A Perfect Population Level Experiment

The NNA spotted a superb statistic on Friday at the government's Tobacco Control Debate. I don't know about you but I think this deserves more attention.

Yesterday in a debate on the government’s Tobacco Control Plan in the House of Commons, Sir Kevin Barron highlighted the gulf between the UK and Ireland, two countries with identical traditional tobacco control policies but with differing approaches to e-cigarettes. Between 2012 and 2016 smoking dropped by nearly a quarter in the UK . In Ireland, where e-cigarettes are viewed with suspicion, the smoking rate actually went up in this period. 

Here is the Hansard entry for it.

I want to give a comparator and to refer back to my intervention on the Minister. I chaired the Health Committee in 2005, after we had fought an election on a manifesto commitment by the Labour party to introduce a ban on smoking in public places. I stood on that manifesto, but the ban proposed was not a comprehensive one. The Health Committee, of which I became the Chair, investigated smoking in public places. We went to Ireland to take evidence, because it had had such a ban for about two years. 

I will now demonstrate the effectiveness of e-cigarettes by comparing smoking rates in the UK versus those in Ireland, where every other approach to tobacco control is identical to those in the UK, such as plain packaging, retail display bans and marketing promotions all stopped. In recent years in the UK, smoking rates have dropped by almost a quarter—according to the Office for National Statistics, 24.4% of UK adults smoked in 2012 and 15.8% in 2016—and the UK now has the second lowest smoking rate in Europe. In Ireland, which has exactly the same tobacco control as we put through this place over many years, smoking rates have stagnated: 23% of adults smoked in 2015 and 2016, dropping to 22% in 2017, according to Healthy Ireland stats. That shows how the use of e-cigarettes has been good in reducing smoking in this country.

As the NNA has shown with their links, Hansard and Barron are actually wrong here. In Ireland the rate was reported as 22% in 2012 (chapter 3) and 23% in 2016. Maybe Barron was confused himself, perhaps it didn't compute. But both figures are derived from the same source, Tobacco Free Ireland.

But whether it is down by 1% or up by 1% matters not, this is a real life experiment which is just about perfect. In the UK smoking rates have nosedived, while in Ireland they have barely shifted. In the UK we have a supportive environment to e-cigs, in Ireland high profile politicians are doing everything in their power to turn smokers away from them.

We are not comparing the UK with a country with vastly differing levels of disposable income here, far from it. Ireland is a country on a par with the UK as far as the economy goes.

What's more, we're not comparing with Africans, south east Asians, Indians, Scandinavians, Americans north or south or antipodeans. We are comparing with our nearest cultural neighbours, so closely aligned are we that we don't even enforce passport requirements between the two countries.

The British and the Irish are about as good a comparison for ecological purposes as there can possibly be.

And, as Barron said, the only difference between UK policy and Irish policy is that over here our government cautiously welcomes new nicotine products whereas in Ireland they don't.

As I mentioned only yesterday, if politicians really want to get smokers to quit smoking - because that is really what they want, isn't it - this should be compelling stuff.

For a political class who consistently say they always wish to act on evidence, this is about the best quality evidence they can get. A population-level, real life study of two almost identical countries - with just the one difference in nicotine policy - but with vastly differing outcomes.

So why are other countries not scrambling to emulate the indisputable success of promoting safer alternatives to smoking that this inadvertent experiment proves? Well, I guess it also shows that the other tobacco control policies legislated for in that timescale - of which there have been many - are completely and utterly pointless. And I suppose there is always the fear that if smokers actually did what politicians pretend they want to see, tobacco tax receipts would also plummet, and they are fully aware that the economically fraudulent propaganda tobacco controllers spout about smoking harming the economy is utter bollocks.

So bravo to Barron for highlighting such a stark comparator in the House of Commons chamber. You just have to wonder why the tobacco control industry and other politicians, both sides of the Irish Sea, have been so silent about it, whereas if the results were the other way round they would be screaming it from the rooftops.

It's never been about health, you know. 

Big Trouble In Little New Zealand

Via Eric Crampton, we are seeing yet more evidence of how vaping has utterly confused policymakers all over the world.

E-cigs and other risk reduced nicotine products are - quite rightly - described as a 'disruptive' technology. Of course, the traditional use of that term generally means that it is disruptive to the current market, but considering the current market is dried tobacco leaves in paper tubes that governments tend to dislike, you'd think they'd be happy about that.

