Do you remember the screaming headlines on the anniversary of the smoking ban? Almost all of the dailies carried, in huge letters, the news that 40,000 lives had been saved. This was an estimate of course, based on another estimate, that 400,000 smokers had quit following the ban.
Strange then, isn't it, that yesterday's reported increase in smoking prevalence has raised barely a murmur, and nothing at all on any front page that I could see this morning.
So, in the absence of some anti-tobacco funded pseudo-scientist with a calculator to give us some figures, I shall attempt to myself. I've got a calculator too, it's a good one, it does square roots and everything.
According to the UK Statistics Authority, there were 19,861,000 adult males in the UK in 1997. Taking the highly-sophisticated mathematical formula used for the June 30th estimates, I calculate that an increase in male smokers from 23% to 24%, means that an extra 198,610 men are now smoking since the ban came into force, that's nearly 20,000 that will die in gruesome and excruciating agony. Hey, don't shoot the messenger.
And just as the previously reported 'saving' of lives was purely and simply as a result of the smoking ban and nothing else whatsoever at all, so must these 20,000 deaths be wholly as a result of the smoking ban. HMG, ASH, Cancer Research, British Heart Foundation - you murdering bastards!
As an aside, I did laugh at this quote from the Times article:
Liberal Democrat health spokesman Norman Lamb said: 'These are pretty stark figures which demonstrate forcefully that the Government's strategy on smoking has not been successful.
'It's yet another case of the Government pursuing tough eye-catching initiatives which in the end don't succeed in tackling the real problem.'
Well sunshine, you voted in favour, as did 95% of your (il)Liberal Democrat chums, so it's a bit hypocritical to criticise now, is it not?
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