What form do you reckon the government’s consultation on cigarette packaging is going to take? Given that health minister Jane Ellison has said that the government’s intention is clear and the consultation short, I rather think it’s going to be like the gay marriage consultation – which ignored half a million objections to the thing in principle, and just focused on asking how to implement a decision already made. So this business of seeking out the views of ‘stakeholders’ is, I rather think, entirely cosmetic.
I don’t know whether you could call me a stakeholder because I’m not exactly a smoker – I’ve never got the hang of inhaling – but I do like a nice cigarette packet. Camels are my favourite with the cheerful camel and the pyramid – a design icon if ever there was one – but there’s a lot to be said for cocktail cigarettes and the Davidoff black and gold sort, though they’ve been ruined with the pictures of rotting teeth and blackened lungs.
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