Article by Cameron Spink

 

Tobacco companies are notorious for using their impressive array of resources to bully a point across. Usually they are trying to bully the state into paving them a golden pathway to skip along without any consequence. Occasionally they implement significant advertisement campaigns when the state doesn't respond to their primitive tactics.

 

So it comes as no surprise that the tobacco industry has released a new set of advertisements condemning the Federal Government's plan to legislate to require all cigarette to have plain packaging. The reasons for such reform include reducing the appeal of cigarettes as well as reducing the ability of the packages to mislead people (http://www.yourhealth.gov.au/internet/yourhealth/publishing.nsf/Content/factsheet-prevention-02).

 

The anti-packaging campaign has its own website (http://www.nonannystate.com.au/) which represents the government as taxing the tobacco industry merely for funding purposes. This is an attack on the idea that the government has not increased prices on cigarettes to dissuade people to stop using them (as the government may claim). This, in part, may be true. However, this does not stop this contention by the tobacco industry as being found as intellectually dishonest.

 

The tobacco industry shows its hypocrisy in two ways. Firstly, this campaign seeks to portray the government as using the tobacco industry to make money (from taxes). This completely ignores the fact that large tobacco companies are doing the same thing. They are creating, processing and selling cigarettes for a profit. All the government is doing is skimming a bit off the top. Now, certainly there are issues with the government doing this. But those same issues exist for the tobacco company. Tobacco industries are not providing a legitimate product to their customers.

 

Secondly, tobacco industries have also been known to claim that if there is a price hike on legitimate cigarettes then consumers will start using other brands that are cheaper and likely to have unhealthy tobacco. Such dishonesty is astounding. How can an industry which knowingly causes death and cancer point the finger at everyone else? The evidence to show the affect that tobacco has is undeniable (http://www.tobaccoinaustralia.org.au/).

 

Perhaps the most bizarre thing about this new ad campaign is the fact that the tobacco industry wants to implicate the consumer in their vehement attack on the government. In one clip we hear that consumer say "I'm over eighteen, it's legal". One has to wonder why this seems to be the only argument posed by the tobacco industry in either of their advertisements. After all, cigarettes are not used exclusively by those over the age of eighteen. Nor does the age of the consumer ever endorse a dangerous activity.

 

Herein lays the problem. The tobacco industry is right. The government is using cigarettes as a major form of taxation. This is wrong, it is manipulative and it is not in the best interests of the layman. What the government should have implemented years ago was a complete ban on the sale of tobacco-related products. Of course, there would be screaming by the tobacco industry that some consumers would turn to highly dangerous varieties of tobacco, yet like a similar argument for legalised abortion, this specifically ignores the ethical issues at hand. A government is responsible to its people. It is their best interests (and not a budget) which should take precedence.

 

The tobacco industry would have us believe that the Australian Government is some evil nanny state for trying to introduce plain packaging for cigarettes. Instead of ignoring their responsibilities to the consumers of their product they are trying to scapegoat the government. It only goes to show there is no benefit for getting into bed with evil money-hungering corporations.