Martin Dockrell, policy and campaigns manager for Action on Smoking and Health, explains how plain packaging on cigarettes will work.
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Martin Dockrell is the policy and campaigns manager for Action on Smoking and Health (ASH)
Andrew Lansley opens a consultation today on plain standardised packaging for the tobacco industry, picking up a proposal first mooted by Alan Johnson when he was Labour’s Secretary of State for Health. It is no surprise Labour’s front bench team have been enthusiastic in support.
Labour’s previous consultation received almost 100,000 responses: 98% of those responding on plain packaging supported the measure and analysis of the handful of opponents showed many had undisclosed links to the tobacco industry.
Nonetheless, the Labour government felt more evidence was needed to justify action. Since then the research has piled in.
A study recently published by Action on Smoking and Health was one among many to show:
• Plain packaging reduces misleading messages to smokers (light coloured packs used to be used for “light” and “mild” cigarettes and although labelling them as such is now illegal, smokers still think cigarettes in light coloured packs are less harmful;
• Plain packaging gives greater impact to health warnings;
• Most important of all, plain packs are much less attractive to young people.
As with Labour’s tobacco advertising ban almost a decade ago, adult smokers will not have their choice constrained – any who want to will continue to buy their favourite brand, and, as with the advertising ban, we can expect to see a steady reduction in the numbers of young people starting to smoke. The only people who will be constrained will be the tobacco manufacturers.
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• Happy smoking ban day everybody! – don’t believe big tobacco’s corporate spin 30 Jun 2011
• Is Big Tobacco blowing smoke in Cameron’s eyes? 10 Jun 2011
• Government is right to take action on tobacco packaging 9 Mar 2011
• Limiting child access to cigarettes – Coalition must enforce health act 9 Nov 2010
Australia has already passed a similar law and will implement it by the end of the year. Needless to say the tobacco industry fought it tooth and nail.
The so-called Alliance of Australian Retailers pumped $5 million into an ad campaign against the legislation and even ran election time TV ads against Australia’s Labor Party but it was soon discovered that it was the tobacco manufacturers who were paying the bills.
Industry disinformation failed to convince the Australian electorate and legislators. Big Tobacco lost in parliament and is now trying to use trade agreements to over-rule the health policy of a sovereign government.
Their favourite ploy is to claim plain packs will be easier to counterfeit. In fact, existing packs are no obstacle to counterfeiters. The truly effective way of stopping fakes is to have invisible marks on the packs, which the industry already does. These already exist and will continue.
It is no surprise they are fighting so hard. Market failure has made UK tobacco companies among the most profitable in the country. Just two companies hold 84% of the UK market and one of them – Imperial Tobacco – made more than £3bn profit on just less than £7bn tobacco revenues.
The industry knows one cigarette is much like another and in blind tests smokers struggle to tell them apart. That makes packaging key to these huge profits because it allows manufacturers to sell premium brands at close to £8 per pack while using the excess profits to cross-subsidise “value brands”, selling for less than £5.50.
That way they reduce the incentive for poorer smokers who want to quit. Companies may blame the chancellor for the cost of smoking but every time the tax goes up they take a little extra for themselves.
The reason all this matters for the left is the main function of the tobacco market is to redistribute wealth away from the nation’s poorest families in favour of the City’s most profitable companies. And the poor pay for smoking in more ways than one: smoking rates are so much higher among poorer communities that half the difference in life expectancy between richest and poorest is down to smoking alone.
But poor smokers can leap the health gap by quitting. The poorest non-smokers have a better life expectancy than the richest smokers and research by Professor Robert West shows poorer smokers are just as likely to want to quit as rich ones. They are just as likely to try to quit too but they are half as likely to quit successfully.
Will health campaigners succeed this time when we failed under Labour? Not only is the evidence out there now, but popular support has grown. Annual polls show support had been growing gradually since 2008.
This year we changed the question, showing people what a “plain pack” might look like and support leapt up to 62% while opposition melted away to 11%. Even among smokers, for every five who thought it was a bad idea we found six who supported it.
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43 Responses to “How plain packaging on cigarettes will work”
Ryan
Angela I saw your interview on sky news. talk about mutton dressed as lamb. you looked like a washed up porn-star! better pack in the cigarettes because they are making your face old and wrinkly. You say you smoke because of the taste? yeah, the taste of nicotine, which some say is addictive as heroin and cocaine. That makes you a junkie! how about you make another video where you’re blindfolded and see how many different cigarette brands you can correctly identify.
Anthony Winslow
My it seems that people are getting tetchy. The truth of the matter is that we all know plain packaging wont do anything for smoking rates. Its just a way of ANdrew Lansley trying to cuddle up to health groups he fell out with over NHS reforms. I see no reason why we should do anything to support Lansley and every reason to send him and the rest a message.
Anthony
Cut it out mate – there is no need for that- let’s try to keep it to the issue and not just throw silly insults about eh?
Ryan
The owners of the tobacco industry are scum, they make obscene amounts of money getting people hooked on their lethal products. And anyone who is low enough to accept funding from them to campaign in their favour deserves to be insulted.
Simon Cooke
I’ve been asked to pass on a message to ASH from the organised crime community.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you…this proposal is a bonanza for us. Our counterfeiting costs are reduced, the huge extra costs on retail businesses will close more small shops in poorer parts of Britain opening up these markets to our agents in white vans and council flats. And we’ll be able to target children with impunity – and then sell them cannabis, cocaine and heroin. So thank you for once again supporting our cause. Yours, The Mafia (on behalf of crime gangs everywhere)