Tobacco lobby tripping over its own spin

In his letter to this paper, John Mallon, of the tobacco-funded lobby group, Forest Éireann, has demonstrated one of the key tactics used by ‘big tobacco’ in fighting plain-packaging legislation.

He has used misleading figures to ‘prove’ that plain-packaging hasn’t worked in Australia. Tobacco companies first started to manipulate data in the 1960s to argue that smoking didn’t cause cancer. They have been losing the fight against a tidal wave of health measures.

Fewer Australians are smoking now, and plain-packaging is a reason. Plain-packaging eliminates the last great marketing tool of the tobacco industry — an industry that costs 5,200 Irish lives every year.