Well, in many jurisdictions it appears not, and if you look closely you can see why. As Crampton points out, the NZ Ministry of Health's latest Health and Independence Report is optimistic about e-cigs but it is worth noting that this is only because they were made de facto legal by a court case brought by the makers of iQos. All of a sudden, vaping was legal too. And with that judgement has come some very irritating problems if you are a government set in its ways and who only had dried leaves in a paper tube to regulate before.

1 There remain interesting conflict of laws problems around plain packaging rules and the Fair Trading Act. Plain packaging rules for tobacco products would include heated tobacco, including Iqos. And, in theory, would also cover any nicotine derived from tobacco for vaping too. But putting the big smoking warnings on packages of products that are not smoked could be considered illegal under the Fair Trading Act's prohibitions around false representations and misleading conduct.  

I emailed MBIE asking about this, and they punted to ComCom. When I asked ComCom, they said that they cannot vet specific advertising or business practices for any company - and that companies would have to seek independent legal advice. So it is legal to sell vaping products - but if MoH believes the nicotine to be tobacco derived, it might consider it to be subject to the plain packaging rules. And it might be illegal to put those plain packaging warnings on the packages. But the government will not tell you. Seems pretty dumb. And it's an odd kind of dumb - companies that are cagey about how their nicotine is derived are probably ok, but ones that publicly state that their nicotine is derived from tobacco may not be.  

2 MoH is of the view that the Iqos decision does not apply to snus. Snus has seemed rather important in getting people away from smoked tobacco in Sweden. Why they want this to still be illegal - I don't get it. I expect that if they ever sued NZ Snus for selling the stuff, that the prohibition could easily be deemed inconsistent with the purposes of the Act. 

3 Excise rates on non-combusted tobacco for reduced harm devices remain unjustifiably high. This doesn't affect vaping, which is not subject to excise (phew!), but would be a problem for other products. And what about the display bans and bans on advertising less harmful alternatives?

All very complicated, isn't it? Where did that golden age go where the NZ government could just nod through ineffective policies from extremist tobacco controllers without too much fuss? Wasn't life so much simpler back then? Now, in the blink of an eye, some bastard judge has just made their lives incredibly complicated.

What's more, interests used to be aligned. Prohibitionist tobacco controllers would scream for ever higher tax on tobacco and all parties in government - much like the tobacco control plan debate here last week - shout "hell yeah!" in support. Yes, tobacco duty is well past the Laffer Curve in most western countries, but raising it doesn't cost a great deal and it helps politicians to virtue signal whilst keeping their state-paid vermin off their backs for a little while.

But now this new thing has come along and they're in a cleft stick. They've demanded smokers quit smoking for decades, and now they are. In droves. And it's happening alarmingly quickly. So much so that government receipts from tobacco duty are starting to tank.

It also shows their coercive and bullying tobacco control policies to be utterly useless, and they spent so much time, money and effort on the legislation to get them through. Just think of all those civil service man hours completely wasted.

So now they are trying to fit current policies to new technology and finding it's like putting a square peg in a round hole. It's the same all over the world, the EU Tobacco Products Directive in 2013 regulated e-cigs despite they not containing tobacco, the FDA classes e-cigs as tobacco products because it's far less effort than actually producing a bespoke regulatory regime for them.

Is it any wonder why the laziest of countries - mostly basket case nations, banana republics and dictatorships (and NHS trust fiefdoms) - simply ban the products rather than have the hassle of changing everything they have been doing for decades?

We are living in historic times. Products have come along in an inordinately short space of time for political policies - it's almost a global revolution - and governments are at a loss what to do about it. This is as disruptive as things get.

It's easy to laugh at NZ politicians because they have kind of brought it on themselves in being lazy and complicit in adhering to the sophistry and mendacity of the tobacco control cult in the past, but you have to kinda feel sorry for them having this hot potato thrown into their lap before they can get their spin-masters to react to it and burble their way through committees to water it down.

Of course, if NZ politicians really wanted to provide a huge incentive to their smokers to quit, this graphic provided by Crampton should show them the way.

NZ is a massive draw for criminals to sell black market tobacco in their area of the world. So if they really wanted to get smokers to stop smoking - because that is what they really want to do, right? - they merely have to enthusiastically welcome e-cigs and other safer nicotine products with open arms, not tax them, and see their smoking rates plummet while simultaneously easing pressure on the cost and workload of their border agencies.

What's not to like?

Let's see which way they jump, eh? God I love watching this stuff, it's like a global zoo dedicated to observing the behaviour of disingenuous and venal politicians. 

Public Health England's Ratchet

Here's a puzzler.

