Tempus: the smoke signals are still hazy

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