Plain packaging kicked into the not very long grass?

I chanced on a tweet that sported this link, and the relevant paragraph is here, embedded in Amendments to the Children and Families Bill:

(1)   The Secretary of State may, if satisfied that doing so is in the interests of preventing harm to the health of children under the age of 18 or of promoting the health of children under the age of 18, make regulations specifying retail tobacco packaging requirements.

The relevant legislation, if this amendment is passed and the bill becomes law, will enable the Secretary of State to write up the regulations just like that. Another amendment to the Bill is to make it an offence to 'fail to prevent smoking in a private vehicle when children are present'.

It seems that there is something more than a little underhand to prepare for the legislation to be brought in without further parliamentary debate, as part of a bill that will be full of glowing language about how life is being made much better for children.

This is clearly the solution that junior health minister Anna Soubry was working to enable but I didn't expect to see it in writing quite so soon as this!

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.

House of Commons Scrutiny Committee questions Under Secretary of Public Health Soubry

Time for opposition parties to challenge government on the Tobacco Products Directive. So eager was Anna Soubry to get the Tobacco Products Directive in Europe through that she went to Luxembourg and took part in all the deliberations, without clearing any of her positions with the Scrutiny Committee. She requested a waiver from scrutiny from the relevant committees, which was allowed by the House of Lords committee(!) but disallowed by the House of Commons committee, which said that there was not sufficient time to debate.

She explains her reasoning for this debacle in the video below, in committee, where she has been called up to answer questions as to how she came to over-ride its scrutiny:

Ms Soubry states fairly bluntly that the legislative outcomes were far more important to her than anything else. Committee members don't seem very impressed with the low priority she places on following parliamentary procedures. They have her apology on record, but it looks as if investigations will be ongoing.

Not only did she give a national position on the Tobacco Products Directive without UK Members of Parliament being able to debate them, but she failed for the preceding six months to keep the committee advised of progress. She thereby contributed significantly to the fact that time ran out for proper scrutiny and debate.

This is open and unembarrassed abuse of process – Soubry says she feels the committee ought to be grateful to her setting out to create conditions whereby the UK government will be able to come back and introduce plain packaging. She somehow attempts to make the case that her abuse of the parliamentary process was designed to protect Westminster's sovereignty.

Will the UK opposition start asking pointed questions?

Perhaps it is time to start writing letters. This seems about the level of debate on tobacco legislation: Why Labour should keep asking Cameron the Lynton Crosby question (New Statesman).

Plain packs fallout

The announcement that the UK government has done a 'U-turn' on plain packaging has been met with a furore in the media. The essence of it seems to be that the UK government puts profit first every time and has clearly compromised its stance on health by listening to lobbyists in the tobacco industry and claiming that more evidence was needed on the effectiveness of plain packaging than Australia needed to implement it last year. Concern that the government expressed about 'jobs' has been translated in the minds of critics to simple 'greed'. The media has explained the government's decision by pointing at the tobacco-industry-linked lobbying activities of campaign manager Lynton Crosby.

I am writing this as someone with no love for Cameron's government and a thorough conviction that it will grab any excuse to make money at the expense of people's welfare. What stops me from joining in the furious response to the government's decision not to leap forward without further evidence from Australia is the conviction that tobacco control policies have little to do with health in the first place. The Cameron government inherited its commitment to tobacco control from the Blair/Brown days. In essence tobacco control involves top-down management of people's lifestyle choices and taking advantage of a massive power differential to influence these choices. It is not about health, but control – millions have been spent on tobacco control and smoking cessation without significant effects on smoking prevalence, and enormous damage has been caused to the hospitality sector especially in poorer districts with higher smoking levels, damaging the social fabric and creating increasing social isolation.

Tobacco control is supported at the highest international levels. This should suggest what is undeniable: big government attracts lobbyists, and the most powerful globally are pharmaceuticals and food because they have monopolised the markets that serve our daily needs. Lobbyists have created tobacco control, and little minnows like the tobacco industry are accused of lobbying in order to disrupt it. Pharmaceutical companies have a clear interest in the denormalisation of smoking: a theme pursued throughout this blog.

