The Yorkshire Post published an article by me about plain packaging on Tuesday. It's not available online but you can download a pdf or read it here:
Simon Clark is director of the smokers’ group Forest which runs the Hands Off Our Packs campaign
To mark the Government’s launch of a public consultation on plain packaging of tobacco, we published a spoof story with the headline: “Easter eggs to be sold in plain packaging.”
We reported: “Public health campaigners want all seasonal confectionery to be sold in uniform beige packs which research has shown is the colour that is least appealing to children and the obese.”
It was a joke but not as far fetched as it sounds. Tobacco may be the number one target today but it’s only a matter of time before other products that are considered “unhealthy” are in the firing line.
Plain Packs Protect, the campaign that supports plain packaging of tobacco, denies this. Campaigners argue that “plain packs for tobacco will not set a precedent for other consumer products”. The very suggestion, they sniff, is a “myth”.
Really? The Government recently published its new Alcohol Strategy. This was followed by an announcement that the Commons Health Committee will hold an inquiry into the proposals.
The inquiry will examine “international evidence of the most effective interventions for reducing consumption of alcohol and evidence of any successful programmes to reduce harmful drinking”. This includes, wait for it, “plain packaging and marketing bans”. Not such a myth now, is it?
Meanwhile, what about plain packaging of tobacco? As the father of two teenagers, I can’t imagine anyone wanting children to smoke. Smoking should be restricted to adults who are old enough to make an informed choice about a potentially addictive habit that is associated with a number of serious illnesses. Any reasonable measure to discourage under-age smoking is welcome.
But plain packaging is not reasonable. To start with, there’s nothing plain about plain packaging. In Australia, which will become the first country in the world to put cigarettes in standard packs, cigarettes are to be sold in uniform packaging whose colour (drab green) has been chosen because research suggests that it is the colour that consumers find least attractive.
In addition to imposing a dull uniform colour on all packaging, graphic health warnings are to appear on both sides of the packet. Logos will disappear and brand names will be printed in a standard font. That’s not plain, that’s grotesque.
The argument that “glitzy”, colourful packaging encourages children to smoke is weak. For years, even anti-smoking campaigners agreed that the main reasons why teenagers smoke are peer pressure and the influence of family members who smoke. What’s changed?
The claim that dull standard packaging will reduce youth smoking rates is equally flawed. No good evidence exists because plain packaging has never been tried. At the very least, the Government should wait and see what impact it has in Australia.
After all, there are well-founded fears that plain packaging could have serious consequences for consumers and retailers if it fuels black market trade in illicit and counterfeit tobacco.
Meanwhile, there is the important matter of public money being used to influence the outcome of a government consultation. Freedom of Information requests have revealed that large sums of public money are being used to lobby the Government to introduce plain packaging in the UK.
Smokefree South West, a publicly-funded tobacco control group based in Bristol, has a current budget of £468,462 to run the Plain Packs Protect campaign. Since its launch, it has been promoting plain packaging online and through billboard advertisements that have sprung up all over the south west of England. It is scandalous that public money is being used to influence the result of a government consultation.
Ultimately, though, this debate is not about tobacco or the alleged misuse of taxpayers’ money, serious though that is. It is about excessive regulation and the infantilisation of society. If public health lobbyists get their way on this alcohol will follow tobacco as night follows day. After that it will be fast food and, yes, even confectionary.
Welcome to a brave new world in which personal choice and individual responsibility are replaced by government diktat imposed by unelected mandarins and supine politicians in Whitehall.
Now that’s plain stupid.