Minister for Children James Reilly has said he "can't think of a better present for children at Christmas" than the European Court of Justice ruling in favour of plain packaging for tobacco products.
The Government will press ahead with its plans to introduce plain packaging from next May, though further “intimidation through litigation” from cigarette companies is foreseen, he said.
“As night follows day, I see further manipulations and manoeuvres from the tobacco industry,” the Minister said. “They’re very well resourced, and they seem to be determined to put their profits above the interests of our children’s health.”
Speaking at Government Buildings in the company of fellow anti-tobacco campaigners, Dr Reilly said the Government is determined to see the measure through.
“We’re very much on track. From May next year, it will no longer be legal to produce other than plain packaging for the Irish market, and from the following May you won’t be able to sell tobacco products unless they are in plain packaging.”
The measure, which will see logos and other promotional notices replaced on a packet by graphic health warnings, aimed to remove “the last billboard available to the tobacco industry to seduce young people into the habit of smoking,” he said.
Seductive advertising would be replaced by the reality, in the form of pictorial health warnings about the dangers of smoking, he added.
According to the Minister, smoking kills about 700,000 people, equivalent to the population of Amsterdam, every year. In Ireland, 5,200 people annually die from tobacco-related illnesses.
Welcoming the European court's opinion, the Irish Cancer Society claimed it "rubbishes the arguments of a tobacco industry that knows plain packaging works".
“Plain packaging of tobacco saves lives,” said Kathleen O’Meara, the society’s head of advocacy and communications. “Big Tobacco is throwing everything at stopping its introduction in Ireland because they need to recruit 50 new smokers every day in Ireland to replace those dying and quitting.
“Today’s opinion means we’ve overcome a big hurdle. But the tobacco industry has deep pockets and this will not be the last legal challenge to plain packaging either here or at EU level.”
Anti-smoking group Ash Ireland says it looks forward to supporting the Government with the introduction of standardised packaging.
It said that treating the effects of smoking costs the Irish health services in excess of €1 billion euro annually and that steps “must be taken” to ease dreadful statistics about smoking.
