WOULD cigarettes be as alluring if all brands came in the same plain grey packaging? Such standardisation could become mandatory following research showing that consumers are still taken in by subliminal packaging messages that lead them to think some brands are less harmful than others.

More than 40 countries have banned tobacco companies from advertising brands as “mild” or “low tar” following research showing they were all equally harmful.

To see whether more subtle packaging cues are influencing consumers, David Hammond and Carla Parkinson at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, created fictitious cigarette packets bearing …