This photograph of two brands, both made by Uganda’s dominant manufacturer British American Tobacco (BAT), shows how the front and back of a 10 pack of Rothmans cigarettes bought in the UK, despite the diminutive size of the pack, have far more arresting warnings than the minute one on the side of a 20 pack of Embassy purchased in Uganda. To mark World No Tobacco Day and to highlight the lack of controls over BAT’s operations, Kevin O’Connor, a journalist and athletics coach resident in Uganda, used pictures of the packs in his weekly column in a leading East African newspaper, The Sunday Monitor. Commenting on a preview of the pictures, the country’s director general of health, Professor Francis Omaswa, referred to the “shock” he felt when comparing the UK pack warning with the “tiny, inconspicuous” warnings on Ugandan packs. And as O’Connor pointed out, the UK warnings are far from the world’s best, with another developing country, Brazil, boasting large, graphic pack warnings (see

.

Size does matter: two brands of cigarettes manufactured by BAT, one sold in the UK with large warnings, the other sold in Uganda with “tiny, inconspicuous” warnings.