Why Big Tobacco is after our children

Big Tobacco is fighting back against Australia’s world-leading plain packaging, and as ever children are in the firing line. Photo: HO

There are three possible explanations for British American Tobacco’s attempts to use Freedom of Information legislation to access Cancer Council research on children’s attitudes to smoking, as reported in The Age last week.

The first is that nobody in the company realised that this would be a PR disaster, confirming yet again Big Tobacco’s reputation as both the world’s most lethal industry and its most ruthless. As such it gives