Why a plain packaging U-turn from UK.gov could cost £3bn a year According to friendly "leaks" passed to newspapers overnight, the government may force cigarette manufacturers to sell their wares in plain packaging after yet another review, despite rejecting the policy earlier this year. But the gambit is unlikely to withstand the scrutiny of the Chancellor. Why? Plain packaging legislation …
(bias admitted: I smoke. No, not near you).
an opinion poll of Aussie smokers in which 80 per cent say they were more likely to give up
I loved that "study" when I first saw it. And so good is it that the UK Gov fell for its charms ... Actually, the UK Gov falling for it, isn't too notable either way, is it?
But anyway: Said survey was done very quickly after the "Playing Card" style packs were mandated. Said packs have just been updated, with arguebly slightly less gruesome pics (which must have upset the burjoining cigerette-case industry, which had seen a revival since it's demise in the 1940s).
(I do hope we see Bryan again, though ... I am missing Bryan already)
As Dear Old A says, in the article, the study informed us that 80% of smokers thought it more likely they would give up now the packs don't look like sweets (or possibly kinder eggs ... or maybe Barbie dolls? No, got to be iPhones then, right? No ... well I don't know then; I'm not a kid!).
Anyway ... I consider giving up every morning, micro-seconds after coughing up most of what remains of my lungs; but I can't say the packaging has effected that, because I'm half-blind from the smoking induced cateracts.
Now, I could spend a good few minutes setting out exactly why only people who are elected to the UK Parliament, are going to think that the Playing Cards have actually reduced anything at all (never mind smoking). But I won't, because if you can't work it out for yourself, then you probably are a ex-smoker who gave up because of the pictures on the packets or a member of the UK government ... and I don't see why you should waste any more of your taxpayers' contributions paying for someone to read my thoughts to you..
What I will say is HOORAH! for the (gone) Aussie Government who have very helpfully - and f**king finally!! - created a black-market for ciggies (or durries, if you live near me ... no, I don't know why ...). I was stunned, when we arrived over here, that I was expected to go to a shop - with signs over the door and everything - to pay my additional taxes, when back 'ome that practice had died out along with school children working down the pit. So well done that Welsh woman with the annoying voice; this is saving me a small fortune.
... It's how you say it.
where everyone smokes, its not socially unacceptable and you can smoke just about anywhere.
I love seeing people visit from Europe and America and watch them spasm as they comprehend the reality of it all.
This story only shows the duplicity of politicians. They want the vote of the anti-smokers, but they also want the cash from the smokers.
As a smoker, you can treat like a human and i will give you my tax, but as it is - being labelled as social evil, i would do everything i can to avoid the UK government getting my tax from smoking (including leaving the country).
Read the disclaimer by KPMG.
"This report on illicit tobacco consumption in Australia (“Report") has been prepared by KPMG LLP in accordance with specific terms of reference (“terms of reference") agreed between British American Tobacco Australia, Philip Morris Limited and Imperial Tobacco Australia Limited “the Addressees”, and KPMG LLP."
Translation: We give you the answer (term of ref: focus on this, ignore that)
KPMG produce the report.
KPMG gets large FEE
TheReg gives Big Tobacco the headline it wants.
Potentially that's a good thing if people are smoking less. But if they're just buying bootleg packs instead, the revenue can be made up by having a £200/packet fine for anyone found in possesion of said bootlegs. (£500/packet for second offence) - and possibly a generous reward for anyone tipping off HMRC to anyone selling them
if cigarettes are *that* bad for you, then why aren't they illegal ? After all we're told that cannabis (for example is illegal). And nobody has ever died from cannabis[1]. Yet thousands die EACH YEAR from tobacco.
Just highlights the hypocrisy at the heart of our society. We don't make laws based on evidence and fact. We enforce someone elses morality on society.
When the smoking ban came in, I did some quick calculations based on personal observation of how much less people were smoking, and how many had given up. Those figures equate to a loss to the treasury. ISTR it worked out north of £100 million a year. I couldn't factor in the increased costs to the treasury of (a) more people claiming their pensions and (b) older people needing more expensive healthcare, but I would hazard a guess it will be at least equal to the lost £100 million, and slowly growing (as more people giving up get older).
So that's around £200 million a year the government needs to find from other sources. Hello non-smokers.
