Cigarette Smoking is the New Ugly Green

Actually -- I'm not a smoker, and I've never really aspired to smoke.

It smells unpleasant, yellows teeth and skin, has various associated health risks and was immensely popular with all the people I aspired to be nothing like in high school. Add to that it's rather addictive and relatively expensive, and not smoking is a fairly easy decision to make.

The example of the inimitably cool Hunter S. Thompson and the romance of the smoke-filled press-rooms of yore, , the fact that it gives the socially awkward something to do with their hands and a quiet space to bond with others, and that it apparently helps maintain a svelte figure and looks cool in film noir is still not enough to convince me to buy and smoke cigarettes. My disapproving Grade Three teacher mentally looms Obi-Wan Kenobi style over my mid-twenties consciousness, tutting over the barest inkling of a thought that smoking might be that elusive step I need to take to be cool. Realistically, of course, I'm so far from cool that the minor image rhinoplasty of rebelling against relative good health is not going to be much help anyway.

This means I'm probably not the target for either the new mandatory snot-green plain packaging measures designed to make smoking less trendy, or even the reaction campaign by cigarette companies concerned to make the colour of cigarette packaging a civil liberties issue. By the way, congratulations Australia - if this is the direst emergency for individual rights going around, we might've just won best country in the world. Yeah -- Suck it, Sweden.

Cigarette companies are conscientiously very worried for small businesses, who are apparently going to find it time consuming and expensive dealing with selling cigarettes without conspicuous branding and it's going to put them all out of business... and, we're reminded, it won't work to stop smokers smoking anyway and it's an entirely pointless exercise of minor irritation.

If we look at the market for cigarettes, we'll see that it's made predominantly out of pre-existing smokers and prospective new smokers. Since this is a product which eventually kills most of its consumers, attracting people who don't currently smoke to the path of lung cancer is the way to increase profits and market share. We also know that smokers tend to be fairly brand loyal, and this is despite the decrease over time in allowable cigarette advertising, because smoking and purchasing cigarettes eventually become habitual behaviour. This means that it may be easier to increase sales by attracting new people to smoking than it is to convince a smoker to switch brands.

Given what we know of the behaviour of smokers as consumers, it seems odd that cigarette companies feel genuinely threatened by the advent of plain packaging. If all brands are forced to have the same shite packaging, this actually removes an element effectively creating a branding demilitarised zone, where all of a brand's competitors are being compelled to behave in the same way.

This surely means that cigarette companies are more concerned that olive green packaging will stop people taking up smoking in the first place, and so impact their bottom line. If the risk of lung and throat cancer's not going to do it, I hesitate to suggest an ugly package will have that much impact - but why else is Big Tobacco splashing out on these campaigns?

Funding public information campaigns for corporate self-interest is not new, and it makes sense as entirely rational behaviour for a corporate entity to engage in - if a new tax will cost your business $1 billion, but you can stop it with a $6 million television, radio and print media blitz aimed at convincing the average punter that your interests are their interests, then it makes rational sense to do so. We've seen it with the Mining Super Profits Tax, too (Clive Palmer really cares about your superannuation, kids, that's why so many of his profits stay in Australia). We'll see it again as various interest groups come out against carbon pricing, too. What these campaigns tell us is that someone within the corporate interest group has crunched the numbers and discovered that even a very expensive campaign will be cheaper than the cost of successful legislative reform.

So, cigarettes are doing us damage and green packaging is apparently going to make fewer people take up smoking, even the tobacco giants are placing their bets there. Cue half the Australian denizens of the internet calling for the government to show some stones and raise the excise by more than 50 per cent in line with the recommendations of the preventative health taskforce. Why, if the government wants to make a moral statement about cigarettes, do they not just raise the excise to price addicted smokers out of the market, or ban cigarettes altogether?

Libertarian moral panic inevitably follows, trailing conspiracy theories about how wedded to the income from tobacco excise the Australian government really is, so much so that it's worth the extra costs to the healthcare system which smokers inevitably bring. If the government really wanted people not to smoke they'd make it much more expensive, they say, with the kind of po-faced ignorant sneer typical of those who find the arguments presented on bumper-stickers compelling.

Smoking excise is a regressive tax. It's a tax targetted disproportionately at those of lower socio-economic backgrounds who are more likely to smoke. As an addiction, it becomes for some households a necessity in the family budget. Making cigarettes cost more means some families will buy less bread, milk, schoolbooks, and moreover it leaves the government open to accusations of cash-grabbing by the sorts of people who think speed cameras exist purely to raise revenue.

A balance needs to be struck between disincentivising smoking through pricing signals - because we don't want to be seen as promoting risky behaviour amongst the poorer groups within society- and recognising the nature of addiction means that people will often buy the product of their addiction even when they cannot afford to.

Sure, if the government really wanted to stop people smoking, they could ban it entirely (because that worked so well for alcohol in 1930s America). They could legislate that cigarettes have to taste like rotting arse, too. They could require that they be available only under prescription, thus making doctors waiting rooms places of cranky withdrawing nicotine addicts and week long queues for a check-up. Sadly, an excise on cigarettes does not exist in a vaccuum, and public policy considerations are necessary.

It was never going to be an uncontroversial move, but by making the available options less palatable but still allowing the individual free choice to smoke or not to smoke, the Labor government has come in for ridicule rather than aggressive criticism based more firmly in social justice, equity and civil liberties.

Even though Phillip Morris and Co are quaking in their large tobacconist cowboy hats at the prospect of generic packaging, I think the politicians have underestimated the appeal of communist chic with the indie/hipster kids generation. While I'm manifestly not a cool kid, and hence can't be certain about this, I suspect the kinds of kids who drink Pabst Blue/Melbourne Bitter for the irony value will lap up the plain packaging for the faux anti-consumerist trendy it will impart.

It is therefore possible that government is just starting a populist campaign to get rid of annoying hipsters, one diseased lung at a time, as they all rush to accessorise with some ironically topical tobacco products. As the spoilt indie kids come out to play once more with the conspicuous traits of the working class, the working class just might be so disgusted with the mirror being held up to them that there'll be a rush on cissy Nicabate and smoking will be something done exclusively by trendy elite of wankers. Chuck us the Winnie Greens, will you love?