Tobacco branding plan will make no difference

Your coverage and editorial pieces on the Australian position regarding plain packaging for tobacco products, fails to mention the downsides.

There is no hard evidence that a brand encourages children, whereas marketing and advertising are the accepted methods of attracting new customers to a company’s products.

The brand, though, is there to distinguish one company from another, and strong brands value this as their competitive advantage once a customer is in the market to buy in the first place. In Ireland, cigarette packets must be hidden, so brand never takes effect until after purchase, not before.

The revulsion therapy behind the gruesome images proposed for the new packaging is gotten around by transferring the contents to an attractive leather case, and it will make no difference in the smoking numbers. The biggest winners are the criminal smugglers who will find the new packaging so much simpler to counterfeit and produce.

And critically, if the precedence of State interference in private commercial branding is endorsed, then what product would be next for tampering with? The IARC in the US has already designated diesel fumes as carcinogens.

On the basis of the tobacco precedent, it would be justifiable to make it the law, to festoon every diesel car in the State with the ugly images proposed for the cigarette packs.

John Mallon

Forest Éireann

Churchfield

Cork