Plain packaging is an infringement of free speech

WHY do people's critical faculties go up in a puff of smoke when it comes to the debate about cigarettes? In the name of "stamping out smoking", it seems governments can be as bossy and intolerant and censorious as they like, and no one will raise an eyebrow.

This week, it took Philip Morris, the tobacco giant, to do what liberals and libertarians should have done ages ago: challenge the Australian government's plan to bring in plain packaging for cigarettes.

As of December next year, it will be illegal in Australia to sell cigarettes in boxes branded with the evil logos of Marlboro, say, or Benson & Hedges.

Instead, cigarettes will have to come in olive green packets free of branding. The packets will still carry graphic health warnings, however, hectoring dumb smokers about how their filthy habit might kill them and possibly their children, too.

Philip Morris has accused the Australian government of "infringing on its trademark rights". It also says there is no hard evidence that moving to plain packaging will reduce the number of smokers. That's no doubt true; after all, people fork out cash for ciggies not because they like the fancy logo on the box, but because they like the nicotine inside it.
Yet Philip Morris is, if anything, being too polite. This is more than a trademark issue; it's a free-speech issue. What is happening here is that companies are being denied the right to publish perfectly reasonable and inoffensive material - the names of their products - and at the same time they're being forced to publish government propaganda about smoking.

That is, not only will they be denied the liberty to project their logos and designs into the public sphere, they will also be obliged, by law, to continue to publish disgusting images of blackened lungs or dead bodies alongside scary sentences about how smoking destroys lives.

For years, it was considered paramount in a civilised society that people should be free to publish what they like, and that no one should be forced to parrot the government line, much less publish grotesque images handpicked by the authorities.

Imagine if such authoritarian tactics were applied in other areas of life. Imagine if government officials started sticking black tape across the face of Tony the Tiger on packets of Frosties (too much sugar can be bad for us, after all) or banned bottle shops from displaying those oh-so-tempting words "BEER" and "WINE". Imagine if a political magazine were forced to carry on its cover government messages about health and wellbeing. There'd be outrage.

Yet in the name of the "war on smoking", the Australian government, closely watched by other anti-smoking governments across the world, can get away with censoring images, banning brand names, and strong-arming companies into publishing images of half-dead humans.

Some will say it doesn't matter, because the target is only Big Tobacco, and no one cares about them. In truth, the target is as much us, the public, as it is the tobacco companies.

Censoriousness is always underpinned by prejudice. The desire to black out certain words and images is never simply about the words and images themselves. Rather it is about the perceived impact such words and images will have on the public.

Censors are always driven by the fantastically snobbish and paternalistic fear that if a certain section of society claps eyes upon a saucy or tempting image or overhears an offensive word, then they will be driven mad with lust or hate and will do something crazy.

And so it is with the censoring of cigarette brands. This, too, is about officialdom covering our eyes, lest we fall like lemmings for the lure of the Marlboro Man and start puffing on 40 cigs a day. It is because they believe we are easily enslaved by brand names and advertising, that we are weak-willed and easily hooked, that governments feel the need to hide certain products from our view.

Whatever you think of Big Tobacco, you should be concerned about the real precedent that will be set by the plain-packaging law: one in which the state gets to present itself as the moral saviour of the fickle throng, using heavy-handed tactics to save us from our own worst instincts.