Individual freedoms and legal industry under attack

Proposals by the anti-tobacco group Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) have been described by the UK’s Tobacco Manufacturers’ Association (UKTMA) as an unwarranted intrusion on individual freedoms and a dogmatic attack on a legal industry.

“This report [Smoking Still Kills] shows just how draconian and self-serving ASH’s agenda has become,” said the UKTMA’s director general, Giles Roca, in a press note issued through PRNewswire.

“Measures such as a complete ban on smoking in cars or a levy on tobacco companies are clearly not evidence based but are simply a case of an anti-smoking professional lobby group trying to find new ways to attack smokers and a legitimate industry. If enacted, these proposals would lose the Treasury billions over the next parliament and would simply provide government funding for this group to continue lobbying the government.”

Roca said that the proposed measures were being put forward on top of a tobacco display ban that had only recently been introduced in small shops. At the same time, bans on smoking in cars with young people present, on flavored cigarettes and on small pack sizes, along with the imposition of standardized tobacco packaging, were in the pipeline.

“Aside from the unwarranted intrusion on individual freedoms, this continued drive to over-regulate the UK tobacco market will simply create greater opportunities for the organized crime groups involved in smuggling on a massive scale,” Roca said.

“These proposals are an unprecedented, un-evidenced, dogmatic attack on a legal industry that would have hugely damaging consequences.”

The UKTMA is a trade association whose members are British American Tobacco, Gallaher (a member of the JTI Group of companies), and Imperial Tobacco.