Plain cigarette packaging - would it work?

Hello everyone. I would like to pick up on a topic that has made the news in the UK earlier this summer: on the 20th May 2017, plain cigarette packaging came into effect in the UK and suddenly, everyone became familiar with a phrase that would have left most people puzzled a year ago - Pantone 488C. This is the hue of brown that has specifically been chosen to make cigarette packaging especially ugly to smokers: it has been described as 'drab dark brown' and even 'greenish-brown' - I say, let's call a spade a spade, I call it shitty brown. Cigarette packets still contain the usual health warnings and scary pictures of what nasty things smoking can do to your health (please see pictures below) - but has this move actually done anything to reduce the number of smokers in the UK? It is too early to tell but it will have little effect but to alienate the tobacco industry even further by treating them like the villains in what is a complex situation.

Meet the Pantone 488C box

I was motivated to write this story because of the many similarities it has with the last story I wrote on my blog: in that piece, I talked about the way black MP David Lammy accused Oxbridge of 'social apartheid' based on the very low number of black students admitted into their colleges. I interviewed my friend 'Marc' who worked at a top British university who explained to me that such colleges already have a very comprehensive outreach programme to help students from more deprived background try to fulfill their full potential at their colleges - the only problem was that such outreach programmes help all student regardless of the colour of their skin, it would help any poor student whether they are black, white or Asian. Such programmes have not yielded perfect results as the students they managed to help turned out to be most white and Asian and without a specific quota for black students, some colleges have failed to admit a single black student. I agree it is a situation that needs to be addressed but rather than turning on the colleges and accusing them of racism, why not extend a bit of goodwill and ask to work more closely with them to find a better solution? All Lammy has done is caused a lot of ill-feeling with his accusations - that is hardly the way to find a solution.

The Singaporean government has contemplated following in the footsteps of the British government (along with many others) when it comes to plain cigarette packaging, but I certainly hope that they won't do that. Not that I am a smoker - actually, the last time I tried to smoke was when I was serving NS in Singapore, I had a few out of peer pressure but never really liked it. It has been over 20 years since I even tried a cigarette. No, I am taking this stance for two reasons: firstly, I am a libertarian. That means I believe in free will - if someone wants to smoke, let them, it is their choice. Secondly, I am a businessman: I believe that the best way to get the result you want may not be forcing the tobacco industry into a corner, tying up their hands and labeling them the evil villains when there is always the option to work with them to reduce the amount of harm done to smokers. Now at this point you may get cynical: Alex, really? Working with tobacco companies to reduce harm caused by smoking? Seriously? How is that going to work? Well one thing is for sure, you are going to achieve a lot less if you work against them, without them than if you work in cooperation with them.

I am not a smoker - just a businessman.

A very good case study is the case of alcohol - back in the prohibition era in America from 1920 to 1933, when the production, importation, transportation and sale of alcohol was totally banned in the USA. Of course, this only last 13 years as it became clear a ban wasn't working and people still somehow managed to get their hands on alcohol illegally. The rich were able to buy expensive alcohol smuggled into the USA, whilst the poor turned to illegal moonshine, ie. home made alcohol which sometimes led to cases of severe poisoning, even death when the alcohol produced was contaminated. In fact just this July in Iran where alcohol is illegal and very hard to get hold of, five people died and 114 people were hospitalized with a batch of moonshine that was contaminated. This is the kind of risks that you take with people's health if you decide to ban a substance altogether - but even with the best interests at heart, surely one should consider alternative ways to work with the people to ensure that they know and understand the risks they are taking when consuming a substance like moonshine that has not been subject to any kind of quality checks. This begs the question: are such moves really done with the best interests of public health, or are they but a token gesture to demonstrate a certain 'moral stance' by the government? So can you really trust politicians to make the right decision?

The article in the TNP has already highlighted a major problem posed by plain paper packaging: it makes smuggling counterfeit cigarettes a lot easier. Well I have a proposal that may sound somewhat crazy but that's what I do all the time - I think out of the box to find new solutions when none are obvious. Why not work with the tobacco companies to see if you can try to work together to reduce harm? I'm sure your first reaction to that is, Alex that's crazy, all the tobacco companies want to do is get everyone addicted to smoking and before you know it, every other person is dying from lung cancer - how can you work with them? But wait, hear me out - the tobacco companies want to make money and their agenda is purely financial: they have shareholders and need to ensure the long term survival of the tobacco companies and being constantly painted as the villains out to kill people with deadly cigarettes is certainly bad for business. There is certainly a bit of bargaining to be made - for example, cigarettes today are a lot less unhealthy than say back in the 1970s and 1980s because of improvements with the product such as lower tar and nicotine content as well as better quality filters. There is still much that scientists can do to reduce the harm caused by cigarettes such as by removing even more carcinogenic contents in them, but these measures are going to cost money and you need to give them some goodwill if you want the tobacco industry to play ball. Much more can be achieved through cooperation than antagonism.