I am not suggesting that the tobacco industry should be able to write health policy – far from it. But the pendulum has swung too far the other way. In Thursday's debate in the Commons, Public Health Minister Anna Soubry declared that she would not allow tobacco industry to influence policy, a position supported in this document (pp. 4–5), which explains the significance of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

One of the most highly taxed products in the UK is thus marginalised from lobbying on its own behalf, in areas of policy that are the most pertinent and in which it is the most knowledgeable. It is not that what the tobacco industry has to say about health is necessarily gospel truth – of course its influence must be balanced by other points of view.

However, the playing field is far from level. Look at the hysteria when the health lobby doesn't get its own way. It must have been that Lynton Crosby! The underlying presumption created by the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and its allies is that the tobacco company is inherently untrustworthy and only out to make money and that those working for tobacco control are inherently trustworthy and incorruptible in spite of their financial interests in their work. (Isn't it funny how only one side is capable of being corrupted.)

This kind of innate bias in the proceedings is troubling – as troubling as if right and wrong had been decided in advance in the courts. No one has a monopoly on the truth, It becomes even more disturbing in the light of the excessive taxation on tobacco products. The government will talk to the tobacco company about its tax affairs, but on policy it prefers an arm's length approach.Taxation without proper representation is very bad form – especially exceptional taxation on a specific product.

Article 5.3 of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control reflects this bias against the tobacco industry as it 'calls on parties to protect the development and implementation of public health policies from the vested interests of tobacco manufacturers'. This suggests that only tobacco manufacturers have interests that might conflict with public health, but almost every industry has an interest that might conflict with public health, including the pharmaceutical industry, on which many public health systems are based. Pharmaceutical industries have commercial imperatives and the industry itself is staggeringly big and influential, but we are expected to believe that because of the good that they do, they are incapable of deals with government that compromise public health.

I cautiously welcome the decision not to act on plain packaging, but there are huge problems with the discussion of tobacco and public health in general, so I'm not celebrating yet.

Plain packaging in an independent Scotland?

Handwringing has occurred at the failure of the Queen to announce that Her Majesty's government was about to force tobacco into plain packaging. Here's an example, provided by the Telegraph, in which a vast quantity of medics berate the government over the omission and hammer home the notion that health is key to government policy:

The health of the people is surely the highest purpose of government, so it is chilling to hear that the Coalition does not consider the prevention of ill health and premature mortality to be part of its role

I suppose that is what you would expect doctors to say, and as it happens I agree that a Conservative government would prioritise corporate interests over public health more than I would like. But as it happens, I don't happen to believe that plain packaging is a policy that has any particular merit – the evidence for it has been collated entirely by people employed specifically as tobacco control advocates and suffers disastrously from a lack of objectivity. Government sources know that most people start smoking before they can buy tobacco legally, indeed it is only a matter of years since the legal age of purchasing tobacco was raised, and smokers generally tell you that they were given cigarettes by friends before they could purchase legally.

Even if plain packaging were guaranteed to bring down smoking rates, I wouldn't necessarily consider it health priority, as there are so many other environmental health problems including everything from general aerial pollution, to mineral depletion in the soil.  

But we were talking about Scotland. Personally I have made no final decision on this issue. A Herald leader characterises the Queen's Speech as led by UKIP: it excludes legislation to allow gay marriage, and commitments on foreign aid. Some of its points are well made, for example will restrictions on immigration involve GPs and landlords being responsible for vetting their patients or tenants? However it refers to plain packaging as 'progressive' and looks forward to 'going our own way' on plain packaging and minimum pricing, playing right into the hands of those who ridicule the outcome of a Yes vote on the Scottish referendum as the beginning of a thousand year rule for Eck.

