Marlboro recruits smokers to its battle against plain packaging

With their backs to the wall amid increasingly tough regulations, as well as the looming threat of having to remove all branding from cigarette packets, tobacco companies need all the allies they can find.

Who better to ask than Britain's 10 million smokers themselves?

In a campaign launched with the aid of a major lobbying firm that has waged similar offensives for rightwing causes in the US, the makers of Marlboro cigarettes are seeking to mobilise a grassroots fightback by customers against moves towards blank packaging.

Philip Morris is running three different inserts highlighting tough policies that aim to hit a nerve with smokers - tax, the possibility of banning smoking in cars and homes, and how plain packaging might fuel the black market trade in cigarettes.

One insert reads: "Plain packaging is the latest in a stream of proposals targeting smokers. Other excessive schemes have been suggested. Know more by learning the issues, then say no more to the government by joining our community and speaking out."