Plain pack review on shaky ground

The Australian Department of Health’s Post-Implementation Review (PIR) of the Tobacco Plain Packaging Act comes to the shaky conclusion that the measure will work over time even though the review is unable to support this claim with credible analysis, according to a note posted on the Japan Tobacco International website.

“The report fails to properly take into account that smoking rates had been steadily declining for years, long before the introduction of this branding ban, and that the measure hasn’t accelerated this decline,” Michiel Reerink, JTI’s regulatory strategy vice president, was quoted as saying.

“Instead, smokers just switched to cheaper cigarettes.”

JTI said it had predicted that this would happen as part of a submission to the Australian Government in 2011, more than a year before the measure came into force, and that this was later confirmed by observations.

“The PIR admits, however, that plain packaging on its own did not drive down smoking rates, as a number of measures – including massive tax increases – came into force in the same period,” said Reerink.

The JTI note said that in a desperate effort to justify the branding ban, the department had tried to argue that the measure was ‘beginning to work’ and that its full effect would be clear only over time.

“This shortcut analysis was only designed to fulfill political agendas,” Reerink said. “It doesn’t inspire much trust in the government’s practices.”