Tobacco and Public Health
Insights, analysis and commentary on tobacco control and commercial determinants of health from the Tobacco Control Research Group. The opinions expressed on our blog belong to the authors and should not be seen to necessarily represent TCRG or the University of Bath.
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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.
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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.
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Tobacco Control in Practice: A Postgraduate CPD module
Registration is open for the fifth Continuing Professional Development module at the University of Edinburgh. The course will take place from the 13th-16th May 2013. The module aims to provide participants with an overview of key concepts and issues in...
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Impact of smoking ban on the most exposed children
High levels of secondhand smoke exposure in children are known to have adverse consequences for arterial health. However, there is no information about the proportion of children in England that are exposed to these levels, whether it has changed over...
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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”.
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500,000 against plain packaging? The figures just don’t add up.
Plain packaging for cigarettes would require cigarettes to be sold in packets of a standard colour and shape with brand names written in a standardised font and pictorial health warnings covering a substantial proportion of the packet. The public consultation on plain packaging in the UK came to a close on the 10th August 2012. A few days later the Tobacco Manufacturer’s Association (TMA) publicised that ‘half a million oppose plain packaging .’ There are three significant issues with this figure:
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Tobacco industry’s influence on tobacco taxes: methods revealed
There are many case studies documenting how the tobacco industry attempts to influence tobacco tax policies but until now there has been no attempt to collate this information. Together with a colleague at the University of Edinburgh, we have published a systematic review of 36 studies (largely in the US) investigating tobacco industry efforts to influence tax policies between 1985 and 2010.
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Big Tobacco create retail group as a disguise
Australian retailers group created to conceal origin of Big Tobacco’s opposition to plain packaging.
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How does the tobacco industry still thrive?
In order to plan effective tobacco control policies we must first understand the tobacco industry and this blog illustrates just how this can be done.
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Plain packaging opposition in the UK
A public consultation aimed to help the government gather evidence on the potential impacts of plain packaging ran between the 16th April 2012 and the 10th August 2012. In response to this consultation, the tobacco industry and its allies launched...
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