I am baffled why anyone takes seriously the objections which fag companies have to a ban on branding their products.
The proposed ban places no restriction on buying, merely on selling.
As a libertarian I am in favour of allowing people to smoke if they are daft enough (or addicted enough) to want to. I have a similar attitude to most toxic products. But what should be restricted is the active, vigorous promotion of such products, enticing new addicts/victims. After all, with most currently illegal drugs, dealing and selling is punished much more severely than mere possession or consumption. Many smokers, like many other addicted drug users, freely admit that they wish they had never started.
Most hilarious of all is the claim by the manufacturers that bright, colourful branding does not increase overall consumption, but merely allows competition between bands. Yeah, right - so if such branding does not increase overall consumption, why are all the manufacturers so desparately anxious to retain it? If overall consumption really were to remain unaffected, the overall profitabilty of the industry as a whole would be unaffected. If anything in fact, it would increase their profits since they would no longer have to bear the considerable cost of branding and marketing their products.
