Opinion: Tobacco packs: promotion may not necessarily mean prevention

There’s no doubt that one of the images in particular is grisly in the extreme; delivering the sort of shock indeed that, perversely enough, will lead some to instinctively want to light up.
Despite all the prevarication, occasional bent science and assorted blah about infringement of civil liberties etc, tobacco is clearly not as healthy as, say, a stick of celery. It kills around 80,000 people each year. En route to the potential end-game that is cancer, heart failure, loss of limbs, emphysema et al, smoking-related illness costs British industry an estimated 34m lost working days and the NHS £2.7bn per annum.

On the upside, of course, smokers bung over £9bn of taxation straight into the Treasury. What hasn’t been calculated either is the ongoing healthcare and welfare cost savings that those unfortunate 80,000 would otherwise have incurred, nor the incremental drain on national resources in prolonging their non-productive time-rich futures.
It invariably tends to get messy when moral imperatives and economic expediencies clash head-on. String together the various stats and demographics, however, and most accountants would probably support the argument for smoking to be made compulsory for everyone aged 55 and over.

Far more people feel passionately about not smoking than those who indulge, which makes this a dicey subject on which to take a position. My bet is that the new labelling will have an initial impact but, thereafter, will go the same way of nutritional advice, apparently disregarded by 75% of the population.

If I’m wrong, however, then this could kick-start a trend for packaging in adding a fifth ‘P’ for prevention to its other attributes of promotion, protection, prolonging and preservation; thus, pictures of obese children on the front of crisps packets; distressed binge-drinkers depicted on bottles of vodka; and images of garrotted turtles on plastic bags.

In the meantime – and just supposing that they haven’t already thought of it – my advice to tobacco manufacturers is to consider promoting discreetly logoed cigarette cases for lifetime use in receipt of 10 returned vouchers and a stamped addressed envelope.

As for me, I’ll hope to sustain a regular flow of overseas trips as opportunities for stocking up on packs of Meharis Sweet Orient at half the price and graphically unadorned. Plus, while I can hazard a reasonable guess at what’s meant by the on-pack warning that ‘rauchen kann tödlich sein’, it doesn’t sound quite so unnerving when intoned in a comic-book German accent.

Conversely, I may just may pack up the habit.

Popular Articles