Pied Piper of tobacco marketing breathes his last
It has been two weeks since Kevin Rudd and Nicola Roxon made their historic announcement that from 2012, all tobacco products will need to be packaged in plain boxes, with only a standard font brand name to differentiate brands. The announcement drew well over 1000 Google global news hits, a glowing editorial in The Lancet, and green light analyses from very senior constitutional, trademark and international trade treaty lawyers.
Even the commercial world has now started to turn on its own rotten apple, with an editorial in Packaging World stating, ”The tobacco industry should steer clear of complaining of being singled out, which, in large measure, stems from its products being like no other consumer packaged good.”
Just how ”like no other” is it? Globally, tobacco claims five million deaths a year. Half of long-term users die from a tobacco-caused disease, losing on average 12 years. Many smokers suffer for years from wretched diseases like emphysema, which eventually makes taking a few steps a major effort. Hundreds of previously private internal tobacco industry documents read like recipe books from crack cocaine labs, detailing how the cigarette can be better engineered as a nicotine delivery device to ”make it harder for smokers to leave the product”.
Lung cancer is a disease that was rarely seen before 1930. Thanks to cheap cigarettes that flowed from mechanisation, lung cancer today is the world’s leading cause of cancer death, way ahead of breast, prostate and all other cancers which often attract massive community and political support. Male lung cancer has been falling every year in Australia since 1982, and female lung cancer rates will never reach the heights experienced by men, thanks to successive governments taking incremental action to curtail the industry since 1973, when health warnings first appeared. In 50 years from now, lung cancer may once again be history.
It is difficult to overstate the global importance of the Rudd/Roxon decision. No government anywhere requires manufacturers of any consumer product to package it completely in a prescribed way. Many products are required to have warnings and ingredient information, but the new tobacco packaging law makes an exceptional statement about tobacco, lifting it into a league above all other health risks.
There is one parallel: prescribed drugs, which are designed to save lives and enhance health, but are heavily restricted because of misuse concerns. Unlike cigarettes, antibiotics, oral contraceptives and cholesterol-controlling drugs are not sold in pretty, highly market-researched boxes, but in plain packs with the name and dosage instructions.
The tobacco industry has been stripped of its ability to call its carcinogenic products ”mild” or ”light”; banished from all above-the-line advertising and all sponsorship; told by all parties except the Liberals that it can keep its political donations; uniquely excluded from giving research money to universities; ensconced in public life as the index case metaphor for corporate mendacity (try Googling ”Just like the tobacco industry”); and last week was rated lowest of all industries in a British survey of corporate reputation.
The new Australian packaging law will set a catastrophic precedent for the global tobacco industry because it rips the very heart out of its ability to dress the pack to make a killing. Henceforth, a pack of cigarettes will be devoid of any feature including on the cigarette itself such as colours and perfumes that will convey any associations other than harm. Just as no Australian aged 16 or under has ever seen a football match sponsored by tobacco, or a cigarette advertisement in any Australian publication, the next generation of children will grow up having no sense of what the difference is between Marlboro and Benson & Hedges. The new law will effectively put an end to this lethal corporate Pied Piper’s promotional tune that has led millions to early deaths.
Australia has always led global tobacco control, and its initiatives have rapidly dominoed around the world. The World Health Organisation’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, now ratified by 168 nations, provides unprecedented momentum for this new development. In public health, we venerate milestones like public sanitation, the discovery of anaesthesia, the introduction of vaccinations, and the development of antibiotics and contraception.
With chronic diseases like cancer, heart and respiratory disease dominating global disease profiles, governments with the courage to tackle corporations whose goals are antithetical to public health deserve a similar place in history. This law, combined with the significant tax rises, is as big as it gets.
BY SIMON CHAPMAN, Canberratimes