Within a very good Storify presentation by ASH Wales on a conference they held about e-cigs yesterday, there was this quote from Deborah Arnott.
Renormalisation
"If e-cigarettes were renormalising smoking, we would see an increase in smoking prevalence among the population. Smoking rates have actually continued to go down since the emergence of e-cigarettes."Now, I could be picky and point out that she would have been more accurate to say "smoking rates have started to go down again after stalling since 2007 thanks to the emergence of e-cigarettes" but let's be generous and claim only that it's an unarguable fact that e-cigs are clearly not a threat to prevalence.
Compare that with Australia, then, where they consider pointless political posturing such as plain packaging as brilliant but where e-cig sellers are mercilessly hounded through the courts. The result being?
Eighteen months after the previous government’s laws came into force, new data, obtained by The Australian, shows that tobacco sales volumes increased by 59 million “sticks”, or individual cigarettes or their roll-your-own equivalents last year.What blithering cob-webbed idiots must they have guiding their public health agenda down there, eh?
2 comments:
"The ABS national health survey has not yet covered the plain packaging time period" says that this is latest evidence. Disputed but not wrong wrong wrong.
DP always says there is still no evidence because there isnt enough to mean corner shops and packagers should have their business attacked. Nothing in the guardian article says that plain packaging has been useful over and above the big tax hikes, so it is a failure and should not be copied in Britain unless there is.
No. Still wrong. Sales of cigarettes per head in Australia have fallen since the policy was introduced. Stop making stuff up. You just make yourself look stupid.
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