A hospital in Swindon wanted to get all that ghastly (dahling) smoke away from those who complain about smokers doing so. So they came up with a very calm, common sense solution.

Head of health and safety Mark Hemphill said: “The trust did have a plan to install visitor smoking shelters, and a policy was drafted and installation of three smoking shelters outside of the atrium, west and emergency department entrances were specified and costed for installation by Carillion last summer."

Wise man. Everyone is catered for and there is no longer any problem. Well, there wouldn't be until Public Health England chipped in.

“The plans changed three months ago at the direct request of Public Health England, who wrote to each trust chief executive and stated the importance of relaunching the Smoke Free NHS.” 

All NHS trusts in England will go smoke free by the start of 2019, with smoking banned from hospital grounds.

Might I remind you that there is no law against smoking at any NHS hospital so therefore they have no enforcement powers behind this. Nor should there ever be. The idea that an establishment owned by taxpayers - of which smokers are some of the highest paying personally - can ban people from using a legal product without any evidence whatsoever of harm to others outdoors, is absurd. The fact that these bans include the car park, where the NHS is happy for instantly lethal carbon monoxide to be generously spewed out, just makes the whole thing laughable.

Yet despite non-existent enforcement, PHE is issuing demands rather than guidance.

Now, the reason I find this curious is because PHE have often been asked why they cannot instruct hospitals and other organisations to allow the use of e-cigs. The stock answer is always that they can issue guidance but that they cannot demand that it be adhered to.

So why the difference here? Why are they all of a sudden able to get heavy with hospitals while not doing the same when it comes to demanding them to treat vaping favourably? I expect it's the usual authoritarian public sector disease that the ratchet only goes one way. And every time away from any semblance of liberty.

In fact, we can see this in the response from the hospital.

Dr Ian Orpen and Dr Christin Blanshard, co-chairmen for the clinical board of the Bath, North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire Sustainable Transformation Partnership, which commissions NHS services, said the changes were part of a bid to stop patients and staff smoking. 

The doctors said: “We understand that some people may not wish to stop smoking and we will be providing them with assistance to ensure that during their stay in hospital or whilst at work they can abstain by using nicotine replacement therapy and support from our stop smoking advisors.”

So where the fuck was PHE's 'guidance' or demands about e-cigs to that hospital? There is absolutely no mention of other products except pharma NRT. Remember this is the organisation that announced to the world they'd be happy with vaping products being sold in hospitals.

Did they conveniently forget?

Tobacco Control Pigeons, Meet Philip Morris's Cat

Boom! Yesterday saw Philip Morris International (PMI) - the tobacco company that owns the Marlboro brand amongst others - making a New Year's Resolution with full page adverts in the Daily Mirror, The Times and The Sun. Here is what they said.

According to an ad industry website, this is "the first step in a campaign that includes further elements later this year". The idea that a tobacco manufacturer is publicly stating - in full page ads in widely-read newspapers - that they want to quit making cigarettes is quite a cat amongst the pigeons story, so much so that the BBC picked it up and ran with it too.

Tobacco firm Philip Morris has placed an advertisement in some newspapers promoting its "ambition to stop selling cigarettes in the UK". 

It is part of the company's drive to achieve a "smoke-free future". 

Asked why, if Philip Morris was so keen to go smoke-free, it did not simply stop making cigarettes and switch over to alternative production, a company spokesman told the BBC: "We are trying to go smoke free as fast as we can. If we just stopped selling cigarettes tomorrow, others would sell them in our place."

Well, it's not just that really. It would also help to fuel a black market and any CEO who cut their shareholders off at the knees with such a stupid destruction of their business would probably end up in jail for abandoning their fiduciary duty to their investors, many of which are pension funds which could see their value decimated overnight. Any tobacco controller who suggests this as a feasible course of action - and some actually have - is showing themselves up to be a monumental cretin.

Tobacco controllers have been very keen to peddle conspiracy theories about PMI and their smokefree future claims. They insist that the Foundation for a Smoke-free World is a scam and are desperately trying to undermine it (no doubt because it will do far more honest research than tobacco control ever has), and this new development is already being received in the same manner.

The overall initiative from PMI, though, shouldn't really be controversial. Uptake of e-cigs in UK, US and elsewhere, plus the astonishing success of heated tobacco products in Asia, shows that there is a huge market to be tapped in harm reduced products, so any company that ignores new technology and rigidly sticks to conventional tobacco could risk doing a Kodak.

And moving from delivery of nicotine via combustion to nicotine via heating or in vapour form is a pretty natural progression for the industry, but that's still no good for a tobacco control industry which is now more interested in destroying "Big Tobacco".

