I WRITE in response to your article ‘Plain cigarette packs will bring in £2m’, published August 14.

Public Health England’s (PHE) assertion that plain packaging has reduced smoking rates in Australia and could boost the economy in the UK are both factually incorrect. In the first year plain packaging was introduced in Australia, tobacco sales volumes increased by 59 million sticks and there is strong evidence of consumers shifting to lower priced brands and less expensive hand rolled tobacco.

Significantly, government data showed smoking prevalence amongst adolescents and young adults has increased by 1.3 percentage points since the introduction of plain packaging.

In addition the introduction of plain packaging would lead to a collapse in the value of a hi-tech packaging sector that is currently worth many hundreds of millions of pounds to the UK economy as well as employing within the total supply chain over 60,000 people.

Commoditising a whole product category would remove the need for a series of highly skilled printing and packaging techniques that currently support jobs, flourishing apprenticeship schemes and valuable export business to the UK economy.

It would be a mistake to blight a sophisticated hi-tech section of the UK’s manufacturing base by adopting a policy that has failed to improve public health, loses exchequer revenue and in fact may have the opposite effect by opening up further the illicit supply chain to vulnerable and young people.

Mike Ridgway, Former MD of Weidenhammer UK Limited and spokesman for six leading packaging companies