Why the plain packaging consultation is deeply flawed


The long-awaited UK consultation on plain packaging was announced by Health Secretary Andrew Lansley in April and will end next month. The Conservatives, who had strongly opposed both tobacco display bans and plain packaging while they were in opposition, have apparently, now that they are in government, discovered the ‘truth’ about plain packaging. Despite the Health Secretary’s claims of open mindedness and objectivity about plain packaging, pending the outcome of the consultation, it seems that he and his department have already concluded that the time is right for such a measure.

The best evidence for this is the flawed nature of the consultation process, which seems designed to produce the ‘desired’ result. Certainly it violates the government’s own principles about risk assessment and principled regulation. These principles demand that regulation be founded on clear evidence which demonstrates that any new regulation, such as plain packaging, is both necessary and will work, that regulations be proportionate and that the regulatory process be objective, open and transparent.

The consultation violates almost every one of these principles. To begin with, it is not objective. In particular, the choice of a partisan of plain packaging to head a review of the evidence supporting plain packaging makes a mockery of objectivity. For this reason alone the consultation should be abandoned. Both the government and the anti-tobacco lobby are quick to denounce any plain packaging research that is supported by the tobacco industry, on the grounds that the source of funding inevitably corrupts the results. But apparently this ‘principle’ does not apply to government funding of pro-plain pack advocates.

Obviously this does not follow. If the principle that the quality of research is compromised by the source of its funding is true for the tobacco industry, it also true for the anti-tobacco industry. Indeed, it is instructive that the consultation requires that ‘all respondents disclose whether they have any direct or indirect link to, or receive funding from, the tobacco industry.’ Respondents with direct or indirect funding links to the government or the public health community or to the anti-tobacco movement are not required to disclose these links, even though, on the logic of the requirement, their funding might as easily prejudice their response as a link to the tobacco industry.

But the consultation not only fails to meet the standard of objectivity, it also completely fails in its evidence base to provide any compelling evidence that plain packaging is necessary and that it will work – two key regulatory requirements.

Finally, the consultation fails the test of proportionality, the requirement that regulation is justified after balancing the gravity of the risk which the regulation addresses against the appropriateness of the proposed mitigation.

The problem with plain packaging and proportionality is that the evidence base for plain packaging fails to provide any compelling scientific evidence that tobacco packaging as opposed to tobacco smoking is a significant problem. The proponents of plain packaging assume that tobacco packaging is a problem because, well, it is a form of tobacco advertising and we all know that that is a problem. But, of course, we don’t know that at all. Indeed, recent work from Nobel Prize winner James Heckman of the University of Chicago along with studies by, for instance, Capella et al., have shown that tobacco advertising has a statistically insignificant effect on smoking initiation and tobacco consumption.

Indeed, this consultation once again points tobacco control in the wrong direction and works to prevent it from actually doing anything meaningful about preventing smoking in the UK. At its unexamined core is the fundamental assumption that plain packaging is largely about eliminating the last remaining bit of tobacco promotion. And this is crucial since, according to this account, tobacco advertising is one of the major, if not the major reason that kids begin to smoke and adults continue to smoke and fail to stop.

But what if this crucial assumption which underpins plain packaging and drives the debate is in fact wrong? The econometric evidence has long failed to support the claim that tobacco advertising drives smoking initiation and consumption. And in recent years the second-line defence of this claim – namely studies of adolescent recall about advertising exposure and smoking initiation – has been thoroughly discredited.

A growing body of evidence does show, however, that the root causes of smoking are best explained by the social determinants of health. According to this perspective, the root causes of smoking are not to be found in such things as advertising or indeed, tobacco packaging, but in economic, social and educational deprivation. In effect the poor in Britain and elsewhere smoke because they are poor; they are not poor because they smoke.

The flawed DOH consultation, however, with its wrong-headed focus on tobacco promotion and packaging, fails to address any of this. It therefore represents a policy failure of spectacular proportions, consigning both current and future smokers to a policy void which does nothing to prevent or stop them smoking. And that is something that is profoundly immoral.


6 thoughts on “Why the plain packaging consultation is deeply flawed”

  1. Posted 10/07/2012 at 11:26 | Permalink
  2. Posted 10/07/2012 at 20:24 | Permalink

    I’m pretty sure that Chanel, Playboy and a lot of Chinese factories are already designing neat stylish cigarette cases that will end up being must-have accessories, turning what has been rather garish packaging into true status symbols to complete one’s look.

    So, there is a third lobby to consider here — the fashion and jewelry industry who no doubt will LOVE having an entire new product line to market.

  3. Posted 10/07/2012 at 21:20 | Permalink

    Helpful Harry:
    Following on from the logic of the article, perhaps ‘Tobaccotactics’ should be open and honest about the source of its funding and the particular proclivities of its members as well? Perhaps you should make clear that it is run by a bunch of anti-tobacco ‘academics’ (led by the anti smoking campaigner Anna Gilmore) based at the Uni of Bath who use tax-payer funded research grant money to put together this propaganda website rather than using it to conduct academic research. Their money comes from the UK govt and the EU, both of whom have a long-standing anti-smoking agenda. Based on this, Tobaccotactics looks dirtier than the IEA to me.

  4. Posted 11/07/2012 at 19:17 | Permalink

    All those “fun facts” even pre-date me at the IEA! The Scruton incident came as a genuine surprise and we (before my time) held our hands up and changed our policy and now ask all monograph authors to declare interests. Out of about 4,000 publications in nearly 60 years, there have been rather few about tobacco given that it is one product that is so far from resembling a market economy and has become more and more regulated in the last 30 years.

  5. Posted 11/07/2012 at 19:55 | Permalink

    If you wast to find out more about those pushing the tobacco control agenda through pseudo science funded by you and me then go here: http://tctactics.org/index.php/Main_Page

    Chris Snowdon also has some nice posts revealing the flaws in their evidence: http://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/latest-smoking-banheart-attack-study-is.html

  6. Posted 25/07/2012 at 19:27 | Permalink

    Hi, many, many thanks for taking the time to share.. It was useful for Pacakging Connections team. Thanks for all of your hard work! I enjoy your weblog and will sign up to your feed so I will not miss anything. Fantastic content.

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