🧐For anyone playing ‘tobacco industry tactic bingo’, here’s a doozy from JTI's latest swish campaign site ‘It Costs More Than You Think’. In classic cherry-picking fashion, JTI claim that every year reports to HMRC of illicit tobacco activity are increasing and at an all-time high. In a political briefing, JTI published a table that shows an increase in hotline reports since 2019/20. But you don’t need a stats degree to guess why calls were lower in 2019/20 and 2020/21… 📉📞 Check out the full HMRC data for the past 7 years (as far back as it goes). Calls to the hotline dipped during the pandemic, but 2018/19 saw the highest number of reports overall. Context matters. 🧩 Nowhere in their so-called ground-breaking research do JTI cite HMRC’s official data showing the illicit tobacco market is stable and has declined in the long term. 📊 So, why are they doing this? Industry has a long history of using illicit trade arguments to undermine regulation. See the fantastic tobacco tactics website for more info. https://lnkd.in/esQBsW9w
