Friday 4 July 2014

A reminder that plain packs for cigarettes will kill jobs in Bradford...and won't stop kids smoking either

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I know I've pointed this out before but it merits repetition. Here's Mike Ridgeway from the Consumer Packaging Manufacturers Alliance explaining:

“Plain packaging would have a catastrophic effect on the packaging industry and its supply chain that currently employs over 60,000 people across the UK. .

"It would remove the need for a series of highly skilled printing and packaging techniques that currently support jobs and flourishing apprenticeship schemes. Plain packaging could result in the loss of jobs within the supply chain and so it is essential that the Treasury and BIS undertake their own thorough assessments as part of this review.

“Inward investment into the UK packaging industry has been substantial in recent years, but further investments are on hold pending the Government’s decision on plain packaging. If the measure was adopted it would inevitably lead to jobs and investment being redirected to other parts of Europe and the world. It is extraordinary that the Government has so far failed to take these concerns into account." 

So hundreds - perhaps thousands - of jobs are risked for a policy where these is no evidence at all from anywhere that it will make one jot of difference to either the take-up of smoking by young people or the continuation of smoking by grown-ups.  Indeed, the decision to look only (and then selectively) at the supposed health benefits in the Chantler Review simply ignores those workers in Bradford.

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1 comment:

Twenty_Rothmans said...

Australian cigarette manufacturing is being closed down.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-02/philip-morris-to-quit-australian-cigarette-manufacturing/5361436

Not because of falling demand - rather, these guys are businessmen, and have seen the writing on the wall.

A good time to invest in nursing homes for the bewildered. I wonder who will pay for them?

I roll 80% of my cigarettes and stuff them into fag packets where there is enough room. This affords me freedom of choice over the type of cigarette I smoke (my rollies last for seven or eight minutes).

So if the fag box is Gauloise or Benson and Hedges or even Nicola Roxon's metastasic face, I do not care.

I do wonder though, what sort of mental deficiency inflicts the people who come out with these edicts. They said that stopping advertising would do it. It didn't. They said warnings would do it. It didn't They said 25% warnings would do it. They said grotesque pictures would do it. It didn't.

Is anyone held to account for these failures? Of course not, they don't have real jobs. They are as parasitical as intestinal worms, with none of the benefits.

They can make me wear an armband. They can tattoo me. I cannot defeat them, but they will never defeat me.