The Independent's Oliver Duggan writes:
The Government is to delay plans to introduce standardised cigarette packaging in the UK, sparking outrage from health campaigners.
The policy, which was expected to mirror a similar Australian measure, has been under consideration at the Department of Health for more than a year. A successful consultation process in August 2012 saw the measure enjoy vocal support across Parliament.
I suppose Duggan defines 'successful' as "rigging a consultation to produce the desired result but getting your asses handed to you anyway." Because the Department of Health never expected to get over 500,000 responses in opposition to plain packs. Note that the plain packaging consultation still has not been published , was just published* which is unprecedented. It's been almost a year since it closed. It makes you wonder what the tobacco control industry's pet stooge in the Department of Health, Andrew Black, is hiding. Duggan also writes "vocal support across Parliament" but fails to mention that a great number of MPs were opposed and signed an open letter rejecting plain packaging. That's how tobacco control industry propaganda rolls. We're used to it.
*(The consultation responses were just published right as I finished this blog post and posted it -- correcting for that here. Here's a link: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/standardised-packaging-of-tobacco-products)
*(The consultation responses were just published right as I finished this blog post and posted it -- correcting for that here. Here's a link: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/standardised-packaging-of-tobacco-products)
Naturally, anti-smoker charity Cancer Research UK invokes the children, as the BBC reports:
Cancer Research UK chief executive Dr Harpal Kumar said the decision would cost lives.
He said 200,000 children were "lured" into starting smoking in the UK every year.
"The government had a choice: protect children from an addiction that kills 100,000 people in the UK every year or protect tobacco industry profits," he added.
To give activist doctor Kumar's statement some proper balance and perspective in respect of children being "lured" by packaging, I suggest reading this Daily Mash article titled "Cigarette packets 'more addictive than nicotine'":
Professor Henry Brubaker, of the Institute for Studies, said: “The only reason young people buy cigarettes is because of the insanely fancy colours and hypnotic shapes.
“Most of them just throw the cigarettes away.”
Quite so.
And you can always tell when the tobacco control industry has failed magnificently when, sensing that their evil plans are losing momentum, The Root of All Evil, whose inside source at the Department of Health lied to him last March, takes to Twitter with hilarity like this:
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| The Root of All Evil |
Because these morons in tobacco control all want you to believe that packaging kills. Do feel free to watch Chapman's Twitter feed for more comedy, or you can use the Twitter widget in the right sidebar to view his crazy antics on social media.
So the UK will get a few years reprieve from the tobacco control industry's evil plan to eradicate packaging in the name of the children whilst the government looks to Australia to see how well it goes there.
You should expect endless dodgy studies with made-up evidence, and an equal amount of hateful commentary from those who hate smokers and the tobacco industry, that their evil programme in Australia is working. It won't be remotely true, but that's how the tobacco control industry works.
Because nothing the tobacco control industry has done has ever worked. Which makes you wonder why, for all of tobacco control's superlative failures, our governments continue to throw money at them hand over fist. The government would get better odds and a better return on its investment in tobacco control by gambling it all in Las Vegas on the roulette wheel. I wouldn't recommend betting on Black, though.
