Lib Dems (and ASH) want plain packaging
Friday, September 4, 2009 Politics.co.uk reports that "Pressure is growing for the government to rid cigarette packets of their designs and branding ahead of a parliamentary vote next month. The Liberal Democrats are trying to reintroduce an amendment to the health bill – due to be debated on the day parliament returns from summer recess – calling for the government to scrap cigarette pack designs."
The story is in response to a news release from ASH which claims that:
New research from the University of Nottingham published today shows that tobacco branding and packaging send misleading ‘smoke signals’ to young people and to adult smokers.
Participants in the Nottingham study were shown pairs of cigarette packs and asked to compare them on five measures: taste, tar delivery, health risk, attractiveness, and either ease of quitting (adults) or which they would choose if trying smoking (children).
Adults and children were significantly more likely to rate packs with the terms 'light', 'smooth', 'silver' and 'gold' as lower tar, lower health risk and either easier to quit (adults) or their choice of pack if trying smoking (children).
More than half of adults and youth reported that brands labelled as 'smooth' were less harmful than the 'regular' variety.
The colour of packs was also associated with perceptions of risk and brand appeal. For example, compared to packs with a red logo, cigarettes in packs with a gold logo were rated as a lower health risk by 53 per cent of people and easier to quit by 31 per cent of adult smokers.
I'd be interested to know what the smokers who read this blog have to say about these findings.
Full story HERE. It includes my reaction.
Simon Clark
I am told that the Lib Dems tabled an amendment to the Health Bill calling for plain packaging but this has now been removed. To the best of our knowledge, however, the party's health spokesman Sandra Gidley remains an advocate of plain packaging which brings to mind the title of our event at last year's Lib Dem conference: "How liberal are the Liberal Democrats?"
Reader Comments (64)
Forsooth, Muche more of this, I warrant, and wee shalle have Master Simon Clark deafing our eares in Cholere, for straying off Topike, and breedeing gravell in his Kidneyes!
Oh dear, I think I'm disobeying an old instinct which says : 'If in doubt leave it out'. The last thing I would wish to do is to pillory a very pleasant young woman at my local supermarket branch with whom I have occasionally chatted in a friendly way at the checkout over the past several months or more. Today she found herself at the section which also sells tobacco. In my view the branch treats its smoker customers with indifference (at best) because it has incorporated the tobacco sales with the quick checkout stations. I get my pipe tobacco mainly on line but the post is playing up and I decided to buy a precautionary packet at the supermarket. The young woman went from her checkout point to the tobacco shelves and found what I wanted. 'You smoke?' she asked. 'Yes', I replied. I should add that she is from somewhere in Europe, so this all may be a matter of language. 'I smoke a pipe', I added. 'What is a pipe?' she asked. 'Is it a wooden stick?' She also asked whether it was like a cigar
It's jolly difficult to describe a pipe...
At risk of causing alarm and despondency it seems to me that social engineering has worked if a woman in her thirties (at most), even if her English is not her first language, has never come across a tobacco pipe. It was a symbol for 'P' in my childhood reading books.
I think the denormalisation of pipe smoking was a major strategic triumph on the part of the fanatics.
My two cents on plain packaging...
The plain packaging ruse
Patsy Nurse brought the bacon home from the UKIP conference, UKIP now want ASH disbanded.
"MOTION CARRIED TO END SMOKE FREE BURDEN ON TAXPAYERS."
http://networkedblogs.com/p11040980?ref=mf
Rose.
What a delightful snippet you sent us about Tobacco Gardens. I'd love to buy the book. I'd love to buy some tobacco seed too. Any ideas?
What a wonderful thing, everybody, that despite the horrors of the Nanny (Bully) State, we can still keep a sense of humour.
Would that the Ash, CRUK, etc people could see the comical nature of their blandishments!
Do you know, I had this thought only this evening. (As you know, I am always having thoungts!).
I have often wondered why MPs vote the way that they do, regardless of the evidence or lack of evidence for what they decide.
I was looking at this picture in the DT of Ban Ki-moon , Secretary Gen of the UN standing on the arctic ice. He says that Arctic ice is melting at a rate of 10 billion tons per an. I asked myself, where does he get his evidence from. And then it struck me. He doesn't! Nor is he bothered! He just says whatever it is that he wants to believe!
Transfer this idea to our own politicians and ask, "Why on Earth did they vote for the total smoking ban?" and you suddenly realise why. The fact of the matter, regardless of the science, is that they simply wanted too!
How can this process be rational?
Well, the way they see it is that they were voted into office by the people to vote for things according to the whims of their gut instict. No need to weigh up the evidence. Just vote as you feel fit.
The same applies to the EU. Think about the light bulbs fiasco. How did it occur? Well, a few powerful people had a gut feeling that incandescent bulbs were bad. So let's get rid of them chaps!
The whole thing is no different from James 1st (or 2nd) or whatever.
THE EARTH IS FLAT!
Margot
The extract is from - Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden: Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians, I checked and surprisingly,though it was first published in 1917, its available on Amazon.
If you copy and paste this link -
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/buffalo/garden/garden.html
You can read the whole thing.
I tested her instructions on tobacco blossoms and they work, so now I am following her advice on what to do with sunflowers.
Just google "tobacco seeds" and you will find so many varieties available that its hard to know which to buy.
