Plain ugly

Thursday February 16, 2012

‘Plain packaging’ for tobacco will inflict grotesque images on children and the wider public to little purpose, says Martin Cullip

Plans are soon to be announced by the Department of Health to obscure tobacco behind what is euphemistically termed “plain packaging”, with a consultation tabled for spring 2012 which will undoubtedly attract responses from the many factions of the state-funded public health community.

In truth, there is very little ‘plain’ about their intentions. If Australia’s lead is to be copied, the UK will soon see smokers subjected to their freely chosen branding being vandalised by super-sized gross images of rotting lungs, near-disembodied eyeballs and dead bodies.

It is ironic that children are forbidden by the Advertising Standards Authority from viewing bus stop advertisements for adult films which contain gore and mutilation, on the understandable premise that they might experience nightmares, or just be plain scared. Yet the same rules dissipate where tobacco is involved, in spite of the mental torture being potentially far more acute for a child who is convinced by such images that their parents will succumb to devastating disease and disfigurement if they indulge occasionally in the dreaded weed.

Without doubt, nothing could be more stressful to a child than having their worst fears played upon by those who have a deep-seated hatred for smoking, or are paid to exhibit one.

For a lobbying body funded by our taxes, it is already an abuse of public health’s duty of care to children that they encourage this kind of gory propaganda to advance their ends, but plain packaging is designed purposely to raise the irrational, and uncaring, horror to a whole new level.

Since the Australian government passed their ground-breaking legislation, the devil in the detail has emerged in the form of the world’s largest graphic pictorial warnings. It was recently announced, to tumultuous self-congratulation, that Australia would soon be able to boast of a world first; ghastly colour images of mutilation and death on 75% of the front, and 90% of the back of cigarette packs. Perhaps if they were being more honest, they might have presented the measure to their parliament as “disgusting packaging” rather than plain. It may not have been politically expedient, but the Australian public may at least have had a true idea of what was to come.

Having overcome objection in their own country by way of clever social marketing, Australian anti-smokers, by their own admission, are now acting as trail-blazers for identical legislation elsewhere. We in the UK would be jejune and overly trusting if we were to believe that our politicians and public sector bodies are more possessed of common sense and perspective than our antipodean cousins.

Indeed, an EU consultation from last year on the future for tobacco control is transparently frank about what they hope to achieve in our name. Despite admitting that “hard empirical evidence is impossible” to assess the effectiveness of withdrawing branding in favour of images Hammer Horror films would have shied away from, the document is adamant that it should be enacted anyway.

Disappointingly, although this is a European paper, the UK is lauded throughout as being a shining example of compliance, so we must assume that the plain packaging proposals will also be faithfully embraced by Westminster without any noticeable clamour from those not already in their pay.

Spookily, the EU enthuses that if branding were to be removed, it is possible that 75% of the front, and 90% of the back of cigarette packets could be solely devoted to images that TV companies would hesitate to broadcast before the watershed – precisely the specifications that Australian lawmakers are now trumpeting as a huge success. Though how one can term ugly and terrifying images being foisted on their citizens a success is something only the most objectionable in our society will understand.

The EU consultation baldly states that “plain packaging would supplement the introduction of pictorial warnings and reinforce their effect”. All well and good if the pictorial warnings had been proven to work, but since being implemented in the UK in 2008, there has been no downward movement in the number of smokers, a fact that has been documented by frustrated tobacco control advocates themselves.

This shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. Evidence promoting the efficacy of pictorial warnings is very thin on the ground and eclipsed by studies proving apathy or resistance. Smokers, young and old, are in reality turned off the message by shock tactics, responding by ignoring them or, worse, rebelling.

All things considered, plain packaging promises paternal government of the very worst kind and should be rejected in a free society.

There is no evidence that it will drive down smoking rates, it sets an alarming precedent for similar moves against other ‘unhealthy’ products, and is an abuse of the trust we hold in our representatives to make life more pleasant, rather than derelict and objectionable.

Those campaigning for this dictatorial development like to call it ‘plain’, while everyone else would just view it as plain ugly.