Yesterday we found out that the government intends to push ahead with putting all tobacco products in plain packs. The news comes after Sir Cyril Chantler completed his review into the public health impact of the policy.

Sir Cyril, for those of you who don’t already know, is one of the UK’s leading paediatricians – and when he got the gig there were obvious questions from the industry over just how ‘independent’ his review was going to be. Today’s verdict is unlikely to change any of those opinions. I am not here to question Sir Cyril as I’m convinced he carried out his brief as thoroughly and professionally as he could in the limited time frame he was given – after all, he was only commissioned in November.

The thing that I am uncomfortable with in this whole business is the politics of it all.

To recap the history again – the government and the PM were in favour of bringing in plain packs when the first consultation into the matter was launched in 2012.

A year-long process followed with hundreds of thousands of responses from both sides of the debate after which the government realised it didn’t have the evidence that plain packs would prevent young people from taking up smoking and decided it would postpone a decision.

The government was then put under immense pressure after this decision by the health lobby and by the opposition parties, who looked to make political capital out of David Cameron’s policy advisor Lynton Crosby’s links to the tobacco industry – hence the advent of the Chantler review.

Yesterday’s publication does not seen to have found any new evidence that plain packs will stop children taking up smoking. What the review appears to do is to dismiss the arguments of the tobacco industry – calling the current packaging a “silent salesman”, and asking how companies can “quarantine” non-smokers and children as they use their branding to convince existing adult smokers to switch to their particular products.

Tobacco companies have claimed plain packs would result in a commoditised market, whereby smokers would be inclined to buy cheaper cigarettes, and therefore smoke even more. Chantler’s response to this point is to say the government could always keep adding taxation.

He was equally dismissive of the potential rise in the illicit trade, saying the government could ramp up its enforcement. What he didn’t do was really prove that plain packs would be a driver in stopping young people from taking up smoking – rather that he expects that over a period of time it would make a modest contribution to a reduction in smoking.

This feels to me like a hunch at best – hardly the compelling proof that that would end the debate once and for all. So where does all this leave the situation now? Effectively we are in the same position as two years ago: the government wants to do it; it doesn’t have much evidence either way and plans to go ahead with it as soon as it can; oh, and of course, we still have a bit more consultation to come.

No doubt the industry will continue to fight and there will be legal challenges further down the road – but if the government wants plain packs, it will have plain packs: that is the lesson we can take away for certain based on the Australian experience.

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