Wednesday 24 April 2013

Scottish Anti-Smoking Groups Pay In Kind

Staggering stuff from ASH Scotland's Sheila Duffy.
Ms Duffy said: "Quitting tobacco is the single best thing a smoker can do to improve their health. We do not support banning e-cigarettes as they could help many smokers to move to a less risky product. However e-cigarettes are produced by commercial companies, with a profit motive."
Err, unlike those philanthropic non-profit producers of NRT her bunch promote relentlessly, and which regularly sponsor events attended by Duffy, eh?

You know, like Pfizer ($14.5bn profit) and Novartis ($9.6bn profit), for example, prominent sponsors of a summit in 2011 at which Duffy presented an opening address.

Well, all that financial assistance must be repaid, obviously. They pat your back, you have to pat theirs.
ANTI-SMOKING groups in Scotland have spoken of an urgent need to regulate the use of e-cigarettes to avoid creating a new wave of addiction. 
The Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Authority (MHRA) is due to publish guidance next month which could effectively ban their use across the UK. 
It is considering the re-classification of e-cigarettes as medicines, which would effectively take them off the shelves until they have had many years of clinical trials and testing, similar to pharmaceutical products. The EU has already issued a similar directive.
So, even though she admits e-cigs benefit public health, Duffy and her Scottish pals are more concerned that they are strictly regulated to the same extent as pharmaceutical products - even if that increases costs, wipes out much competition, and undoubtedly reduces their economic advantage over tobacco.

Still, those pharma sponsors - whose profits are being dented by the stunning success of e-cigs - will be very happy, so that's all right then.

It's never been about health.


7 comments:

Mr A said...

Never mind, Dick. Just keep taking notes. It will all come in handy for the prosecutions in years to come....

moonrakin said...

So, Sheila Duffy is a tart in the original sense of the word - paid for and obliging.



Does she publish a menu of her services?

Tom said...

Water is an addiction, people drink it every day and can't seem to stop. It's also a medicine since it is used in the worldwide Thirst Epidemic plaguing our children. Some companies are making a profit bottling and selling this addictive medicinal substance. Perhaps it should be pulled of shelves until further tested or banned altogether. There is obviously profit motive behind it unless trusted pharmaceuticals are permitted monopoly power over this potent liquid.

Rebecca Taylor said...

While I remain unconvinced that e-cigs should go through the medicines route, if they did there would be no need for clinical trials. E-cigs would instead (at least in the UK) go through an abridged procedure like generic painkillers do, which would require meeting quality & safety standards, but would not require any clinical trials at all.

DP said...

Dear Mr Puddlecote

We
are getting close to that Wall moment when people suddenly wake up and
realise that there does not have to be a Wall and so they take it down.

One morning, soon, people are going to wake and realise that there does not have to be all this regulation.

And the regulators will be out of a job.

Ms Duffy seems to be in the vanguard to wake us all. Good luck with a ban MHRA and EU ...

Can't wait.

DP

Dick_Puddlecote said...

Interesting. And great if true, though I wouldn't trust the word of anti-tobacco as far as I can throw the London Eye. They will want the severest measures or their pharma funders will get the ball gag out.


Ta for commenting, though. If you weren't so hypnotised by tobacco control agitprop to support plain packaging and the banning of e-cig use in public, I could even be persuaded take you a little bit seriously.

South Beach Smoke said...

Agree with that, quitting smoking is the best thing a smoker can do and electronic cigarettes can be very helpful to achieve that.