TY - JOUR T1 - Legal action by Big Tobacco against the Australian government's plain packaging law JF - Tobacco Control JO - Tob Control SP - 80 LP - 81 DO - 10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2011-050370 VL - 21 IS - 2 AU - Simon Chapman Y1 - 2012/03/01 UR - http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/21/2/80.abstract N2 - Now that the Australian government's plain tobacco packaging legislation has passed into law,1 the three tobacco transnationals which sell cigarettes in Australia are jostling to show who has the hairiest legal chest.2 3 British American Tobacco, Philip Morris, Imperial and Japan Tobacco International have commenced court action. Philip Morris has also elected to test a bilateral investment treaty with Hong Kong4 that it wants the world to believe will entitle it to massive compensation. In the highly unlikely event that the companies succeed in any of these arenas, they hope to stand triumphant over the corpse of the legislation, holding aloft the Australian government's bloodied scalp and saying to the world ‘now, anyone else want to have a go?’Throughout their failed lengthy campaign to dissuade the Australian government from its course, the rhetorical twins of plain packaging being globally unprecedented and the threat of humungous compensation have walked hand-in-hand. Their shared subtext (that any government thinking it could do this to the noble tobacco package has lost leave of its senses) bears careful scrutiny, as does the notion that the financial loss to each company from being forced into plain livery will be both huge and easily determined.The last 150 years of history have seen several perfectly legal companies consigned to pariah status as public values changed. The slave trading South Sea Company and the British East India opium trading company were not compensated when nations began outlawing their commerce. Sideshow tent owners exhibiting people with congenital malformations for the entertainment of the curious5 did not line up for payouts when civil society declared this abhorrent. And more recently, the compensation vaults were not opened to the asbestos industry when the disease causation curtain fell unceremoniously on that formerly ‘ordinary’ product.6But these examples … ER -