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Comment by benmmurphy | Hacker News Reader

I would be careful using Australian packaging laws as evidence that plain packaging has an effect on rates of smoking. There has been a lot of controversy about whether it has had an effect or not. There has been a secular decline in smoking in Australia so a continued decrease in smoking is not necessarily evidence of an effective policy.

Here are some alternative points of view:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/health/labo...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepac...

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I would be more careful trusting The Australian on anything to do with smoking (and a few other issues) given their writers' links to the tobacco-funded IPA. Media Watch put it a lot better than I could, with sources:

http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s4026465.htm

Media watch has some interesting quoting.

"Do the figures mean more people are smoking?

Well, no ... the industry admits , the number of smokers fell in 2013 by 1.4%. "

and they link to: http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/1420_bata.pdf

“From 2008 to 2012 smoking incidence, or the number of people smoking, was declining at an average rate of -3.3 per cent a year. Since plain packaging was introduced, that decline rate slowed to -1.4 per cent,” Mr McIntyre said.

“Over the five years in the lead-up to the introduction of plain packaging, total tobacco industry volumes were declining at an average rate of -4.1 per cent.

So the source material appears to support the case that plain packaging has not been an effective policy and may have slowed the decline in smoking.

The plain packaging policy looks a lot like rainmaking. Propose a policy that sounds like it might bring a decrease in smoking in an environment where smoking is already decreasing and then when smoking continues to decrease claim that it was a success.

Care to provide a link to the direct report the Australian quoted from? I'd like to be able to read the report and its data in its entirety. And, no, a quote from Scott McIntyre, the spokesman from British American Tobacco, is not good enough for me. Data please.

I'm confused - The Australian article cites the very 0.3% outlier that the Washington Post article is talking about. It's not reliable.

You say you should be suspicious, but you seem to show no suspicion of an article that starts with the sentence "LABOR’S nanny state push to kill off the country’s addiction to cigarettes with plain packaging has backfired, with new sales figures showing tobacco consumption growing during the first full year of the new laws."

Does your bias radar not kick in at this point? Or perhaps the anecdotal evidence from two smokers in Brisbane who said their friends haven't quit, and one convenience store worker in Sydney who agreed with British American Tobacco's spokesperson? Do you really consider this article to be... reliable? Did you wonder where they found these people? Are you not slightly suspicious who was feeding the info to the journalist?

It's well known that the Australian article you cite is an editorial, and an inaccurate editorial at that, by a former staffer in the Liberal Howard government. The article was highly criticized as being wrong on almost every count, most damningly by Media Watch (see here: http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s4026465.htm )

But here are a few counter articles from less biased, non-News Corp sources:

* http://www.crikey.com.au/2014/06/06/oz-exclusive-big-tobacco...

* http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/06/labor-rejects-t...

* http://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/increased-tobacco-s...

The data itself was "leaked" to the Australian and is from InfoView, who supplies this info to cigarette companies. And, surprise, surprise, the full report and data it analyses was never released publicly.

Funny that.

Immensely wealthy tobacco companies pay people to spread misinformation.

Do you have links to reputable sources?

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