The Guardian view on cigarette packaging: smoking out Conservative thinking
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Version 0 of 1. Any veteran nicotine addict will testify that fancy packaging plays no role in the decision to keep smoking. So, it is argued, stripping cartons of their branding will trigger no mass movement to quit. But that isn’t why the government – under pressure from cancer charities, health workers and the Labour party – has agreed to legislate for standardised packaging. The theory is that smoking should be stripped of any residue of glamour to discourage new generations from starting in the first place. Plain packaging would be another step in the reclassification of cigarettes from delectable consumer product to narcotic. Naturally, the tobacco industry is violently opposed. No business likes to admit that it sells addictive poison as a lifestyle choice. That is why government has historically intervened, banning advertising, imposing health warnings and punitive duties. This approach has led over time to a fall in smoking with numbers having roughly halved since the 1970s. Evidence from Australia suggests plain packaging nudges society further along that road. Since tobacco is one of the biggest causes of premature death in the UK, a measure that tames the habit even by a fraction is worth trying. So why has it taken so long? The Department of Health declared its intention to consider the move in November 2010 and consulted through 2012. But the plan was shelved in July 2013. It did not escape notice that a lobbying firm set up by Lynton Crosby, David Cameron’s election campaign director, had previously acted for Philip Morris International. (The prime minister denied there was a connection between his new adviser’s outside interests and the change in legislative programme.) In November 2013, after a superfluous round of additional consultation, health minister Jane Ellison said the government was minded to proceed after all. Now we are told MPs will have a free vote before parliament is dissolved in March. Parliament has in fact already authorised government to tame the tobacco trade. MPs voted overwhelming in favour of Labour amendments to the children and families bill last February that included the power to regulate for plain packaging. With sufficient will in Downing Street this would be done already. But strength of will is the missing ingredient where Mr Cameron and public health are concerned. His attitude to state intervention has looked confused ever since his bizarre 2006 lament that chocolate oranges placed seductively at supermarket checkouts stoked obesity. There is a patrician streak in the prime minister that grasps how market forces and collective public interest are in opposition, but it is not wider than the libertarian streak in his party (aggravated by competition with Ukip) that sees any curtailment of corporate interest as debilitating nanny-statism. So the government has shuffled reluctantly into a sensible public health policy, but with such obvious squeamishness that any political credit due belongs to the opposition. Without sustained external pressure it seems certain Mr Cameron would still be hooked on the interests of big tobacco. |