Office of Tobacco Control ignores smuggling problems
The associations urges all retailers to register their objection to any change in cigarette packaging as it "would most certainly give oxygen to the illicit sector"
Print15 December 2010
The recent publication of a report commissioned by (amongst others) the Office of Tobacco Control from a team of researchers based in the University of Nottingham deserves comment from a retailer’s perspective. The report determined that young people were better protected by the “de-normalisation” of tobacco that has followed from the removal of point-of-sale tobacco promotion.
Furthermore the report concluded that the ban had no “statistically significant short term impact on sales”, and that there is a general downward trend in cigarette pack sales, which preceded the ban by several years. It also suggested that the impact (of the ban) on sales will take effect over a much longer period, allowing retailers to adapt over time.
The CSNA has never suggested that the ban would, in its own right, cause immediate loss of sales. The registration system for shops has allowed the smoking customer the same range of outlets as they previously had available to them, so there was no reason for us to consider that there would be an automatic loss of sales, as distinct from additional costs that would be incurred by the ban; an area that the report is silent upon.
It is also silent upon the cost to retailers of smuggling and the black market for tobacco products, both of which are causing very significant losses to our sector.
Perhaps the purpose of the exercise was not to provide evidence that retailers were not unduly affected by this ban, but to use the research to promote a far more significant change in tobacco retailing, namely the sale of packets that were without any colour or identifying logos, the next logical step in “de-normalisation”. There is a European Consultation process that has, amongst other areas of interest, a section on whether or not cigarettes should be sold in plain packaging. If this research can be used to suggest that retailers have nothing to fear from such a route, than one of the primary concerns (loss of revenue/loss of sales) for the retailers will be answered.
What it will not do is show the bonanza that such a course of action will be for the illicit traders, who will be able to continue to sell their colourful and logoed products to a growing body of customers, suspicious of the new plain substitutes. As retailers, we must resist this latest attempt to divert product out of our legitimate and registered outlets. A copy of the consultation document is available on our website, and we urge all retailers to register their objection to any change in packaging as it would most certainly give oxygen to the illicit sector.
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