Email received following my TV appearance on Saturday:
Hi as a former smoker can I just say that letting your representative loose on BBC Breakfast this morning, Saturday 1 December has done your organisation no end of harm. Why would you not support ANY initiative to stop young people smoking? Surely you realise that as adults we all have a choice, but that children and teenagers should be discouraged from starting at every opportunity? Your representative was also aggressive, argumentative and unreasoned, not to mention extremely rude speaking over the other invited guest.
At least two presenters asked me pretty much the same question over the weekend. If it stops even one child from taking up smoking, surely plain packaging is a good thing?
The trouble is, how far do you go? If it stops even one child from smoking should we ban tobacco completely?
If I remember, I told at least one one presenter that we support all "reasonable" measures to stop children smoking. These include cracking down on shopkeepers who sell cigarettes to children and making it illegal to proxy purchase on behalf of children.
Plain packaging however is not reasonable. It's disproportionate because the impact is likely to be minimal, and if it encourages counterfeiters, as experts say it will, it will be counter-productive.
Anyway, have a look at the interviews on BBC Breakfast and decide for yourself whether I was "aggressive, argumentative and unreasoned, not to mention extremely rude"!! (I think she's referring to the discussion at 9.22.)
Check out too the interview with my wonderfully demure colleague Angela Harbutt who went head-to-head with Deborah Arnott of ASH on the BBC News channel:
