Peer pressure

A Conservative peer and former government minister wants health warnings on individual cigarettes.

Lord Young of Cookham will tomorrow table a private members’ bill that would require a warning such as ‘Smoking Kills’ to be printed on every cigarette and cigarette paper.

To put this in perspective, it’s not the first time George Young, as he then was, has proposed the idea. The first time was when Margaret Thatcher was in office.

Private members’ bills have little chance of becoming law but the Cigarette Stick Health Warnings Bill is all part of the political circus that tobacco control has created ahead of the announcement of the Government’s new tobacco control plan in the summer.

The plan was due to be announced before recess in July and although that would still appear to be the ambition of public health minister Jo Churchill she has given herself some wriggle-room by saying the Government wants to take into account the latest Office for National Statistics’ figures on smoking rates, due to be published next month, before announcing the new plan.

(I also suspect that the Department of Health and Number Ten may not see eye to eye on the plan so there could be some political infighting going on behind the scenes.)

Meanwhile the idea that health warnings on individual cigarettes will deter people from smoking is laughable.

Thanks to decades of anti-smoking messaging smokers are well aware of the alleged health risks. 

Hidden from display for almost a decade, cigarettes and rolling tobacco are now sold in standardised packaging with graphic and sometimes repugnant health warnings covering most of the pack.

If those measures haven’t stopped people smoking (and I don’t believe they have) why would anyone be persuaded not to smoke by yet another warning on the actual cigarette?

The only thing to take from this is that tobacco control campaigners are running out of ideas and will consider anything, however ridiculous, to achieve their utopian smoke free world.

The Mirror has the story here - Plan to print 'smoking kills' warning on every individual cigarette not just packets.

Update: ASH, naturally, is keen on the idea.