Industry tactics
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
The public health implications of tobacco industry pricing
Governments need to be far more sophisticated in the way that they monitor cigarette prices. Using weighted average prices will help but it is also essential to monitor price trends by price segment.
-
New research suggests that government cap cigarette prices and raise an extra £500m per year in doing so
Dr Robert Branston, from the Centre for Governance and Regulation at the University of Bath’s School of Management; and Professor Anna Gilmore, from the University’s Department for Health and the UK Centre for Tobacco Control Studies, say that capping the pre-tax cigarette manufacturers’ prices would safeguard society from the market failure behind manufacturers’ pricing power and associated high profits.
-
New research explains why Corporate Social Responsibility is unlikely to change Big Tobacco
It’s now widely accepted that tobacco companies use corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives to influence policymakers and weaken public health policies. Until now what tobacco industry executives think about this and what it tells us about the limits of tobacco companies’ CSR programmes has been a mystery. For the first time researchers at the University of Bath have been able to explore this question using internal British American Tobacco (BAT) documents.
-
Imperial Tobacco criticised for pre-empting packaging laws
On the 1st December 2012, plain packaging will be introduced in Australia. Cigarettes will be required to be sold in olive green packaging with large pictorial health warnings and brand names appearing in standardised font. Ahead of the legislation, Imperial Tobacco has changed the packaging of their Peter Stuyvesant brand to show a ripped branded pack exposing plain packaging underneath with the accompanying slogan “it’s what on the inside that counts”.
