Tobacco company loses FoI appeal bid
The High Court has rejected a tobacco company's bid to appeal for the release of privileged parliamentary documents containing legal advice on plain cigarette packaging.
British American Tobacco argued it should be allowed to see a memo outlining legal and constitutional issues involved with the world-first plain packaging legislation, which is due to take effect in December after the company lost a long-running legal fight this week.
Imperial Tobacco has been handed an infringement notice after local residents complained about the smell coming from its factory.
The tobacco giant's plant in Lower Hutt has recently been upgraded, but locals say the work hasn't stopped the "sickly odour" from spreading across the town.
The Petone factory has increased its tobacco production and says the smell is a result of steam from blending tobacco leaf and water.
The report tells us that "colours and fonts tend to produce particular responses in customers" and that "imagery and symbols exert very powerful effects" - on us ordinary mortals, you understand, not on state employees or health experts, who are of course immune to the brain-invading charms of Big Tobacco branding. Apparently, state-designed plain packets will help save loads of lives, since they will "reduce the temptation of tobacco".
And thus it falls to the state to save us from the "temptation" by shielding our eyes from "seductive" logos, in a similar way that priests used to claim to be able to "deliver us from temptation" by limiting what we could know and inculcating us with The Truth.
An FOI request is turned down just because?
The odor of tobacco blended with water offends delicate noses now?
The idea of olive green making a behavior change is pointless and silly.
*sigh*
Plain packaging - common sense or nonsense? You decide...
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