Paul Thorne

“When you don’t have anything else, our packaging is our marketing”

Posted on April 18, 2012 by Paul Thorne

If you’ve bought today’s Times newspaper you may have seen this page printed in there.

(Click to on the image to see a bigger version)

On Monday, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley launched a three-month long public consultation on the future of tobacco packaging. What is up for discussion is whether the colourful and slickly designed tobacco packaging should be removed.

This would be replaced by packs of uniform size, shape and colour. We’d like to see large picture health warnings on the front and back. This would help reduce the appeal of tobacco and help give young people one less reason to start smoking.

100,000 people in the UK die from smoking related diseases each year. Eight out of 10 lung cancer cases are caused by smoking.

We expect opposition to this measure – the advertisement illustrates why the tobacco industry values packaging so much.

As you can see in the ad above, in their words:

“Our final communication vehicle with our smokers is the pack itself. In the absence of any other marketing messages, our packaging… is the sole communicator of our brand essence. Put another way: When you don’t have anything else, our packaging is our marketing.”

For more information visit our campaign website - The Answer is Plain.

Paul

A personal story about the impact of tobacco

Posted on April 16, 2012 by Paul Thorne

Henrietta and her children

Andrew Lansley has launched a three-month long consultation on the future of tobacco packaging, and whether all cigarettes should be sold in packs of uniform size, shape and colour.

This is a measure we fully support as a way to help reduce the appeal of cigarettes to children. It’s about giving young people one less reason to start smoking and stopping them becoming addicted to a product that kills half of all long term smokers.

In this article, mother of two Henrietta Pretty talks about her personal experience of losing her mother to lung cancer, her perspective on tobacco marketing and of wanting to protect her two young sons from becoming smokers.

My mum the addict

My mum was an addict for as long as I can remember. She’d got hooked in her teens and was never able to kick it. She’d tried several times but the draw was just too strong. On the outside she was a capable, talented woman – clever, sensible and in control of her life. It was her only weakness, but she was totally and utterly powerless to it. Smoking ruled her with an iron hold.

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UN meeting on non-communicable diseases was only a partial success

Posted on November 14, 2011 by Paul Thorne

The meeting was a huge opportunity

‘A limited success’ is how we’d best describe September’s United Nations high-level meeting in New York, which gathered to discuss non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as diabetes, cancer and heart disease.

This was only the second ever meeting of its kind, bringing together heads of state and health leaders from around the world. The first meeting was back in 2001, and focused on HIV/ AIDS. With NCDs set to cause up to two-thirds of all worldwide deaths over the next 25 years, it was agreed that they too need global action. Back in August we discussed exactly why this summit was too important an opportunity to miss.

But now, in the aftermath, we think the meeting could have gone much further, and we have some real issues of concern.
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Year of Radiotherapy: A lot can change in 100 years

Posted on July 29, 2011 by Paul Thorne

Radiotherapy has come a long way since this picture was taken in 1957

If you could travel back in time to 1911 you would see, hear and smell a world that is vastly different from today. Horse drawn carriages dominate the roads; the streets and most homes are still lit by gas; and the only option for treating cancer involves surgeons cutting out the tumour and hoping for the best.

Fortunately, the options and outlook for cancer patients have hugely improved since then.

One hundred years ago this year Marie Curie won a second Nobel Prize for her research into radium, establishing her position as a pioneer in the field of radiotherapy. To mark this, 2011 has been designated the Year of Radiotherapy, celebrating a century of advances.

Around four in ten patients who are cured of cancer have received radiotherapy as part of their treatment, but public understanding and appreciation of this vital technique hasn’t kept pace with the scientific advances made over the last century.

Fewer than one in ten members of the public think that radiotherapy is a modern, cutting-edge treatment. And people still fear the treatment, with 40 per cent of people describing radiotherapy as “frightening”.

Doctors too are often unaware of how far radiotherapy has come. Currently around four in ten cancer patients get radiotherapy but studies suggest that this figure should be closer to five in ten, suggesting that some patients may be missing out on the opportunity to benefit from a treatment could help save their life. We’re working to tackle this through our Voice For Radiotherapy campaign, which you can join today.

On Monday the National Cancer Director Professor Sir Mike Richards joined radiotherapy experts, including Cancer Research UK’s Professor Tim Maughan, at the Royal Marsden Hospital to discuss how to ensure that all patients who could benefit from radiotherapy are getting access to the most up to date treatments.

You can watch a video of the whole round-table discussion on the Royal Marsden’s website, but we’ve pulled out some of the highlights below.

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