There are too many doubters about the wisdom of Scottish independence for this to be a likely political outcome. The Scottish Socialists also support independence, and it is very unlikely that people who have been persuaded into voting for independence, their own warts-and-all goverment rather than the mess (devolution) that we currently have, will be content with a one-party state, whatever the SNP expects at present.

Plain packaging is supported by Cancer Research UK, which is a fanatically anti-tobacco organisation. Its Tobacco Action Group, which funds research into tobacco and cancer, will generally only fund research that finds tobacco responsible for most cancer and supports further restrictions. Such prejudicial conditions are anathema to real scientific investigation and I would not want it to be the basis of policy in Scotland under any circumstances, whether independent or not. The whole tobacco control agenda is pushed by ASH Scotland, an organisation that gets minimal private funding: this does not speak for its popularity.

Those pushing for independence should realise that they have to fight the impression created by the media that they want independence inside a yellow packet adorned with Alex Salmond's picture. He is no more responsible for the popularity of Scottish independence than 'pretty packaging' is responsible for the young taking up smoking. A Yes vote can only occur if the result is expected to improve genuine public participation.

Until I've read more I will still be neutral on this issue. Tobacco control is what we are up against, because it is designed by a global health body that is directed by pharmaceutical interests rather than real health needs.

ASH Scotland and the tobacco control lobby talk nonsense about profits and health

Two extraordinary statements have arisen this week from the anti-smoking lobby that reflect its bizarre approach to ethics, business and health.

On the issue of regulating e-cigarettes, tobacco control is faced with a dilemma. The controlling interest in the field is tobacco's competitor, namely the smoking cessation market (and I use the word 'market' deliberately). E-cigarettes muddy the water, as they are a clear alternative to smoking, but they're made by those rascals the Chinese (!), and so cannot be trusted as a legitimate alternative to smoking. It may be that the existence of these products will force the more honest among tobacco control advocates – those who actually recognise that smokers have a legitimate range of options if they want to quit – to admit that some of their more extreme allies might have an agenda other than helping people to stop smoking. 

It looks as if Sheila Duffy has quite a long way to go before she can bring herself to applaud the existence of e-cigarettes as an alternative to smoking: 

 Ms Duffy said: "Quitting tobacco is the single best thing a smoker can do to improve their health. We do not support banning e-cigarettes as they could help many smokers to move to a less risky product. However e-cigarettes are produced by commercial companies, with a profit motive." [Emphasis added]

Ms Duffy has of course observed that smoking cessation medication, much of it laced with nicotine, is also made by commercial companies. In fact these companies are major pharmaceutical companies, some with eye-watering turnover. 'Health' is one of those goodies that we buy all the time: the demand is enormous globally, and the question is whether drug companies can keep their mind on the job of improving health and off the balance sheet. Pharmaceutical companies co-sponsor the UK's annual smoking cessation conference (one might as well call it a trade fair), and Chris Snowdon spotted that the main sponsors all have a slots on the conference programme (click on the figures in this link to enlarge). In fact Ms Duffy knows quite well that smoking cessation products are [also]produced by commercial companies with a profit motive. She knows quite well that she's talking nonsense. Doesn't she?

The Scottish government awaits the conclusions of UK regulators before deciding what action they should take on regulating e-cigarettes, so Ms Duffy can afford to sit on the fence for a little longer. 

But there was an even worse clanger in a letter from various tobacco control personalities to the Guardian on the subject of plain packaging, which claimed: 'Tobacco, unlike other causes of disease, has a global and powerful industry promoting its interests' [emphasis added]. We-e-e-ll, as Sheila Duffy observed 'mosquitoes don’t have PR agencies and expensive promotions budgets', which means that it's not really worth fighting malaria because it's no fun unless you can blame a company for the fact that people get ill. 