I suspect if the government had been honest and said "are you prepared to pay 5% extra VAT[2] to plug the loss of revenue from tobacco", there would have been an awful lot less people so keen.
Personally I smoke 3 hand rolled cigarettes a day. Not so fussed by the smoking ban, but it could have been made a bit more flexible.
[1]Please don't post a link to that moronic coroner who recorded a death due to cannabis. No doctor believes him.
[2]What ? Why do you think we've already been warned that VAT increase will never be reversed ?
When the ex-smoking MP Luciana Berger was interviewed about plain packaging, she was asked what had caused her to start smoking. I was interested what she would say next - if she said it wasn't the packaging she would harm her point, if she said it was because the packages looked nice she would come across as a bimbling simpleton.
The quote she gave was "The packages I remember very clearly. They were very shiny...they were alluring". My confidence remains uninspired.
First of all, with smoking being banned in so many indoor places, smokers now congregate outside. And in Oz you can do that all year around. So kids get exposed to SEEING a lot more people smoking and enjoying it. In fact it looks like it's done by a LOT of people, not just say Dad and 2 visitors at home. This makes it a more socially acceptable activity.
A few years before the plain packaging, they did something really stupid. They removed the (up to then compulsory) labeling about the nicotine content. The explanation was , young people would think it was ok to smoke as long as they smoked a weak one.
The reality was, a lot of SMOKERS of strong cigarettes, say 16mg ones, were cutting down to weaker ones, 12s and maybe later 8s. Not giving up, but at least cutting down. Many gradually cut down by 2 levels. This reduces the level of addiction and makes it easier to gradually stop altogether. Then they took the numbers off. Now a kid starts up, he might start on 16s for all he knows, and get hooked in a week. If he names a brand and the shopkeeper asks which one? blue? green? grey? gold? the kid says "gold sounds best", Yeah guess what? that is the strongest.. Yes they still have COLOURS written on them, to HIDE the strength.
Every tobacconist shop sells fakes and imports under the counter; you just have to ask for them when there's nobody else in the shop to hear. They're about half the price of the "real" ones. Most have more real tobacco and less fillers and chemicals than the "real", too. Some now come in proper looking "plain" packaging as well, the selling point being the price.
Yeah, sure, I'm going to give up possibly the most addictive substance available legally or otherwise not because I'm worried about my health, not because I'm worried my kids will become smokers, not because I don't want to pass secondhand smoke to those around me, not because I despise paying the taxes.. after all let's face it, despite all these reasons I'm still lighting up 20 a day.
No I'm going to give up because I don't like white boxes.
FFS really? People who had even the slightest inclination in believing that plain boxes would convince smokers to give up have to be this stupid on purpose..
@Dropper - "FFS really?"
No, not really.
Reading the Aus Dept of Health website, the goals are to:
While the article is right to highlight the non-definitive nature of survey results, it is interesting to note that during the implementation, a survey found that almost twice the number of smokers using plain packaging believed the cigarettes to be of lower quality than the previous year, compared with those still using branded packaging. A similar result was shown for satisfaction with the product - those using plain packaging were twice as dissatisfied as those with branded packets.
Worth noting is that the report very clearly made the disclaimer that it could not determine if the result was due to the plain packaging itself or the now more prominent health warnings. You will note that that still fits the government's goals for the legislation.
Your argument is a strawman - you ignore the fact that anti-smoking measures are multi-pronged as what works to encourage one person to quit, cut-down or never start, is not necessarily the same as the next person. That's why, in that same term of government, duties were raised, with plans for further, predictable raisies (12.5% over CPI from 2014); Internet advertising was banned; cigarettes must now be kept out of sight at counters; over $100m was allocated to address Indigenous smoking; bans on outside smoking were widened - including beaches, playgrounds and restaraunt seating; $135m was allocated for additional media campaigns; The duty-free allowance was significantly reduced; penalties for tobacco smuggling were increased; and Additional nicotine replacement therapies were approved for subsidy under the PBS.
No one serious about reducing smoking believes any one measure will be broadly effective in isolation and that is why the government did not pass this legislation in the hopes that it, alone, would be some silver-bullet. The tobacco companies, of course, argue the case with that deliberately false assumption. But then those tobacco companies have recently tried to fight this legislation with two diametrically opposed reports - that the ban has not affected legal sales, but somehow has managed to increase the incidence of illicit tobacco use.
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