That TalkRadio interview in full
Friday, May 20, 2016 at 18:25 
Earlier today I spoke to Julia Hartley-Brewer on TalkRadio.
The station has now posted our ten-minute discussion online together with a brief report:
Government legislation forcing cigaratte manufacturers to sell their products in non-branded packaging infantilises adults and is doomed to failure, according to Simon Clark, director of the Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco (Forest).
From today (Friday), all cigarette packets are required by law to be the same size, shape and colour. More than 60 per cent of the surface must be covered with health warnings, and brand names must be written in a standard font rather use easily identifiabe logos.
Legislators believe these steps will help to reduce the number of smokers in the UK, but Clark disagrees.
"We're saying to adults 'we're going to treat you like children'," he told Julia Hartley-Brewer. "We're going to take away all these fancy colours, and produce these cigarettes in plain packaging because we think you're too stupid."
Strict packaging guidelines have already been introduced in Australia, but Clark, who has led FOREST's 'hands off our packs' campaign against the new legislation, believes the change does not have sufficient evidence to support claims of success.
"Smoking rates have continued to fall in Australia, but only in line with historical trends," he said. "There's no evidence [the new packaging] actually works.
"We're going to have less choice, because companies are not going to spend time researching and developing new brands if they can't distinguish them."
Clark also disagrees with claims that children are influenced into smoking by cleverly branded packaging.
"I don't think children do start smoking because of packaging, it's because of peer pressure," he said. "Yes, you want to look cool - but that's the cigarette between the lips, not brandishing a packet of cigarettes."
To listen to the full interview click on the image above or click here.
Reader Comments (8)
I find it quite funny listening to two never smokers hypothesising about why people might have put their cigarettes packets on tables and coming to to the most convoluted explanations.
Cigarette packets were not put on tables to look cool or to show off an expensive brand, it was to stop having to rummage around in your pockets for your cigarettes and lighter all night.
Packets of whatever design are only there to hold the cigarettes.
If you decide to see what smoking is like, you ask for one to try regardless of brand, and you may well stick to your friend's choice until someone offers you a cigarette you find you like better.
Then having seen the packet it came from, you know what to ask for at the shop.
No mystery, no psychology about it, coloured packaging is to help you differentiate between one packet and another, like different colours on different brands of biscuit.
There is no point in tying yourselves in knots looking for ulterior motives. All manufacturers of all kinds of products try to make the packaging look attractive so you are more likely to buy their product out of a range of many.
You would do well to take note of anything Rose has to say on the subject, Simon. She is our Miss Marple, and as well as having extensive knowledge of the subject at hand (extending to the positively arcane) has an uncanny knack of cutting through all the verbiage and getting to the heart of the matter.
And in this instance, she is absolutely on the nail. Unless someone is trying to impress with something wildly exotic, cigarette packs are just boxes which contain your cigarettes, or the pouch which contains your tobacco. It's nice to have an aesthetically pleasing design on the pack, but the miserablists have done their utmost to uglify everything to do with smoking anyway, with their photoshopped medico-porn plastered all over the packs (not that it stops anyone from smoking - it just makes the packs unpleasant to look at). I long ago invested in a very nice leather pouch for my tobacco so I don't have to look at their stupid, hyperbolic and misleading 'warnings' anyway. Not that we're likely to be subjected to the moronic idiocy of PP here. We don't even have the grotesque pictorial imaginings of the TC mafia on packs here.
Did either of you listen to the full 10-minute interview? That's largely what I said, but thanks for the advice!
I did indeed, Simon and I have just listened to it again to see if I was mistaken.
So non smokers think we smoke to look cool do they?
Well at least that is an insight into the relentless attack on packaging.
Tell me Simon, did you have you first glass of beer to look cool, or was it because you wanted to know what beer tasted like?
It wasn't peer pressure that persuaded me to try my first cigarette, I thought it was a pointless practice, it was that anti-tobacco kept making statements about the contents of tobacco that I knew to be false and I wanted to know what they were hiding.
It turns out that they weren't hiding anything, the science really was that derisory and done solely in repeated attempts to prove an old belief that the public did not share.
Perhaps the passage of time and constant repetition has given the theory a dignity it just doesn't deserve.
After all, it is only recently that the saturated fat theory has been disproved and been found to be the product of one man's obsession, cherry picking only the studies that suited his belief and who became so powerful that he and his followers could stifle all dissent and ruin the diet of nations, including ours.
Having listened to Julia Hartley-Brewer once again, I see that she devoutly believes in the Smoking Ban heart attack miracles and bases her arguments on them, apparently heart attacks "plummetted"
Here is the evaluation of a real antismoking epidemiologist.
Official Data Show No Effect of England's Smoking Ban on Heart Attack Admissions During First Nine Months
February 26, 2009
"We now have large population-based studies in England, Wales, and Scotland which fail to show any immediate effect of smoking bans on heart attacks. In light of these studies, which are based on very large sample sizes and which include all hospitals in the relevant areas, it is impossible to stick with the conclusion that smoking bans lead to dramatic, immediate reductions in heart attacks.
It will be interesting to see whether anti-smoking groups in England and elsewhere retract their earlier claims in light of these new data.
As John Maynard Keynes said: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"
My suspicion is that the anti-smoking groups will not change with the facts. Based on my experience, they will stick with their premature and inaccurate claims and shift the debate over to the character and integrity of those who are pointing out these conflicting data. They will not deal with the substance of these new findings"
http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/official-data-show-no-effect-of.html
Perhaps you will disabuse her of her mistaken belief next time you speak to her.
Rose, I think it's silly to pick apart every comment in interviews like this. We're both talking without a script, responding to each other's comments. Re smoking and drinking, there are a number of reasons why teenagers smoke and drink. For some teenagers one of the reasons is to look cool. (Sometimes this is referred to as peer pressure.) There are other reasons (I made the point that when I tried smoking I preferred one particular brand because of its taste) but there's never time in these interviews to discuss everything in any detail. Try it sometime.
I appreciate the problem, Simon, but you are speaking on our behalf. If you can't instantly refute such accusations, you are left a sitting duck, pleading a hopeless cause.
I think we smokers only got in this mess because we were far too polite and understanding of other people's right to a different view. Look where that got us.
Thank you for the advice!