with a sweeping regulation-making power. It says, ''Regulations made for the purposes of [giving effect to the plain-packaging legislation]: (a) may be INCONSISTENT with this Act; and (b) prevail over this Act ... to the extent of any inconsistency.

But basic constitutional law tells you that a minister cannot make regulations inconsistent with an Act of Parliament. The minister, like everyone else, must obey the law. ...

No Act can surely contain regulations that over-ride it. Hull's view seems to be that the Government is not sufficiently confident that the law is robust, and that they hope the regulations will allow it to make last-minute adjustments.

I find the rest of Hull's case rather odd ...  

Other than the one legal point, the tobacco companies' submissions to the Senate inquiry have been contradictory and almost self-incriminating. They argue that plain packaging would result in tobacco companies only being able to compete on price, so they would have to lower their prices.

More people would then be able to afford to smoke more and this - the implication runs - would be a bad thing. They admit their product is bad.

They say plain packaging would make smuggling easier - again, lowering prices and causing greater consumption of their - by implication - bad product.

Their main argument against plain packaging is that it would ''lead to an increase in the uptake of smoking''. If their product is so bad why are they in the trade?

The question 'why are they in the trade'  lacks relevance to the issue. Tobacco companies point out that if brand packaging has no place in the market, price will become a far greater driver, and a price war is a likely outcome. This will militate against any health gains that might be expected from a lower smoking rate in the population. Not only will the Government gain no benefit from 'acquiring' tobacco company trade marks, but its claimed health goals – the whole point of the legislation – will not be met.

As to why they are in the trade: they wish to meet and exploit demand for tobacco on a commercial scale. They also probably wish to stimulate demand, which goes with the territory of being in business. Legitimate businesses have obligations in meeting safety standards. It would benefit nobody if demand for this product were met by people without any legal obligations who work in the black market and beyond the law.

Hull concludes rather ineffectively with a familiar piece of flawed logic beloved of many supporters of plain packaging legislation: 

Then [tobacco companies] say, ''There is no real world data to demonstrate that the plain packaging of tobacco products will be effective in discouraging youth initiation, encouraging cessation by existing smokers, or increasing the salience of health warnings.''

Well, if plain packaging is so ineffective why are they so worried about it?

This also fails to recognise the obvious point that branding is intellectual property and losing intellectual property will significantly diminish the value of their assets – and that the Australian Government will not gain from their losses, either financially or in terms of achieving policy goals.

Hull is all for improvements in the writing of this legislation before it becomes law. Whatever its state by that time, I hope it will be unravelled in court.

Smoking bans threaten mental health: Opinion, Australia

This writer asks why comprehensive smoking bans are imposed on mentally ill people, when at least at this point in our history nobody would think it right to impose such a comprehensive ban on the rest of the community. Both the circumstances of a person's incarceration in mental health facilities and the fact that they may not get home for a period of days, weeks or months, to say nothing of their existing mental anguish and the effects of any medication, make somebody's stay in a mental health facility possibly one of the least suitable times to deprive them suddenly of nicotine and expect them to get by on patches at best.


There do seem to be people out there in the caring profession who find the opposite and who knows but they may be most sincere in their views. But bringing in a comprehensive ban that will force psychologically disturbed people to withdraw suddenly from nicotine would be controversial even if implemented in a single unit. The current trend is for health departments to encourage if not legislate for the provision of comprehensive smoke-free mental health service, affecting all units everywhere.  People who run these departments are not medics, they are officials, who seem to be motivated by targets and ideologies dressed up as care for patients.


The comments on this story are instructive too, especially the one that points out that 'nicotine replacement is not an alternative to smoking, it's an aid to give up smoking'. In the eyes of tobacco control, nicotine replacement is a form of 'harm reduction': i.e. anything is better than smoking (as long as it's not made in China with cartridges of course) and we'll give you nicotine patches because you really want to give up smoking, don't you – most smokers do, after all! One reader says:

We should not be allowing or encouraging people to utilise pathological coping mechanism when they are facing a crisis. When alcoholics and heroin addicts are admitted we provide healthier alternative and encourage them to reduce their dependence. 

But this is a false parallel. No one is admitted to psychiatric care because he or she is a smoker. Drug and alcohol abuse signify addictions of a completely different order from a nicotine habit. There is no reason that any patient should be compelled to give up smoking. Allowing smoking areas need not undermine the ward experience for everyone else. It's just a matter of will.


To finish let's have another story about Champix (comments disabled). Sorry it's from the Daily Mail. The MHRA (medicines regulators) are convinced that people who react to Champix have underlying problems (even though most reports I have read concerned people without any history of psychological problems I can't pretend to have read enough to be certain of this). This will account for ASH Scotland's keenness to recommend Champix to those in mental health facilities.

European Union doubts about plain packaging and an Aussie caricature

Further to criticism from other quarters, the European Union has added its voice to the doubts being expressed about the legitimacy of the plain packaging strategy, the World Trade Organisation fearing that it breaches laws on intellectual property. The Australian government is convinced it has done its homework and insists it can work the legislation within intellectual property rights law. The reporter clearly has reservations:

The Health Minister refused to answer questions about the size of the legal budget the government has set aside to cover the cost of challenges brought by the tobacco industry. When asked whether lawyers would be the biggest winners out of plain packaging laws, Ms Roxon said: "I think the public stand to be the biggest winners out of this measure."

Meanwhile writer David Campbell shows the caricature that results when the media decides not to take both sides of an issue seriously.