But can't we all blame companies for people getting ill. Bhopal? Who makes asbestos? What about illegal levels of pollutants in the air? It is completely absurd to claim that tobacco companies the only corporate entities that give people health problems. I return to a passage from George Monbiot's Captive State (2002):

As big business infiltrates the research agenda, ever wider zones of public enquiry are placed off limits. In 1999, the government published a White Paper on public health called Saving Lives: Our Healthier Nation. The only atmospheric pollution named in the report is radon. It also happens to be one of the only pollutants in Britain which does not result from the activities of large corporations: it is naturally occurring. The report warns us about the dangers of cancer resulting from 'exposure to radon gas in certain homes or excessive sunlight', but nuclear power stations are not mentioned, and nor are any other chemicals, even though the paper concedes that 'Pollutants in the atmosphere may cause cancer if inhaled or swallowed'. The language in which this warning is given is interesting: it creates the impression that breathing or ingesting pollution is something we can avoid. The paper informs us that the government hosted 'the largest ever Ministerial conference on environment and health in 1999. It fails to tell us that the links between cancer and industrial pollution were dropped from the agenda soon after the meeting began. [link added] 

Monbiot is clear that somehow environmental issues came off the agenda in 1999, suggesting not that tobacco is the most powerful company that causes ill health but that it is the least powerful, because it couldn't get its product taken off the danger list. He points out that while universities are happy to boast that they won't take money from tobacco, they are also happy to take money off any other powerful investor, in effect offering up their research facilities to the highest bidder. There are many reasons that tobacco has such a bad press (the power of the medical establishment and the perceived uselessness of tobacco are two of them), but the fact that tobacco has been pushed off the debating table (denormalised) is not really good news for the public. For years, we have been asking who is going to be denormalised next.

Both Sheila Duffy and the health lobbyists who signed the letter to the Guardian are misguided in their judgements. Shortcuts taken by competing companies on a global scale do injure people and make them ill, It's a fact, and pretending that only tobacco or e-cigarettes benefit from an absence of regulations is either quite dishonest or deplorably ignorant.

Arguing with Simon Chapman!

To persuade fellow tweeters that making packs look identical speeds up transaction times, Simon Chapman first pointed at the study referred to here:

The study in question is Carter O, Mills B, Phan T, Bremner J. Measuring the effect of cigarette plain packaging on transaction times and selection errors in a simulation experiment, Tobacco Control, 21, 572–577, 2012.doi:10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2011-050087.

I expressed doubts that removing the branding would make cigarettes easier to identify, but he had none of it, posting the video below to prove how quick it is to pick out a plain pack from behind a screen:
This of course is not proof of anything, it is a video of a single transaction, without any consideration of how sales environments vary.

Professor Chapman has so much faith in this study that it resolves all the plain packaging dilemmas for him (to my mind serving times are nowhere near the crux about why this is a bad idea). To him this is a 'non-issue'. I asked him why he was bringing the issue up, when the study was over a year old.

After a few minutes I managed to find the response from Dick Puddlecote to the study: BMJ's official attempt to 'prove' that plain packaging makes shop service quicker. But I couldn't share it with Simon since he had blocked my response with the following comment:

Simon Chapman‏@SimonChapman6

@Belinda64 Study was done in Nov/Dec 2012. I talk about it because of the oceans of nonsense that BigTobacco & its goons (like you?) spout.

 

Well, no hard feelings, Simon! I have never been in correspondence with this man before but within a few exchanges of tweets he calls me a stupid person or a thug, and terminates the connection. More to the point, he hasn't persuaded me that he has a case using that study (incidentally he is also wrong about the date: the BMJ published the study in September 2011).          

EDIT: please see comment below 12 February from second Anonymous commenter: my mistake, seems I was the one got the studies back to front.                       

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.

Unleaderlike

I won't say the editorial from the Scotsman (scroll down) on the Australian court decision was disappointing because these days it is hard to expect anything better from the media.

Does anyone really doubt that the way cigarettes are marketed – the packaging’s colour, texture, design and branding – are designed to add an attractive patina of glamour to the product? And does anyone really doubt that this glamour is part of smoking’s attraction, especially for the young and impressionable?

