No choice, no quality, worse tobacco

Wednesday February 8, 2012

The ‘plain packaging’ campaign reminds Simon Hills of a journey through Soviet Russia

The heart of every free-minded person should sink at the idea of a ‘consultation’ on forcing tobacco manufacturers to sell cigarettes in plain packaging.

Already there is a campaign. Plain Packs Protect is an alliance of mainly state-funded anti-smoking pressure groups dedicated to firing a constant broadside against a legitimate industry and 25 per cent of the adult population. History tells us that they’ll get their way − a consultation is nothing more than a series of questions used to justify the unjustifiable.

I remember the ‘consultation’ on the London Congestion Charge. Questions were along the lines of: ‘Do you want traffic to move more quickly across central London?’ Like, er, no, I wouldn’t. I’d like traffic to be reduced to a crawl. The question: ‘Do you think motorists should pay again and again to drive on the streets they’ve already paid for 100 times over?’ was conspicuously absent.

Similarly, the first question on the HS2 railway consultation was: ‘Do you agree that there is a strong case for enhancing the capacity and performance of Britain’s inter-city rail network to support economic growth over the coming decades?’ Well, no, I’d like it to deteriorate, if that’s OK by you. Even when a consultation document asks a direct question (rarely), it doesn’t mean diddly squat anyway. The consultation for the HS2 rail link asked: ‘Do you agree with the principles and specification used by HS2 Ltd to underpin its proposals for new high speed lines and the route selection process HS2 Ltd undertook?’

Agree: 3,136. Disagree: 28,455. Right, we’ll build it then.

Plain Packs Protect doesn’t even have any of these niceties, it just goes straight to the jugular: ‘Every year, another 340,000 children in the UK are tempted to try smoking’, it claims. Despite these figures, taken from what the late Keith Waterhouse called the National Guesstimate Authority, there is rather more evidence that today’s teenagers aren’t that fussed about cigarettes and their lah-di-dah packaging and would much rather plump for cannabis, a product which is a) illegal and b) has very dull packaging indeed.

Indeed, the worst thing about this ‘consultation’ is the way it invokes the helplessness of ickle children, seduced by rapacious big tobacco through a pack of Mayfair with ‘Smoking Kills’ emblazoned all over it. Cast your eye over youngsters waddling out of school of an afternoon, and rarely will you seem them sparking up; the youth of today favour high energy drinks, doughnuts, sweets, burgers and chicken nuggets. Compared to Fifties children this lot are predicted, again by the National Guesstimate Authority, because of their diet and alcohol intake, to die far younger than their counterparts who through their childhood gleefully inhaled secondhand cigarette smoke without a second thought and were constantly tempted by the glamour of a pack of Player’s Weights.

So surely if the argument for cigarettes to be sold in plain packets has any merit, then surely it should apply even more so to these other comestibles. Alcoholic drinks, which sparkle across supermarket shelves, should surely just have the words ‘Beer’, ‘Red Wine’, or ‘White Wine’ across them. Naturally burgers shouldn’t appear nutritious in any way, so McDonald’s and Wimpy should devote 75 per cent of their store front to the form of a health warning, with the other 25 meekly announcing that a cheeseburger can be purchased inside. Taxation, naturally, should at the very least match that for cigarettes.

And what of sweets? These teeth-rotting concoctions of sugar surely shouldn’t have enticing names such as Fizzy Rainbow Stripes, Tutti Frutti and Heart Throbs. Get them in plain paper bags, now, 75 per cent of which to have a picture of fillings.

Remember too there is no such thing as a healthy sausage, and as for croissants, pizzas, Indian takeaways – heart attacks waiting to happen.

Is plain packaging for these proposed? No. Why not? Because they are eaten by the majority. Because there aren’t scores of pressure groups, snarfing huge amounts of public cash, whose livelihoods are dependent on victimising, ostracising and promoting lies about a minority.

My smoking choice is absolutely informed by the packaging. I choose to smoke Winston Blue (they used to be called ‘Lights’, but that word has now been banned) because they have less tar than many brands but still taste strong. That is an informed choice – the choice these same pressure groups are actually demanding for food. For smokers, though, freedom of choice has been turned into some kind of obfuscation by nasty tobacco companies.

One of the most informative journeys I ever made was across the then Soviet Union when Gorbachev was in power. It was a nation for whom big business, whether it was tobacco or life-saving pharmaceuticals, was as desirable as sick. Everything therefore, was sold in plain packaging. No advertisements, no colours. Often, of course, no products – a bit of a drawback when the product was food.

The result was beer so weak it could be bullied by orange juice (although fat chance you’d have of buying any). The vodka was a distillation so noxious it seized your joints, and biscuits tasted of lumps of earth. Meanwhile, compared to the products on tobacconists’ shelves today, cigarettes were one great long roll of cardboard with some stalks at the end, and probably contained more tar than the M1.

The whole point of branding is that the consumer can trust the brand – i.e., when you buy a block of soap from Palmolive you know it’s not going to be a rancid block of whale blubber. So it goes with cigarettes.

It seems not to worry Plain Packaging Direct that the proposal to sell cigarettes in plain packaging means I as a consumer will be forced to buy a product that I have no idea what it contains and will therefore be far worse for my health. Or that selling products in plain packaging has precedent only in the policies and prejudices of the cruellest states in history. Nor has it occurred to them that, without the aid of advertising or branding, the population of the Soviet Union still chose to smoke in droves. And at some point, they were ickle children too.

Simon Hills is associate editor of The Times Magazine and author of Strictly No: How We’re Being Overrun by the Nanny State.