Surely we're being far too tough on Big Tobacco, as so many disparagingly refer to it, after the failure of its High Court challenge to the plain packaging legislation. If we'd only open our minds to what British American Tobacco and the others are saying, we'd see how remarkably public spirited they are.
They're worried not for themselves but about the "serious unintended consequences" they fear plain packaging will bring. According to their spokesman, Scott McIntyre, its only benefit will be to "organised crime groups which sell illegal tobacco on our streets".
Huh? "The illegal black market will grow further when all packs look the same and are easier to copy," he says.
In case you hadn't heard, this country faces a rampant illicit tobacco problem, with "criminal gangs now smuggling three times the amount of counterfeit and contraband cigarettes into Australia" last year, compared with the year before.
Overall, the illegal tobacco market is equal to 13.4 per cent of the legal market. How does the industry know? It commissioned a report from Deloitte, a financial services firm.
The industry has been terribly concerned about the illicit tobacco market for some years. Why? Not for itself, of course, but for what it's costing the taxpayer in lost tobacco excise. Last year, almost $1 billion, according to Deloitte.
You've often seen me criticise industries trying to hit the taxpayer for subsidies but with the tobacco people it's all the other way. Last year they ran ads desperately trying to dissuade the government from persisting with its plain packaging notion and thereby obliging the industry to cost the taxpayer millions in legal fees responding to Big Tobacco's High Court challenge - not to mention the billions the government stood to lose in compensation should the court agree the government had appropriated the industry's intellectual property.
Fortunately, the court didn't agree. It also awarded costs against the industry, which I'm sure will come as a great relief to the public-spirited tobacco people.
But the industry's concern for the taxpayer doesn't end there. It opposed the 25 per cent increase in the tobacco excise in 2010 because of the hit to revenue it would cause as the jump in the price of legal cigarettes forced more of the market into the hands of the cut-price criminal black market.
You may in your innocence think plain packaging will reduce the number of young people taking up smoking but that's where you would be wrong.
As the industry explained in full page ads last year, plain packaging "could drive the cost of [legal] tobacco down. Because with no branding, companies will have no option but to compete on price. And lower prices will make tobacco more accessible to young adults".
The boss of British American elaborated elsewhere that this was a worry because it would undermine government health initiatives to curb tobacco consumption. See what caring people we're dealing with?
As I discuss in my little video on the website today, I think plain packaging may force down the prices of "premium-brand" cigarettes. That wouldn't be a good thing but it would be easily (and lucratively) remedied by increasing the tobacco excise.
The tobacco companies aren't the only critics. According to the Australian Retailers Association, "retailers now face the costs of plain packaging transactions, which will see a significant increase in the time taken to complete a transaction as all products will be near identical".
"Transaction time increases are estimated to cost businesses up to half a billion dollars, which is the equivalent of 15,000 jobs," we're told. No back-of-an-envelope was offered in support of this remarkable claim, in which case I'd be inclined to view it with scepticism.
But what about the supposedly booming black market - how worried should we be about it? Not very. We've really only got the industry's word for how big it is and a detailed critique by Quit Victoria casts doubt on the reliability of the report commissioned from Deloitte.
Deloitte's calculations are built on a poll with a very small sample, which doesn't seem completely random. It asks smokers about their purchases of unbranded tobacco (mainly loose tobacco in plastic bags), contraband cigarettes (those imported without excise payment) and counterfeit cigarettes (those with fake brand names) and adds their answers together, even though you'd expect virtually all counterfeit smokes also to be contraband.
How do people know the cigarettes they've bought are illicit? Because of perceived poor quality, cheap prices, labelling in foreign languages and a different taste. Trouble is, these days a lot of cheap, foreign-made, funny-looking cigarettes are imported legally.
According to Quit Victoria, Deloitte's estimates imply one cigarette in eight is illicit. That's a bit hard to swallow.
Quit Victoria used an official survey by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare in 2010, which had a very much bigger sample, to estimate the total use of illicit tobacco products is more like 2 per cent to 3 per cent of the overall market.
This implies the revenue forgone by the taxpayer is closer to $165 million a year than $1 billion.
I'm sure taxpayers everywhere thank the industry for its concern on our behalf but I don't think we need to be losing too much sleep over it.
