Friday 31 May 2013

It's Not Junk When WE Do It ... Again

Important new research on tobacco health warnings is just in from Canada ...
Warning Labels On Cigarettes Would Help Smokers Quit
A leading tobacco control researcher says the next step to encourage smokers to quit is to print warning labels on cigarettes. 
Massey’s new College of Health head Professor Paul McDonald, a world expert on smoking cessation, backs the Government’s plans to introduce unbranded tobacco packages with graphic warning images, saying it is the next logical step for cigarette packaging.
A "leading tobacco control" researcher says this? Well, that's it then, eh? I'll bet the research is sound and impeccably unchallengeable, so anyone with objections may as well pack up and go home.
The qualitative study surveyed 10 smokers ...
Oh dear.


Perhaps Simon should get on the dog and bone to this "leading tobacco control researcher" and tell him to stop publishing rotten "science", he being Editor Emeritus of the Journal of Tobacco Control, and all. 

Or do you kinda suspect this will be proudly published in Tobacco Control anyway and is just yet another example of "it's not junk when we do it"?

Good grief with tassels!



7 comments:

Ivan D said...

"Worldwide tobacco kills nearly 6 million people each year; 5 million from direct tobacco use and more than 600 000 non-smokers exposed to second-hand
smoke"

This sentence is listed as a fact at the bottom of the press release. In addition to not understanding the difference between fact and speculation, these "experts" appear to be incapable of performing basic mathematics. I note that the source for this information has some connection with the WHO, which suggests that it may appear as the result of deliberate deception rather than simple stupidity.

I really do despair. Professor? World expert? Scientist? Sample of 10? 600,000 non-smokers fact?


The 600,000 passive smoking deaths derives from a particularly appalling speculative exercise involving a bunch of nonentities with big imaginations a WHO grant and some computer models. To claim it as fact is dishonest in the extreme.

Dick_Puddlecote said...

They're living on borrowed time. They can refuse to debate for as long as they like, but those who aren't psycho have worked out that these people refuse to shut up even when they have milked the cash cow dry.


They're doing our job for us by proving that it's never been about health and that the primary driver has always been about protecting their own grant income. Interestingly, it is coinciding with the Master Settlement Agreement cash river turning into a dribble in the US.


The stance of the more stupid amongst them towards e-cigs is just a handy double whammy. :)

John Gray said...

I hope you're right, Dick, but I have a nightmare that you may be wrong.

junican41 said...

Things will only change when politicians find that 'public opinion' is turning against the nanny state. Public opinion will turn against the nanny state eventually - it always does. In fact, the public consultation about plain packaging suggests that it already has.
It seems to me that the Zealots are panicking like mad. The drive for more and more LEGISLATION about peripheral things like smoking in cars shows how desperate they are.
Only LEGISLATION justifies their income.

yvonne said...

Can someone here refute the assertions in this article "Smokers Die Ten Years Sooner than Non-Smokers" http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/261091.php

nisakiman said...

HEALTH Minister Tanya Plibersek is insisting that Labor's plain
packaging reforms will help cut the number of smokers as her critics
mark World No Tobacco Day by declaring the changes have had no impact on
sales.



I'm sure we'll see some 'creative accounting' from Pilbersek's department soon, claiming massive reductions in smoking due to plain packs. It will of course be virtual reductions, churned out by a computer model just like the SHS stats already mentioned, but that won't stop the ever supine press from printing what they are given verbatim. "It's a miracle!", they will proclaim, and PP will be rolled out globally.

truckerlyn said...

Yet another pointless money wasting exercise. Do any of us even notice the pictures and print on the packs telling us that smoking will kill us?


It is quite common that something that is seen so regularly, ceases to 'be seen' in that it completely fails to have any impact whatsoever!