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"Anti-smoking campaign groups have won a ruling against a tobacco company that claimed there was &amp;quot;no credible evidence&amp;quot; for bringing in plain packaging for cigarettes.  Gallaher Ltd, which has brands including Camel, Benson &amp;amp; Hedges and Silk Cut, ran three national press ads attacking the government&amp;#039;s plain pack consultation.  Text in the ad said: &amp;quot;The anti-tobacco groups say that plain packs would prevent young people from starting to smoke. So why is there no evidence to support this claim in the Department of Health&amp;#039;s consultation?  &amp;quot;Why, when the same policy was rejected in 2008, due to the same lack of evidence, has nothing credible emerged since?&amp;quot; But ASH, ASH Scotland and Cancer Research UK contacted the UK advertising regulator over Gallaher&amp;#039;s assertion that there was &amp;quot;no evidence&amp;quot; to support the move.  They told the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) that it was misleading to claim that the government had rejected the policy of adopting plain packaging on cigarettes in 2008 because of a lack of credible evidence. Gallaher attempted to argue that after the 2008 consultation, the government had taken forward a ban on the display of tobacco products at the point of sale and stopped cigarettes from being sold in vending machines, but had not advanced the introduction of plain packaging of tobacco products.  It quoted Baroness Thornton, then Health Minister in the House of Lords, as saying in March 2009 that &amp;quot;... we consider it premature at this stage to take this major step&amp;quot;. She had added: &amp;quot;We will work hard to ensure that the emerging evidence on plain packaging is kept under review, and the government&amp;#039;s policy will change if and when that is appropriate.&amp;quot; The ASA said that while the government did not advance the plain packaging policy in 2008, ministers did intend to keep it under review for reassessment at a later date.  It therefore felt that the word &amp;quot;rejected&amp;quot; used in Gallaher&amp;#039;s adverts &amp;quot;implied a stronger and more definitive action taken by the government than appeared to be the case&amp;quot; After contacting the Department of Health, the ASA was also told that the government did not consider &amp;quot;rejected&amp;quot; to be an accurate description of its position on plain packaging in 2008.  &amp;quot;We therefore considered that the claims in the ads that the policy had been &amp;#039;rejected&amp;#039; in 2008 because of a lack of credible evidence gave a misleading impression of the position and action taken at that time by the government and concluded that the ads breached the Code,&amp;quot; said the ASA.  Gallaher was told the ads must not appear again in their current form, and the firm must never again claim that the government &amp;quot;rejected&amp;quot; the policy of plain packaging in 2008, or state there was a lack of evidence.  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/media/news/a465283/anti-smoking-groups-win-plain-packaging-ad-verdict/>