That is the way any packaging is designed.

If so, what possible justification can there be for allowing cigarettes to benefit from this? Advertising and sponsorship by the tobacco industry has already been severely curtailed for precisely this reason.

And tobacco has remained popular regardless, and the anti-smokers need to blame something beyond the fact that people have been smoking for millennia.

What rationale – beyond special pleading by vested interests or a woefully misplaced argument about freedom of expression – can there be for allowing this to continue? 

That we don't particularly want governments to exercise the authority to prevent people and businesses from using their branding because they perceive it to be unhelpful to their policy objectives. This is not 'woefully misplaced' concern. If government deprives anyone of assets, they should provide compensation. Brand packaging exists to protect both consumers and manufacturers from cheap imitations. Sometimes vested interests are good sources of insight.

 Smoking’s social acceptability has declined markedly over the past two decades. When the ban on smoking in public places was first introduced in Scotland, there were those who said it would never work. Does anyone now regret that historic step? Or the ban on cigarette vending machines (where many a young teenager obtained their first furtive pack)? Or any of the other curbs designed to protect public health?

You can just see the point here – anyone not agreeing with this programme can't love children and has probably got shares in tobacco companies.

This is a poor excuse for a leader article. Not even the pretence of an attempt at even-handedness.

Cancer Research supports plain packaging on your High Street

Cancer Research UK's campaign against plain packs continues here (this is from yesterday). The usual warnings – that colours mislead customers into the belief that some brands are safer than others – and the story of a mother's death from lung cancer prompting her daughter to stop smoking.

I enjoyed this piece, from Smoking Scot. An interesting view of Cancer Research's place on the High Street:

They love recessions because landlords have few choices and will sign up to predatory long term deals when they can't rent to the productive sector. The hidden value of 44,500 volunteers is worth tens of millions of Pounds to CRUK and the whole lot's tax free. Little wonder they couldn't care less if every pub, greasy spoon or betting shop in the country closed - far less competition and lots of opportunities for them to open another retail "presence" in another High Street.

And even better:

Thankfully it's no longer necessary to go into a great long explanation about CRUK. All I need do is refer them to Tobacco Tactics (9), and point out that it's partly through their corporate donations that CRUK can help finance a site that slanders ordinary citizens, attempts to bully politicians and does its level best to ruin the careers of professionals who disagree with their view of the world. [link in original]

We may be met with a brick wall when it comes to most politicians, however very few corporations want to be associated with something as base as Tobacco Tactics. Once they see it for what it is, (and I highlight their "disclaimer") they quickly grasp how embarrassing it might be for their Chairman to have to answer searching questions at the next shareholders meeting! [link added]

Didn't need to go that far with one Tesco not a million miles from Edinburgh. Now their customers have a choice of charity cans and their alternate is excellent; the RNLI. The direct approach works, especially when the manager smokes!

One thing this has taught me is smokers need to get on to this charity bandwagon. It would be awesome if F2C, TCT or TICAP could set up a charity wing and start handing out donation cans. I've checked in on several small newsagents in my area that sell cigarettes and none accept cans from CRUK. To an owner, they've all indicated a willingness to accept a can from any outfit intent on fighting this monstrosity. [links added]

The reference to Tobacco Tactics is particularly interesting. The site includes a directory of opponents to tobacco control (split into categories such as libertarians, bloggers, politicians, etc.). Cancer Research has provided donations to this effort.

I find intriguing the idea that powerful charities might find it lucrative to lobby on legislation that will endanger small unfashionable shops, and small shops would support resistance to this juggernaut.

The fight goes on.

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.

From Linda Bauld: the case for plain packaging (UK Smoking Cessation Conference address)

Here's Linda Bauld's spiel.

She sticks fairly closely to the slide show, reproduced below the audio clip.