I recommend Virginia for its sheer beauty.
A plant as tall as me, with large spring green leaves and huge heads of pink blossoms like small petunias, and it flowers for months.
Treat it as a half-hardy annual.
And to continue on matters scottish... and as to who is backing the Yes propaganda outfit on Lisbon.
It turns out that the reason for the release of the mass murderer Megrahi the Lockerbie bomber, was a deal between Libya and BP for an oil deal worth 630million.
Peter Sutherland an irish wealthy banker and lobbyist in Brussels and who, up to last Tuesday, was the chairman of BP and who is also chairman of Goldman Sachs International, and whose man made a secret deal six months before the release to achieve a trade deal with Libya worth 17billion for Mr Sutherland's BP, happens to be a patron of Ireland-for-Europe.
Seems that the Yes-to-Europe brigade have no problem with a colleague who gets deals worth billions resulting in the release of a killer of 270 people in a fireball over Scotland.
Margot et al -
If you haven't read it, there's an interesting chapter on tobacco-growing at the end of Iain Gateley's wonderful celebration of Our Favourite Vice - 'La Diva Nicotina'.
You can also get details online from:
http://www.coffinails.com/
The joy of grow-your-own was that it USED to be excise-free.
Then the EU stuck its little nose in, and decided that it SHOULD be taxed. Naturally, HM Government had to implement this far-sighted decision - which it did in 2001.
Here's a depressingly familiar snippet from Mr Prodnose at Customs and Excise:
"Nor is it an attempt to generate revenue from a previously untaxed product. Tobacco use is detrimental to health with significant wider social costs. Growing tobacco at home for personal consumption has, potentially, particularly adverse health consequences as its manufacture is totally unregulated and is not subject to the same limits on tar and nicotine levels as commercially produced tobacco. It is appropriate, therefore, to deter such tobacco consumption in the same way as the Government seek to deter consumption of commercially produced tobacco."
"Wider social costs". Got that, Children ?
Makes your heart glow with pride...........
Do we all see the absolute non-sequitur of Mr Prodnose's statement?
A precis of his statement would be:
"We believe that growing your own tobacco is dangerous because tobacco smoking is dangerous and especially so when the 'strength' of the tobacco is unregulated. Therefore, we will tax it (although we do not actually want the money)."
Let's try this arguement on something else.
"We believe that amateur football is dangerous because playing football is dangerous. At least the professional game is regulated and these professional footballers pay a hefty extra Health Premium. So, we have decided to charge a Health Premium on these amateur footballers. We do not want to actually collect the money because it would be too difficult and too time consuming, but we have done it anyway. Up yours."
Junican -
Yes, cunning - the way these people slip in an ASSUMPTION (which few seem willing or able to question), and then build an entire argument upon it.
It might be better for us all if they replaced pointless Sex Education in our schools with a compulsory one - year course in Logic.
In time, Thinking may actually catch on..................
Even among reporters.
Mind you, it's probably because more people ARE beginning to catch on to all these frauds, that The Experts have increasingly come to rely upon The Precautionary Principle (as I mentioned in an earlier post).
Its use can usually be taken as a sign of intellectual weakness - if not downright cowardice...............
Much as the frequent insertion of that ghastly Weasel Word 'APPROPRIATE' into the dead prose of our apparatchiks.
I think the crucial part of the advice is this bit -
"You may wish to point out to your customers that duty only becomes due once the tobacco can be smoked i.e. when the cured tobacco leaves have been shredded.
There is no duty on tobacco seeds, which are quite legal to buy, or on the tobacco plants themselves"
Unless the law has changed, that means that its fine to grow the plant as an ornamental, or for study.
If I remember correctly tax comes into play at 1 kilo of good quality cigarette tobacco, but thats dry weight and highly unlikely anyway.
Rose2 -
Thanks for that.
The reason I mentioned the non-ornamental use for tobacco is that - having read Iain Gateley's book - I slowly nurtured the fantasy of organising a tobacco-growing co-operative that could satisfy the needs of all its members, AND stick two fingers up to Nanny and the Excise Man.
A lovely dream, though............
Martin V
By mentioning the words 'Sex Education' you open up a whole hornet's nest of ideas. Did you intend that?
Do you REALLY mean that sex education should include actual, physical sex demonstrations for sixth formers? What an interesting thought!
Oddly enough,this thought is a damn sight more interesting than one might think.
I do not know quite how to put it.
I will try, but please understand that I am just thinking thoughts!
If it is correct to show lungs which have supposedly been corrupted by tobacco smoke, is it not therefore correct to show genitalia which have been corrupted by sexually transmitted diseases?
Should not the British Medical Association be pushing for such demonstrations? And should not the BMA be pushing for the abolition of yer actual sexual intercourse on the grounds that it is dangerous from a health point of view? Surely, impregnation can be achieved in a much more healthy way than this dangerous, unhealthy physical thing?
LEGISLATE AGAINST THIS FILTHY, UNHEALTHY ACTIVITY! EXTOL THE VIRTUES OF 'IN VITRIO' FERTILISATION! INSTALL LOCAL AUTHORITY CAMERAS IN EVERY HOME AND EVERY HOTEL ROOM!
PROTECT THE CHILDREN!
This is the way in which the government is going, but they cannot see it.