Australia's Tobacco Firms Threaten Price Cuts

If plain packaging is implemented, Australia's tobacco industry is threatening to cut the price of cigarettes if it is forced to remove branding from packets.

May 18, 2011

MELBOURNE - British American Tobacco Australia (BATA) has threatened to slash the price of its cigarettes to counter the Australian government??s plain packaging plan, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports.

As part of that effort, the BATA launched a series of ads earlier this week to fight plain packaging laws.

"BATA [has launched] a national media campaign which questions the Federal Government's proposed plain packaging experiment, while also releasing a series of confidential government documents which support the company's view," said BATA spokesperson Scott McIntyre. "Many of these confidential documents??show the Government has no credible proof that plain packaging will reduce smoking rates and that they are prepared to spend millions of dollars of taxpayers' money on legal fees."

McIntyre said if plain packaging laws proceed, the industry will have no choice but to lower its prices to stay competitive.

"Also, we've seen in the last three years a boom in illegal tobacco; it's grown 150 percent in this country," he said. "If you make all packets look the same and you take away the branding and trademarks, then counterfeiters in China and Asia are rubbing their hands together in glee at the thought of being able to mass produce this stuff and bring it in."

McIntyre said there is no evidence to support a claim that smoking rates will drop if plain packaging is implemented.

"The Government is putting together this legislation so they're the one that needs to supply the evidence that the legislation??is based on evidence and it is going to work," he said.

However, Health Minister Nicola Roxon disagreed.

"We're confident this measure will have an impact. We won't be silly in making assertions about how many people it will affect," she said. "But we are very confident and we are more confident every day when big tobacco yells and screams and scratches, that this measure will have a big impact and that that's why they're fighting so hard to stop it."

Roxon says she is determined to introduce the plain packaging legislation into Parliament during the winter session.

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