Plain packaging and intellectual property arguments

Professor Simon Chapman, a tobacco control careerist, defends plain packaging with vigour. He believes that the worries of intellectual property experts, the British, French, Canadian and Lithanian governments and an Australian senate report dating back to 1995 are misplaced, on both the advisability of the policy and its potential to create positive health outcomes. Just yesterday we reported how concern about this policy has reached Washington.

I'm no policy expert but its seems to me that no government should expect to wipe out the brand identity of products and not expect manufacturers to react with court action. It amounts to destruction of property, on a vast scale. As discussed in the clip below, possessing intellectual property (and this includes branding) implies being able to trade on it. Simon Chapman's argument appears to be that if the government destroys brands without either itself or a third party gaining directly from their destruction this is somehow allowable. It's okay as long as the government doesn't take these brands for its own use, or give it away to another party. Quoting Professor Mark Davison, Chapman explains:

"The extinction of rights or the reduction of rights is not relevant. The government or a third party must acquire property as a consequence of the legislation.

“The government does not wish to use the tobacco trade marks. Nor does it want third parties to do so. It does not desire to or intend to acquire any property. The proposition that prohibitions on the use of property do not constitute an acquisition of property was confirmed by the High Court as recently as 2009. In that case, the High Court held that the government was entitled to extinguish property rights in licences of farmers to take bore water.”

The implication that government can actually destroy property (intellectual or otherwise) if it can satisfy a court that it doesn't accrue any direct benefit does not reassure many of the opponents of plain packaging, many of whom fear that legal action could result in enormous pay-outs that the taxpayer will ultimately have to pay. This is the line of radio presenter Alan Jones (a self-confessed smoke-hater, but he explores this issue with an open mind – on smoke, anyway!) in this discussion with Alan Bennett, adjunct professor of law at Sydney University. (Much of the same material is covered here.) Jones discusses many angles, including the lack of evidence that plain packaging will reduce smoking rates, and international concern about trade related property rights agreements (TRIPS is a World Trade Organisation ruling).

The discussion is well worth a listen – Professor Bennett points out that plain packaging will create two classes of intellectual property holders, namely tobacco companies, who are not allowed to exploit their intellectual property, and all other intellectual property holders, who can exploit their brands and trade marks to make as much money as they wish. Since even Australian Health Minister Nicola Roxon knows there is no empirical evidence that plain packaging will work, since it has never been tried before, it is hard to say that there will be any public health benefit. Arbitrarily destroying a single industry's property when nobody benefits does seem to be pointless at best, and vindictive at worst. I think I prefer Alan Bennett's reasoning to Simon Chapman's. I hope he's right anyway.

LATE EDIT – a group of tobacco-producing nations led by the Dominican Republic has also spoken against the policy at a meeting of the World Trade Organisation in Geneva – concerned about damage to the tobacco trade. Confusing intention with effect, the Australian trade minister described the move as 'not anti-trade' but 'anti-cancer'.  The idea of the policy is to prevent tobacco purchasers paying more because they like specific brands – it will bring tobacco prices down. Its effect is more likely to be anti-trade and (if tobacco is as dangerous as they say it is) pro-cancer!

US Chamber of Commerce and others issue statement opposing plain packaging

Major business interests in Washington have issued an important statement on the implications of Australia's plain packaging policy, and expressed their opposition to this policy.

Although many people appear to feel that the tobacco industry's indignation about plain packaging demonstrates how important plain packaging is in the fight against tobacco, it would appear that the tobacco industry is not alone in its concern for intellectual property in general and the likely benefits to rogue tobacco traders. Two extracts:

However, plain packaging risks establishing a precedent of intellectual property destruction for an entire industry through government mandate that would be very damaging to the legitimate interests of trademark owners to associate their brands with their products, a fundamental protection under trademark law

and:

Moreover, we have genuine concerns that plain packaging will incentivize further the already growing incidence of counterfeit, smuggled and other illicitly traded goods being sold in Australia. There can be little question that plain packaging will make it easier for contraband or counterfeit products to enter the market. This will augment the inevitable downward pressure on prices of legally sold goods when brands are undermined and the market moves toward commoditization. The economic incentives to avoid the legal system will overwhelm any enforcement effort detailed in the legislation. As a country that has supported the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), Australia should be particularly concerned about these consequences.

 Simon Chapman, professor of public health at the University of Sydney, tries to explain how plain packaging will indubitably help. I find his logic hard to follow:

Profitability in the tobacco industry today rests largely on high-priced premium brands, which are able to attract higher retail prices purely on the strength of branding and pack image. If all packs will look the same, many smokers will wonder why they should shell out far more for a pack that looks the same as every other brand except for brand name and that internal tobacco industry research shows cannot be distinguished from cheaper brands in blinded smoking experiments. The illusion that premium brands are “better” will evaporate, and much profitability with it.

The result of this will surely be falling prices – not an outcome advocated by anti-tobacco activists in general. Chapman is confident that Australia is on top of illicit tobacco, but while it is true that Australia is less exposed than Canada, for example, there is still an issue with illicit tobacco and those involved tend to have an opportunistic streak that would likely be excited by a legitimate-industry-busting initiative like plain packaging.

The Chamber of Commerce and its allies in this statement have made an important case. Brand protection is a guard against cheap imitation, and health authorities that were really interested in health would not attempt to destroy it. Insofar as it represents an attack on intellectual property, the proposed plain packing measure is a dangerous precedent that threatens the benefits of brand packaging not just for tobacco but for any other line of products. Legality brings with it rights and obligations, and brand protection should not be removed from tobacco – or why did we ever bother with it in the first place?