Yes but it could be used as a way to see what would appeal to youngsters and so add it to marketing strategies. Or to make sure that workable solutions that discourage smoking are not adopted.

With advertising already banned and incoming proposals including the requirement to use plain packaging and the possibility that tobacco products should not be displayed but rather sold from under the counter, I can't see a single "marketing strategy" that is going to boost the fortunes of the tobacco companies, university research or not.

Not forgetting that, like all the big tobacco companies, PMI is a large multi-national corporation.
Just because they couldn't make much use of the information in this country doesn't mean they couldn't take some cues from it to use in another - USA, Canada and Australia for instance.

That's the problem of those respective jurisdictions, not the responsibility of British authorities.

I would wager that not much of the information is transferable - the culture of all the aforementioned countries is very different from one another.

It's the less developed countries they'll be interested in.

Totally China, India, Phillipines and Africa. If they can encourage young smokers there they would be set for two generations.