Allow me also to make a further point from a marketing perspective - plain paper packaging, or in this case, Pantone 488C, isn't going to have that much of an effect. The gross, shocking photos of what smoking can do to your body certainly has a shock factor, but that shade of brown doesn't. Let's take a product that we all know, the chocolate wafer snack KitKat which comes in that distinctive red foil packaging. Imagine if the government wanted to tackle obesity and forced all candy and snack manufacturers to switch to plain packaging using Pantone 488C to deter the public from consuming such high-calorie snacks. If you still craved a KitKat, would you allow the colour of the packaging to deter you? Not really, you'll just rip off the foil packaging to get to the chocolate product inside that you know and like. By the same token, smokers know what they want, the colour of the packaging has little effect on their choice to smoke. After all, nobody has ever become a KitKat fan or a smoker because of the attractive packaging - the marketing and packaging has a much smaller effect than you think on consumer patterns. Would you consume a chocolate product with attractive, colourful packaging if it still tasted awful? Of course not, so why is the focus on the packaging anyway? Short of designing a kind of packaging that will deliver an painful but not lethal electric shock to the person trying to take a cigarette out of the box, well, Pantone 488C just doesn't do the job. All this does is push the tobacco companies further and further into a corner and that will achieve little more than to feed the egos of some politicians desperate to look good.

Furthermore, the 'shock' factor of smokers realizing that their favourite cigarettes now come in a shitty looking Pantone 488C box is only going to last a short while because they just get used to it. Let me give you an example that shows how many men managed to get used to a much greater change - when I was in NS, we went from having the luxury of wearing what we liked to being only allowed to wear the uniforms that were issued. The first few days were unforgettable: most of us didn't like what we were given, the uniforms felt very impractical for the very hot and humid weather in Singapore and the boots were especially uncomfortable. However, most of us just accepted that, "oh well, things are just going to be this way, so let's just accept it for what it is as we can't change anything". You'll be amazed how quickly that attitude can kick in when you realize you can't change the situation - we put on the uniform without thinking or questioning whether we wanted to or liked it, we had plenty of other things on our minds to worry about.The second example I have is when the logo for the 2012 London Olympics was first unveiled: everyone hated it and reacted with so much scorn. The spent a massive £2 billion creating this! But when it became clear that this was the logo we were stuck with and they were not going to change it, most people actually embraced it or at least chose to focus on other aspects of the Olympics. Nobody actually boycotted the Olympics because they hated the logo. Visitors to London today still purchase souvenir merchandise bearing the ghastly controversial 2012 Olympics logo - we all just got used to it after all.

They spent £2 billion and came up with this logo?!

By the same token, smokers will simply get used to those Pantone 488C boxes pretty quickly and those who are really disturbed by that colour may transfer their cigarettes into nice cigarette cases which can cost less than a packet of cigarettes. It is yet another empty gesture that will yield little or no results in terms of reducing the number of smokers. Australia is the originator of the idea for Plain Packaging for tobacco products. But 5 years after it was introduced in Dec 2012, the jury is still out if it has actually helped reduce smoking in Australia or not. Both sides of the argument are still adamant, and the real truth of the matter probably falls somewhere in between.  If extreme regulations like plain packaging are adopted, it would lead to the increase of demand and supply of illegal tobacco (as was the case in Australia), and it is most unlikely that the government would have to play a cat and mouse enforcement game with the black market. Would you rather regulate and work with a legal, law-abiding industry player, than deal with illegal black market profiteers? When you are presented with a messy situation like this, you choose the least bad option - the option that will deliver the best outcome when it comes to public health. At least one would think that any sensible government would make that choice but that was clearly not the case in Australia. Governments can and do constantly make mistakes - where do I begin? Just look at Trump and his wall. Sometimes we do need to hold governments to account.

There is one more reason why plain cigarette packaging is going to be bad for public health in the long run - let me use chocolates as an analogy. there is a huge market out there for luxury, premium brand chocolates. Walk into the chocolate section in any major supermarket and you'll find everything from bargain chocolates for consumers on a tight budget to luxury brands when you want to impress someone important to you on a special occasion. Now why would you spend $50 on a box of chocolates rather than $5? It is the impression that the $50 chocolates are extraordinary, but without the marketing that goes along with it, there's no way the consumer is going to get the message. Marketing for tobacco products is already so curtailed - the packaging of the boxes is the last little bit of marketing they have left and if you remove that, it is going to become even harder to distinguish between a well crafted, quality cigarette and a cheap knock off from China or Eastern Europe where they have cut-corners, using inferior ingredients to slash the price, leading to a far more toxic cigarette. When you give them the edge on price, then you force even the leading brands to cut corners too in order to survive and you don't want to trigger that price war when the main casualty will be the health of the smokers. The sensible compromise is to concede that if these people are going to smoke regardless, then less harm will be done to the smokers if they opt for the more expensive, branded cigarette but by that token, you have to permit the companies to continue some form of branding on their packaging if it will lead to consumers making better choices.

