Tobacco companies are digging in to battle a possible UK ban on one of their profitable marketing tools: Cigarette Packaging. The UK’s Dept of Health declared that it might consider mandating universal packaging for all cigarettes as an element of a campaign to split smoking rates by 2020. Cigarette packs would be either white or brown, with only the name brand written in simple type, with no logos or colors. The packs would still carry the giant health warnings on the front.
Health officials called colorful packing the “silent salesmen” for brands like marsh wheeling cigars and declared evidence suggesting that without it, consumers may be rather likely to notice the health warnings and less likely to wrongly believe that some cigarettes are less dangerous. Other countries, including Canada, have considered requiring plain packaging, but among heavy industry resistance, has failed to do so.
The UK stated it would carefully consider the case for plain packing, along with the legal implications of the restrictions for IP rights and liberty of trade. The tobacco industry was quick to voice its intention to guard those rights. UK American Tobacco declared the UK would have a massive fight on its hands if it tried to ban current packaging.
An Imperial Tobacco Group PLC spokesperson cited the longstanding position on plain packaging. That it would expropriate valuable corporate assets in which the company and its investors have invested in for more than a century.
This could possible place the UK government in breach of a range of legal and treaty obligations. Phillip Morris and other cigarette makers argued that there isn’t any evidence that plain packaging reduces smoking rates. But the health policy experts laughed at the idea that plain packaging wouldn’t reduce smoking.