The announcement this week that plain packaging for cigarettes would be pushed through parliament before the election was greeted with inevitable dismay from the tobacco industry — especially as it seemed that the issue did not seem to be a priority for the government.
Jane Ellison, the public health minister, was clear that the removal of branding from tobacco packaging was a “proportionate and justified response to the considerable public health harm from smoking tobacco”. In particular, she believed that the measures would help to prevent children from taking up smoking.
Anti-smoking campaigners were jubilant, but the big tobacco companies accused the government of treating the issue as a “political football”. Imperial Tobacco insisted that it had “a fundamental right to differentiate our brands from