Analysis: Stark images reignite cigarette pack debate

Rotting lungs, throat cancer and a drooping cigarette are among the images selected by the Department of Health to appear on tobacco packaging in a bid to get the UK’s smokers – some 22% of the population – to “face their demons”. From 1 October, all new tobacco packaging will replace the written warnings that were introduced in 2003 with one of the graphic images. The images have to cover at least 30% of the front and 70% of the back of the pack (see box).

Ann McNeill, a professor at the University of Nottingham School of Community Health Sciences who has extensively researched smoking habits, says the images will be a “constant reminder” of what smoking does. “Tobacco is a unique consumer product in that smokers carry it around and look at it a lot. Research has shown that graphics can be influential and on packaging can be a powerful communicator. But it’s got to be part of an overall tobacco control strategy that includes marketing campaigns.”

Tobacco companies have accepted the ruling to include the images on their packs but remain unconvinced that it will add to the general awareness of the risks involved in smoking. “The government has chosen this as a means of conveying health messages to people, but we would be keen to see an evidence-based argument supporting it,” says Chris Ogden, chief executive of the Tobacco Manufacturers’ Association (TMA).

Plain packs
While manufacturers will adopt the images, they have been much more damning of the idea of the ‘plain’, non-branded packaging that was mooted in the government’s consultation on the future of tobacco control (Packaging News, July 2008).

“No other country that we’re aware of has introduced such as measure, and if the government was going to introduce [a legal requirement for plain tobacco packaging] we’d expect a genuine consultation,” says Ogden. Despite this, plain packs are something that anti-smoking campaigners have been pushing for.

Last month, pressure group Action on Smoking and Health (Ash) published its Beyond Smoking Kills report into tobacco control that called for the prohibition of “any kind of branding” on tobacco packaging to remove misconceptions about product safety. “Companies have redesigned packs using light colours so that people think they are less harmful. We want to remove the branding to break that association in order to stop people being misled,” says Ash research manager Amanda Sandford.

The report includes new research from Professor McNeill surveying 516 adult smokers and 806 smokers and non-smokers aged 11-17. Packs displaying the words ‘smooth’ and ‘gold’ were considered “lower tar and lower health risk” than regular packs, while lighter colours gave the impression of being less harmful or easier to quit. When asked to compare plain versions of packs, where only the brand name was present on a brown or white background, participants were “more likely to indicate there were no differences between the risks of these brands”. “Certainly young people are three to four times as likely to report a preference for a branded pack,” says McNeill.

In response, the tobacco industry is keen to underline its right to protect brand identity in a legitimate retail environment. But its favoured argument seems to be that branded packaging enables retailers to distinguish between authentic and counterfeit products. Last year, £12.6bn was spent on tobacco in the UK. The TMA estimates that 3% of the market is counterfeit products, which would amount to £378m. Simon Evans, spokesman for Imperial Tobacco, says: “Counter-feiting is a significant problem for us and it’s a great concern that if we had a situation where we are putting all cigarettes in the same pack it would increase counterfeiting.”

More harm than good?
Those tobacco packaging manufacturers contacted for this piece declined to comment on the issue, but Packaging News’ online SoapBox forum did elicit a number of responses. Richard Jotcham pointed out that counterfeit products did not have to conform to any regulations. “Introducing plain packs will have a much larger detrimental health and excise revenue than a perception that lighter-coloured packaging is ‘safer’,” he said.

While plain packaging, for now at least, remains off the cards, there are concerns that its introduction could have implications beyond tobacco. British Brands Group director John Noble says that removing branding would mean that brands could only compete on price, and would make it impossible for consumers to know which product to choose. “Branded packs are a very succinct shorthand for product selection,” he says.

“Imagine if a tobacco company developed a product that was genuinely less harmful to your health.

How do you communicate that benefit to the consumer if all the packaging looks the same?”

Smoke signals
“Tobacco packaging has to be beyond reproach, because the product it contains is contentious,” says David Land, director of ink manufacturer DIC Sun Chemical’s global tobacco centre of excellence. Because tobacco can absorb substances, any material used in the packaging, such as the inks, could potentially migrate to the product. “To some extent, tobacco packs have to comply with more stringent standards than pharmaceuticals,” adds Land.

Land works with tobacco firms on product branding. He says although they might scoff at the idea of black-and-white packs, the requirements have forced them to look at printing processes. The new graphic images require more colours and the reduced area for branding means that firms are looking for more eye-catching designs. “Tobacco firms said they want to go with CMYK, which could potentially knock some of the smaller players out of the tobacco printing market,” he says.