Ireland said a second major cigarette manufacturer, Imperial Tobacco Group, has threatened legal action against the government over plans for a law requiring them to sell cigarettes in plain packets, reports Reuters Health.
Ireland said in 2013 it wanted to become the first country in the EU to ban branding on cigarette packages and reiterated its plans this week after the legislation prompted a threat of legal action from Japan Tobacco International. The minister who has designed the legislation, James Reilly, said Japan Tobacco and Imperial Tobacco had written to his department and that one of the firms demanded he tell them in writing by this week that Dublin would not proceed with the law.
"I want to be crystal clear. We will put the health of our children ahead of the profits of Imperial Tobacco and Japan Tobacco International every time," Reilly said. No one at Imperial Tobacco, whose cigarette brands include Davidoff, Gauloises and John Player in Ireland, was immediately available for comment.
In a response last year to Britain's health department over its plans to introduce a similar law by May, Imperial Tobacco said plain packaging would infringe international law, could threaten future foreign direct investment into Britain and set a dangerous precedent for other sectors.
The scientific journal Addiction has, meanwhile, published a collection of peer-reviewed research papers and commentaries that bring together key parts of the evidence base for standardised packaging of tobacco products from 2008 to 2015.
[link url="http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/21/us-ireland-tobacco-idUSKBN0LP0SO20150221"]Full Reuters Health report[/link]
[link url="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/%28ISSN%291360-0443/homepage/plain_packaging.htm"]Addiction research papers[/link]