I thought I would present it here as we are near the end of the consultation period on this (12 August).  To me (cynic that I am) it sounds as if she is saying the following:

1. There is no empirical evidence about plain packaging because it is not in place anywhere yet.
2. We have been asked by the government to compile evidence and we have done so using reports of varying quality that somehow combine to make a very strong case.

3. It is quite untrue that our academic report is biased. It is all peer reviewed. We chose all the studies and the government chose us  to do the work because of our monopoly of wisdom and experience in this particular area.

4. Branded packs are more attractive than plain ones and this suggests that people will be less inclined to choose plain packs even when they can't choose branded ones. Plain packs are associated with older, less attractive and less popular people in society and the young won't want to be associated with that kind of person (this is what it says in the research!)
5. Young people that our colleagues gave plain cigarettes to were too embarrassed to get them out when out with their smoking friends, and more likely to think about quitting. This is ample evidence that they will actually go on to quit when the law is enacted and their friends are all carrying plain packs around.
6. There is no evidence that the policy will result in further extension of illicit tobacco sales (forgot about point 1, where it says there is no evidence about any aspect of the policy, because it has not been implemented anywhere yet).

For more about peer reviewing see here. It does not prove worth. This whole area of research is led by policy requirements, and peer review is alleged here to be part of this process.

Plain packaging may not work, but that's not the point

Can't say I have ever been a fan of Ian Paisley (whichever), but the logic in this piece is risible.

Maybe plain packaging on fags isn't going to stop them being bought. Maybe it will make smuggling easier if all branding is removed. I don't know. But that's not the point.

Of course it's the point. The author admits that the policy may not have its desired effect (indeed may have an adverse health outcome) once passed into law. But her message is that this doesn't matter: what matters is being politically on-message and knocking tobacco companies because 'reputable person' knows how bad smoking is.

But Nuala, really, what is the point of an anti-tobacco policy that assists the sale of illegal and even less safe cigarettes? What kind of a health outcome is that?

She argues that a campaign based on threats to jobs could be unethical because if all jobs mattered people could get paid to dangle babies over cliff tops for fun. Somehow laws are made to prevent such unethical forms of employment:

But that's why we have laws, isn't it? To impose a consensus about what's acceptable and what's not, on the general public.

That's not my understanding of a law: this is as much as to say that the government is there to tell us what to think, and tell us what our values should be. Impose a consensus? Can anyone advise where she learned that? Is it recognisable legal theory?


Nuala's conclusion?

Smoking belongs in the past. God help people who are addicted, it's hard to give up. But that doesn't mean we should keep making the things and profiting from another generation's misery. 

Having just declared that a growth in illicit sales doesn't really matter, this line of argument is hard to swallow.     Nuala clearly has gripes with the influence of Paisley when she mentions the burning of Irish flags (she may have a point there), but you don't need to support Paisley to realise that this is totalitarian nonsense of the first order.

Plain packaging at the Olympics

This appears to have been a 'false flag', and apparently the police will on duty at the Olympics will not, after all, have to empty their crisp packs into clear plastic bags. As reported today in the Telegraph, the order was given by the chiefs of Thames Valley police to forces on the Olympic sites outside London, on the understanding that this would help to satisfy the sponsors that no one who wasn't sponsoring the Olympics was entitled to any 'trickle-down' free publicity. Imagine someone watching the Games on television in Budapest imagining that Thames Valley police were promoting Walkers' crisps or Ginstead pasties on their lunch breaks? unthinkable.

It turns out that Thames Valley police chiefs were being over-zealous. But isn't it a sign of the times when a crisp packet is viewed as advertising? This is a definition employed by anti-smokers in relation to tobacco and cigarette packets, even though actual advertising was banned over a decade ago.

Brand packaging is brand packaging: it isn't advertising, and I would have hoped that any company forced to forgo its branding for the Olympic Games would sue the sponsors. The idea that small traders should be expected to bury their instincts to capitalise on extra visitors to London in order to avoid committing the new crime of 'ambush marketing' is further evidence yet that the Games were never meant to be a boost to Londoners. Read more here.

