22.01.15
MPs to vote on plan cigarette packaging before general election
The government plans to press ahead with legislation that would make the Britain the second country in the world to introduce plain packaging for cigarettes.
Public health minister Jane Ellison said on Wednesday night that the government would give MPs a vote before the election in May on regulations forcing tobacco firms to introduce plain packaging.
She said: “Smoking remains one of our most significant public health challenges. It is a major cause of cancer, heart and respiratory disease and almost 80,000 people in England alone die every year from ill health caused by smoking. It places an enormous strain on the NHS.”
The proposed regulations would specify mandatory colours for retail packaging (dull brown for the outside and white for the inside) and permit only specified text, such as the brand and variant name.
Health warnings would also remain in place on the packages.
Professor Dame Sally Davies, Chief Medical Officer for England, said: “I welcome the government’s backing for this policy. I have reviewed the evidence, and agree that standardised packaging would be a positive move for public health, particularly the role it could play in helping to prevent the uptake of smoking by children.
“We have seen smoking rates decline, but smoking remains the single biggest cause of preventable mortality. We need to keep up our efforts on tobacco control and standardised packaging is an important part of that.”
If approved by Parliament by May, a new law could be in force by 2016.
Wales has already voted to accept any Westminster legislation on the matter. Scotland and Northern Ireland are also expected to vote on whether to back the move.
Australia became the first country to ban all images and words – apart from public health warnings – from cigarette packs in December 2012.
Tobacco groups have spoken out against the plans, with the Tobacco Manufacturers Association saying calls for plain packaging were based on "dogma", not evidence.
The Rothmans-smoking leader of Ukip, Nigel Farage, tweeted out his opposition, calling it an “appalling intrusion into consumer choice”.
UKIP MP Mark Reckless, who defected to the party last year, tweeted: “Plain packs for cigarettes as enshrining overseas aid at .7% GDP unites Cons with left wing quangocrats against public. Only @UKIP will fight.”
But the British Medical Association, which welcomed the government’s decision, said research showed that the policy had deterred smokers.
Its chairman, Dr Mark Porter, said: “There is some evidence [from Australia] that eliminating branding makes it easier for smokers to quit and makes it easier for non-smokers not to relapse and start smoking again and it discourages young people and children from taking up the habit. All of the indications are that this decision has produced good results.”
Professor John Britton, director of the UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies, predicted that the policy would reduce smoking in the long term.
Interviewed on the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he said: “In the first few months of the policy it is going to be a fairly modest effect because this is something that affects particularly children’s uptake of smoking, so it is going to take a year or two to see those trends come through in the figures, but in the long term it will have much more widespread affects because by removing branding from packs and the brand imagery and equity that goes with them we will start to see adult smokers discouraged from the buying the product at all.”
He added: “The value of these brands is perhaps evident in the fact that Imperial Tobacco paid £7bn for a package of brands of which Winston was a key player.”
“What matters here is that it is going to make it harder for tobacco companies to make a profit out of British smokers. And that means the fewer children will take up smoking and that means that fewer lives will be lost to dependence on tobacco.”
Earlier today Dr Mike Knapton, associate medical director at the British Heart Foundation and a member of NHE’s editorial board wrote about the prospect of a smoke-free Britain and the role standardised packaging might play.
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