Here's the full page advertisement that provoked "anger" among tobacco control campaigners yesterday.
It was placed in national newspapers and magazines by the tobacco company JTI and shows the result of a Freedom of Information request obtained from the Department of Health.
Correspondence from a civil servant at the DH to his counterpart in Australia reads:
I work on the UK Government's Tobacco Policy Team ... and you will be aware that the UK Government is considering the introduction of plain packaging of tobacco products.
As I'm sure you're aware, one of the difficulties regarding this is that nobody has done this and therefore there isn't any hard evidence to show that it works [my italics]. Therefore, I am wondering whether the Australian government drafted any type of impact assessment or cost analysis in which the likely benefits and costs are measured and if so, whether you would be willing to share this information with us.
It is dated May 10, 2011.
Oddly enough the Advertising Standards Authority announced only last month that it was upholding a complaint against Gallaher, which is part of the JTI group of companies, following a previous series of advertisements.
The DH has airily dismissed JTI's latest advertisement. According to a spokeswoman the correspondence is nearly two years old. "Research and evidence have developed since then and continue to emerge" she told The Grocer.
All I know is that in 2008 the then Labour Government decided not to proceed with plain packaging because ministers accepted there was no hard evidence it would work.
Three years later, undeterred by the sound of tumbleweed and the continued lack of evidence, civil servants decided to revisit the issue and plead for information from their peers Down Under.
It seems pretty desperate, doesn't it? If hard evidence existed anywhere in the world in 2011 I'm sure tobacco control campaigners in the UK would have known about it and passed the information to their friends at the DH.
Meanwhile, here we are in 2013, four months after the introduction of plain packaging in Australia, and we are still waiting for an announcement by the Aussie Government that plain packaging works.
Don't hold your breath, folks.
To download a full size pdf of the new JTI advertisement (above) click here.
See also: Anger as tobacco firm contests benefits of plain packaging , Silk Cut maker fights plain packaging (Daily Telegraph) and Why did ASA uphold complaint against JTI? (Hands Off Our Packs).