Now it's the Guardian's turn

And the tactic employed this time is all in the headline: 'Tobacco packets attract children. Now argue against making them plain.'

This is the kind of argument that is presented as so profound and showing such insight as to disempower opponents completely. There is no evidence showing that children are actually enticed to buy tobacco as a result of finding packs attractive – indeed many children interviewed in the course of 'research' on this topic are barely tall enough to see over the shop counter.

Actually it is the usual moral blackmail: 'I represent children's interests, and the world will despise you if you argue against me.' A commenter says:

... and cue the remainder of hysteria as already spoken, but please feel free to insert this specious argument into any possible article and/or argument from now on into the future.

Because no-one, no matter what the argument, can ever going to turn around and say "you know what – sod the sodding children".

It seems claiming the interests of the children puts you on the moral high ground even if your claim is absolute nonsense. How about saying: 'actually, we do want our children to learn not to want things just because they see them on the shop shelves; we do want them to learn that all that glisters is not gold', and even, 'we would rather they were able to buy tobacco legally in shops than have to turn to possible counterfeits in the streets, without being stigmatised. When they are old enough, of course.'

How long can the Scotsman keep this up?

Plea from British Heart Foundation spokesman to sign petition in favour of packaging – Thursday
Plea from young scientist to sign petition in favour of plain packaging – Friday
Plea from Labour MEP David Martin to sign petition in favour of plain packaging – Friday


Go to Hands Off Our Packs instead!


By the way, the runner up in the race to plain packaging won't be the UK after all.

Counterfeit tobacco no more dangerous, says ASH

Defending plain packaging, Graham Jones MP hosts a piece from Action on Smoking and Health declaring that counterfeit tobacco is no more harmful:

The Transcrime report argues that ‘counterfeit tobacco products have been proved to cause even more serious damage to human health’ than legal cigarettes. This is simply not true, indeed research by the Canadian government has concluded that contraband tobacco poses the same risk of harmful health effects as legal cigarettes. All smoked tobacco contains thousands of toxic substances many of which are carcinogenic. All smoked tobacco products are deadly.  

Without getting into detail it is hard to see how anyone can talk about 'counterfeit tobacco' as if it were a single commodity. The author seems to use the terms counterfeit and contraband interchangeably, and while it is a fair bet that much tobacco ticks both boxes they are not necessarily the same thing.

Contraband is black market: illegally traded. It is a legal product on which tax has been evaded. It may also be counterfeit (illegally produced) but need not be.

Tobacco is a regulated product. This means that its ingredients are controlled. Counterfeit tobacco imitates a legal product but its contents are – who knows what?

The Canadian government source that this piece uses does not use the word 'counterfeit'. It discusses contraband tobacco and concludes rather pointlessly that its health effects are the same as those for legal tobacco, which is rather like comparing apples with apples. It stands to reason that legally traded tobacco and illegally traded tobacco will have comparable health effects, because they are essentially the same product.

There is no evidence that the tobacco under discussion is illegal – counterfeit. Even if there were evidence that the tobacco tested by the Canadian government in this particular report were 'only' as dangerous as legitimately traded tobacco, this result would not apply to all tobacco. The whole point of branding is that a particular combination of ingredients and preparation methods earns a trade mark, and can be identified. By definition this feature is absent from counterfeit tobacco. 


It is hard not to conclude that ASH has failed to grasp any of the safety concerns about plain packaging, and even that its bosses have failed to grasp the point of branding. Any of Mr Jones's constituents in Haslingden and Hyndburn feel like pointing this out?

Reminder: Plain packaging consultation closes 10 July

The consultation is can be found here.

New video presentation below:



Please see Handsoffourpacks for latest campaign information.

ASH compiles a list of people whose views on plain packaging cannot be taken seriously

It's here.

This is where article 5.3 of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control will take us. Everyone is ridiculous except tobacco control.


And they forgot this blog! (Must try harder.)