1. — Plain Packaging: Evidence 2018
Sinclair Davidson
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Economics, Finance and Marketing

2. National Drug Strategy Household Survey (2013 data)

3. National Drug Strategy Household Survey (2016 data)

4. State Based Results: NSW

5. State Based Results: Vic
Victorian Population Health Survey (Various)

6. State Based Results: QLD
report-chapter-8.pdf

7. State Based Results: SA
_2017_-_April_2018.pdf

8. State Based Results: WA
cations/Population%20surveys/Health-and-Wellbeing-of-Adults-in-Western- Australia-2017.pdf

9. The Australian Surveillance State
“the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission’s annual national wastewater survey, in which household waste is tested for the presence of various drugs, tells a different story. Law-enforcement agencies consider it more reliable because it’s hard to hide what’s in your urine. The commission’s 2017 report issued in July, from testing conducted between October and December last year and February this year, shows tobacco use nationally going up, not down.”
Source: The Saturday Paper tobacco-trade/

10. The Wakefield Studies
The Cancer Council Victoria survey was “commissioned” by the Australian government to investigate the impact of the introduction of plain packaging.
Results published in 2015 Tobacco Control.
Other government funded survey studies published in same issue.
Conclusions:
“Plain packaging in Australia has been a casebook example of effective tobacco control – a policy measure driven by evidence, carefully designed and implemented, and now rigorously assessed”. Hastings and Moodie (2015: ii2)
“These results should give confidence to countries considering plain packaging that plain packs not only reduce appeal of tobacco products and increase the effectiveness of health warnings but also diminish the tobacco industry’s ability to use packs to mislead consumers about the harms of smoking.” Melanie Wakefield

11. The Wakefield Studies Three important studies:
Responses to health warnings (Wakefield et al.).
Quitting behaviours (Durkin et al.).
Linking responses to behaviours (Brennan et al.).
Problems (Davidson and de Silva 2016):
Data mining.
Different data across studies.
Different time periods.
Different variables.
Does not test actual quitting behaviour before and after the policy introduction.
All the (inconsistent) methodological choices made in the studies work to demonstrate that plain packaging was successful.
When you untangle those choices, the results are not robust.

12. What did the WTO say?

13. What did the WTO say?
That is a damning assessment because what did convince the WTO was even worse – junk science.

14. The Post-Implementation Review
The Australian government must have known their original survey evidence was weak: because they commissioned more original research for the post-implementation review.
According to Mike Daube:
“… it is especially rewarding that this meticulous independent analysis attributes part of that decline to plain packaging alone …”
According to the actual post-implementation review:
“… it is not possible to identify separately the effects of tobacco plain packaging and enlarged and updated graphic health warnings on smoking prevalence …”.

15. The Post-Implementation Review
After a freedom of information request the summary data was made available.

16. The Post-Implementation Review

17. The Post-Implementation Review

18. The Post-Implementation Review
The post-implementation review also contained another modelling exercise.
Model has 800,000 observations and 52 explanatory variables – but not price.
Lindley’s paradox (large N makes it easier to find statistically significant variables at conventional levels).
Unusual model base:
an unmarried, Australian born, 14 – 17 year old, male, with a tertiary qualification, employed full time, but with an income less than $6000, and living in Victoria.
0.55% decline in tobacco consumption can be attributed to plain packaging.
Sample error is 0.6%.
Pseudo-R2 are all very small.
Data not publicly available for replication.

19. What to believe?

20. What to believe?

21. Conclusion
Plain packaging is failing to meet its stated objectives in Australlia.
The only ‘evidence’ left is junk science.
‘Unfortunately, in 2016, official sales of cigarettes increased in France: the [plain packaging policy] did not reduce the official sale of tobacco’. Agnès Buzyn – French Health Minister.
‘Since implementing the policy, cigarette smoking has increased in the U.K. according to the Smoking Toolkit Study by 0.7 percent, and the black market for counterfeit cigarettes has expanded, according to the Tobacco Manufacturers Association’. Philip Thompson – Washington Examiner.

22. How to find me
My Plain Packaging Resources page:
Google: Sinclair Davidson plain packaging resources
Blog:
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