Turning back to the story with Lammy's ridiculous accusation of Oxford and Cambridge running a 'social apartheid' situation (when clearly, that isn't the case), how do you expect them to react in a positive way when he attacks them with such a hideous accusation? Likewise, if you want the tobacco industry to respond with goodwill when it comes to harm reduction, well you can't expect them to do that if you are extremely hostile to them. You're never going to get people to give you what you want by being hostile to them: let me give you a simple example. I remember once I was at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport when my flight was cancelled - we had to queue up at the customer service desk to get rebooked onto the next flight. The man in front of me was extremely angry and he vented his anger at the lady behind the counter, shouting at her in quite an abusive way. He wasn't happy with the delay to his journey and she kept repeating, "sorry, there's nothing I can do." When it came to my turn, I was very polite and pleasant with her, knowing that I was probably going to be put on the same flight. I asked her that under these circumstances, if I could get an upgrade to business class. She smiled and said, okay, let me see what I can do, that's possible, Yes there are a few more seats there. Just, please, don't tell the others about this as we can't do this for everyone." Giving the tobacco companies that shred of dignity by extending an olive branch isn't such a crazy idea when you realize that millions of people out there still want to smoke and won't quit regardless of the kind of packaging you use. The only way to reduce the harmful effects of smoking on their health is by working with the companies that provides them with those cigarettes they will be smoking.

If you want less people to smoke, then the cigarette packaging is really just a red herring: we need to look at the much bigger picture. People are turning to smoking for a variety of reason: it is often peer pressure, sometimes they perceive it as a way to deal with stress and sometimes it is a way to project a more adult, grown-up image of themselves. If you go as far as to make it very hard for them to get hold of the cigarettes, then guess what? They are just going to turn to something else and you had better hope it won't be something that will cause them as much harm, just in a different way, like alcohol or drugs. We have seen this in the food & drink industry already: various governments have seen targeting unhealthy snack foods like chocolates, potato chips, fizzy drinks and ice cream as culprits for obesity and thus quite a few countries have imposed a 'sugar tax' to try to tackle this issue. The sugar tax in the UK is a farce because they are targeting sugary drinks, but somehow high-calorie, sweet snacks like chocolate are let off the hook. So if someone is desperate for a sugar fix and they can't get hold of their favourite sweet drinks for some reason, guess what? They're just going to turn to an equally harmful alternative, in this case, chocolate. This is why you really need a holistic solution.

They jury is out on the effectiveness of Pantone 488C.

This is why I wish to talk about a more holistic approach to harm reduction by getting the public to understand the relationship between their choices and their health - it is easy to make this a part of the curriculum at school, but what about adults who don't have teaches or parents to be accountable to? Too often, such campaigns are targeted at students because it is so easy to cram information down their throats whilst they are stuck in a classroom, but what about older, uneducated adults then who are free to make bad decisions? Singapore is no stranger to high profile public campaigns: from the Courtesy campaign to the Speak Mandarin campaign to the Keep Singapore Clean campaign - this is precisely the kind of issue that the government should be tackling through public education. Like chocolate, tobacco is one of those things in life that will bring you some short term pleasure at a a cost: in both cases, your health will suffer as a result of your indulgence. On one level, there is a certain amount of ignorance that the government has to deal with - particularly with older, less educated people who are constantly making poor choices out of ignorance, stupidity and often both. I recognize that even with the best education campaign, some people will still choose to have unhealthy diets, consume too much alcohol or smoke - but there is much you can do to ensure that they are at least making informed decisions. So rather than blaming the tobacco companies for what is happening, how about making sure the government steps up their public health education campaigns then? Perhaps the old fashioned solutions are still the best ones.

That's it from me on this issue - what do you think? Would you like to see the government implement this plain paper packaging? Would Pantone 488C put you off smoking? Do you think the government is barking up the wrong tree? Are you a smoker or an ex-smoker? Why do/did you smoke? What is the best way to reduce the number of smokers? Can and should the government work with the tobacco companies in this instance - or is this a sign of giving up in the fight to reduce the number of smokers? Let me know what you think, leave a comment below and many thanks for reading.