Wednesday 3 May 2017

Awkward Facts Emerge From France

Oh dear. It seems that, just like in Australia, plain packaging is having the same polar opposite effect that tobacco control industry troughers were hoping for in France.

Via The Local:
Smoking on the rise in France despite rollout of plain packaging
Since France introduced a ban on branded cigarettes in January 2017, more packets of cigarettes have been sold compared to last year when branding was allowed, according to the country's Customs Office (L'administration des Douanes). 
In March alone the French bought four million packets of cigarettes, over four percent more than during the same period last year.
It's a bit of a dog's breakfast, isn't it?

The problem for tobacco control is that they delude themselves on a daily basis, and have done for decades. Sitting in their ensconced echo chamber shunning all meaningful debate with the outside world, they have become accustomed to convincing themselves that their policy-led rhetoric is somehow a form of truth, despite being the very opposite.

In this case, they have hoodwinked themselves into being very confident that a policy which every man or woman on the street knows won't work, will. They are so incredibly naive that I really should get round to designing that brochure to show off the fine array of handsome-looking bridges that I intend to market to them in the near future.

It's easy to see how their heroic predictions for plain packaging were rooted in sand when you take a quick glance at the ridiculous propaganda they utilised to get the daft idea past wooden-top MPs in the first place. Apparently it would make the warnings more visible, yeah, so what? No-one looks at them after the first glance. They would increase calls to quit lines, yeah so what? Calling a quit line and actually quitting are entirely different things, as the NHS agrees. It is the opinion of tobacco controllers that the policy they have their future income pinned on will work, yeah so what? Everyone has an opinion, and by the law of averages around 50% of them will be wrong - considering tobacco control comes from a low, fact-devoid base, their opinions are invariably less accurate than that.

Christ! Cancer Research UK even provided them a study where kids told how they have never seen the 'glitzy' packs that they were getting so agitated about! What does it take to make these morons realise it's a dud policy? Does it need to be tattooed on their palms before they start to get it?

So, no, it's not a surprise that plain packaging is failing in France. In fact, it's very predictable.

Just last week, a piece of worthless fantasy bullshit stated that 300,000 smokers would quit in the next year solely as a result of plain packaging. We already know this is star-gazing fuckwittery from people so inept that they shouldn't be allowed to handle a sharpened pencil without supervision. They are not just living in cloud cuckoo land, they are whacked off their heads on crack while living in cloud cuckoo land ... yet government pays them!

Meanwhile, in Australia, tobacco control's Clown-in-Chief is valiantly trying to paint lipstick on his pig of an idea.


It has always been maintained that the tobacco industry fought plain packs because it took away premium branding and the ability to fight competitors for market share, therefore ossifying the market. No tobacco company believed for a second it would harm sales.

Chappers has been pointing to "The Scream Test" as proof positive that plain packs was a winner for years, but now it's been shown to be a damp squib - as anyone not a self-deluded tobacco control cultist knew would be the case - he's even trying to deny reality that is in front of his very eyes. What goes on in the limited mind of someone like that? So the scream test was proof that it will work and now it isn't working the scream test proves that the French are talking bollocks? The mind boggles.

Simon, it's not working in France! This is a fact. Howling at the moon and restating that it surely must work because 'Big Tobacco' fought it doesn't change that. It is you that has the problem of comprehension, sunshine, not the rest of us who live in the real world.

It's long past time we stopped paying these people. Tobacco control is packed to the gunwales with propagandists, junk scientists, chancers, journeyman no-marks, charlatans and weapons grade cretins. Politicians and civil servants, for the love of whichever deity you have faith in or not, turn the fucking tax tap off.

Please?

See also: The curse of plain packaging - VGIF



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