Our Chief Executive, Jonathan Isaby, wrote for Conservative Home today, explaining why all taxpayers should oppose plain packaging for cigarettes.
Here's what he had to say:
It stands to reason that cigarette packets free of any branding whatsoever would be infinitely easier to forge, making the measure tantamount to a counterfeiters’ charter.
And guess what? An increase in illicit tobacco sales would mean a decrease in tobacco duty collected by the government from legitimate sales. Here the evidence from Australia is clear: since the introduction of plain packaging, the previous downwards trend in illicit sales has been reversed as the black market has hit a new high, with a 24 per cent jump in illicit sales in just two years.