Tobacco decanting, government recanting

Tuesday January 17, 2012

Tom Miers wonders if the ‘plain packaging’ measure will be self-defeating

The arguments over ‘plain packaging’ – where government forces tobacco companies to sell their product without branding – are already well-rehearsed.

The measure is a serious infringement of liberty, and in particular the right of the seller to communicate with his customer. Branding is an important mechanism to establish trust in the marketplace. It encourages the producer to differentiate himself from his competitors by improving his product, and its absence will encourage both smuggling and contraband.

Those who lobby for plain packaging know all this, and they also know that there is little evidence that the measure will discourage smokers in itself. But they hope to further their campaign of ‘denormalising’ smoking and smokers as another step towards eventual prohibition.

But there’s a good chance that ‘plain packaging’ will backfire spectacularly.

The main role of branding in tobacco is to make the product stand out from the competition. Different makes of cigarettes attract loyalty from different customer groups according in part to the brand image. They therefore play a role in the desirability of one tobacco product over another, and customers play into this by displaying the brand in part to reflect their self image. It is very common for smokers to display the product packaging and logo quite prominently.

The importance of the brand is recognised, and used, by anti-tobacco campaigns in the insertion of health warnings and graphic anti-smoking images on packaging. They sit next to the brand, in effect piggy-backing on its effectiveness. The anti’s are saying to the tobacco companies, ‘You want to show of your brand. Well, we recognise its importance too. Wherever you display your logo, there will be a health warning.’

This begs the question, what happens if the brand is taken away? It will have no role to play in differentiating either product or customer. And while ‘plain packaging’ will not preclude the imposition of health warnings on cigarette packs, it will remove any motivation for smokers to keep the packaging – no doubt with even larger and more grotesque health warnings – on display.

Not only will smokers keep their fags out of site (thus presumably lessening the effect of health warnings), but they could well start to cover them up altogether.

There has always been a small market in bespoke cigarette pack covers and cigarette cases, and in the days when tobacco was cheaper people used to keep it in elegant boxes around the house for guests to help themselves to.

It will be interesting to see if such forms of display make a revival, in the same way that carafes and decanters are used to hide the packaging of cheap wine. If a trend like this really took off, the whole campaign to use health warnings would be undermined.

The usual reaction to such unintended consequences is further repression. But it will be difficult even for the keenest legislators to ban cigarette cases.

Australia’s imposition of plain packaging will give the rest of us the opportunity to witness a test case in this absurdity. With luck, such will be the legal challenges, lack of impact, unintended consequences and consequent squabbling among the health lobbyists that the measure will make little further progress around the globe.

Tom Miers is Editor of the Free Society