Snowdon’s “White Paper” and more…
ASA rules against JTI’s anti-plain tobacco packs ad
An anti-plain tobacco packaging ad Japan Tobacco International has been ruled misleading by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA)
The move has been backed by anti-smoking organsiation ASH, which complained, along with Cancer Research UK, against the 2013 advert. However, JTI has rejected the ruling and is taking its case to the ASA’s independent reviewer.
The national press ad included a reproduction of an email from the UK Department of Health to the Australian Department of Health and Ageing. The email featured text from a civil servant enquiring about the evidence on standard packaging in Australia.
It stated: “You will be aware that the UK Government is considering the introduction of plain packaging of tobacco products. As I’m sure you are aware, one of the difficulties regarding this is that nobody has done this and therefore there isn’t any hard evidence to show that it works.”
Text beneath the original email said: “We couldn’t have put it better ourselves”.
Deborah Arnott, chief executive of ASH, said: “Yet again the claims made by JTI have been found to be false and misleading. The evidence from Australia is clear: standard packs make smoking less attractive and have helped drive down smoking rates. Standard packs will help deter children from starting to smoke, which is why tobacco companies are fighting so hard against it. It’s time for the Prime Minister to say that the tobacco industry won’t succeed in its dishonest campaign, and that Parliament will get the chance to vote on standard packs Regulations before the next Election.”
In its adjudication the ASA noted that the date of the email was included in the ad but considered that the presentation of that information was not clear and that in any event readers would consider the highlighted reference to “there isn’t any hard evidence to show that it works” as being a reference to the position at the time the ad appeared and not only to the position two years earlier.
The ASA added: “We considered consumers would interpret the claim to mean that no real evidence existed to support the introduction of plain packaging at the time the ad appeared.”
