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Soap Box questioned the validity of putting tobacco products in plain white packaging this week after the publication of the Beyond Smoking Kills report by anti-smoking pressure group Ash.

According to the report plain tobacco packs could "help remove misconceptions about product safety" caused by the use of colour and clever wording on packs.

However, Richard Jotcham refuted these claims on packagingnews.co.uk and argued that plain packs play "directly into the hands of cigarette counterfeiters" as they are far easier to copy.

Design Diva agreed: "Putting cigarettes into plain packaging will make it harder to distinguish between genuine and fake tobacco and could lead to people unwittingly buying fake – and highly dangerous – cigarettes from genuine outlets."

Soap Box regular Pack Man, meanwhile, questioned what impact plain packs would make when most people have a favourite brand, and for those who don't "price seems to be the most important factor when choosing what to smoke".

Newcomer Rex Cess-Pack said that people are quite happy to "mislead themselves fine all on their own" without "pointing fingers 'at 'misleading' pack design.

He concluded: "The deliciously toxic poisons in the cigarettes are the problem, not the packs, and we grown ups should be more than capable of deciding whether a functioning respiratory system is high on our personal agenda without carton converters slashing their ink bills."

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