Brown paper packaging……

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Brown paper packaging……

24 November 2010

The Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, has reignited considerations to force tobacco companies to sell their products in standard packaging, despite Conservative opposition to similar plans by Labour.

Mr Lansley believes ‘glitzy’ packets attracts young people to smoke, and has said ‘the evidence is clear that packaging helps recruit smokers so it makes sense to have less attractive packaging’. He wants to cut the ‘vast’ smoking related cost to the NHS and the economy, and instead use this money to ‘educate our children and treat cancer’.

Though the ban has been welcomed by doctors and anti-smoking bodies, the tobacco industry has already indicated it will totally reject the idea of plain packets. This is an unsurprising response from an industry already effectively stripped of its marketing arsenal, now facing a Government intending to ban companies from using their intellectual property rights.

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