Industry ‘spent millions’ to scupper cigarette-pack plan
Children’s Minister James Reilly revealed the extent of the pressure to scrap the plan during a speech to the World Health Organisation.
At the group’s three-yearly international meeting on tobacco issues in Abu Dhabi, the minister confirmed the industry has repeatedly tried to prevent the introduction of plain packaging. This included one unnamed firm that hired 161 lobbyists and spent “millions” to stop a 2013 EU directive allowing the measure, a move Dr Reilly said shows the “full influence of the tobacco industry at work”.
“Thankfully, the tobacco industry’s lobbying was not successful in diluting picture warnings... Despite their billions or euro and hidden connections, the tobacco industry can be defeated,” Dr Reilly said as he urged other nations to mirror Ireland’s new public health rules.
Dr Reilly said cigarette manufacturers tried to tell the Irish government how to behave when it moved forward on plain packaging.
“Their response was unprecedented and global —from members of the European Parliament to US congressmen, from Indonesian farmers to Irish retailers. We were lobbied on a scale that Irish politics had never seen before, but we had built a strong coalition that proved impenetrable to tobacco industry lobbying.
“Not only did they attempt to tell a sovereign government that we did not have the authority to enact plain- packaging legislation, they attempted to tell us how far we could progress it through our parliament and insisted that we provide them with a written undertaking — within a matter of days —not to progress it any further,” he said.
Read Dr Reilly’s full speech in our analysis section
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