However, Deborah Arnott, chief executive of health charity Action on Smoking and Health said the "offer to support" local authorities was nothing more than a donation, which is not allowed under World Health Organization guidelines. 

"As Philip Morris well knows the government isn't allowed to accept 'donations' from the tobacco industry," she said. 

"However, it does show that the industry has money to burn. Rather than making donations, it should be forced to pay the government more of its enormous profits."

This is bollocks, of course. WHO guidelines are exactly that, guidelines. The government is "allowed" to take donations from whoever it likes, all that article 5.3 of the WHO FCTC says is that any interaction with the industry must be transparent. Besides, I don't think government is quaking in their boots about any sanctions the WHO could apply considering it leeches off of UK taxpayers for its revenue.

But isn't it bizarre that PMI wants to help Stop Smoking Services (SSS); put smoking cessation messages into its packs for every smoker to read directing them to a website which mentions no brands but is full of information on how to stop smoking ... and Debs Arnott - reportedly someone who wants people to quit smoking - is arguing against them!

Arnott and her richly state-funded colleagues in tobacco control have lobbied and bullied to have all marketing removed from the tobacco industry - right down to the colours of the packets themselves - because they deem it all to be far too powerful. Yet here is PMI suggesting putting this incredibly powerful stuff into packs to suggest smokers either quit or switch to a safer alternative, and apparently it's now not powerful at all .. it's just a PR stunt. I wish they would make up their minds.

The truth is that there must be many in tobacco control circles shitting themselves right now. Initiatives like PMI's threaten to render tobacco control irrelevant and steal their jobs. This is why they persistently misapply article 5.3 and threaten governments with dire consequences if they so much as answer an email from industry. Tobacco control trades on this fear. They need it because they know damn well that in a fair debate they would lose dismally.

We now face the intriguing situation whereby PMI want to put inserts into packs to help people quit smoking, and want to assist SSS into the bargain, while anti-smoking groups heckle from the sidelines and lobby against it, and government probably feels obliged to dream up some bullshit reason why they won't permit any of it.

Now, if that doesn't convince you that this whole repulsive anti-smoking charade has never had anything to do with health, then nothing will. 

An Encouraging Tale Of Christmas Disobedience

Like most, I've been overrun with Christmas stuff recently - including a rather fabulous road trip to a café with a sea in its garden - but have an observational tale to tell which I found very interesting.

This year we Puddlecotes booked a Christmas dinner at the local pub. I know from speaking to a previous Manageress (a vaper) that the chain to which it belongs has stupidly installed a vaping ban but - never having come across one yet that can't be bypassed - I had brought a simple e-cig for the duration.

I was far from alone. Once we got to the venue at around 1pm, the place was packed and I counted at least five people vaping unobtrusive devices, seemingly without a care in the world. To say that it piqued my curiosity would be an understatement. I don't often visit there so watched with a keen interest. Had they changed their policy? Did the new Manageress just turn a blind eye?

Once seated at our table, we had a clear view of the whole pub and I watched as a group of 30-something lads stood at the bar laughing and joking, with one of them considerately vaping. No-one was concerned, nor did I see any perturbed looks from anyone else in the bar around any of the others I saw doing the same.

The new Manageress was helping with waiting tables for a steady procession of Christmas guests paying £40 per head (not including drinks) and I felt pretty sure she'd seen me using my Vype at least once, but nothing was said. I went to the bar to order some drinks and my silent query was answered by the barmaid as she poured a pint and said pointedly to someone behind me (one of the group of lads) that "you can't use that in here!". He swiftly apologised, but once she went to the fridge to get the bottle of Sauvignon Blanc that I'd ordered, promptly carried on regardless.

It struck me then that the chain pub's policy is laughably unenforceable and was being widely ignored. This doesn't come as a surprise because 'stealthing' is always very easy but it was encouraging to see so many not showing any respect to a daft policy whatsoever, and absolutely no-one else caring that it was being flouted.

More intriguingly, however, a little later a new group of eight came in to take up their Christmas table. The mousey housewife who appeared to be the one who had booked it walked in with her handbag in one hand and a basic Ego type e-cig in the other, plainly on view. The Manageress came to make sure they were seated properly and to point out where the free tea and coffee was and I saw her look directly at the e-cig in wifey's hand. I was expecting her to say something about it, but there was just a brief pause - perhaps while she totted up the £320+ that this group was going to be putting into the pub's coffers - and she just smiled, had a laugh and a joke and was off without saying a word about it. The lady in question vaped openly throughout her meal and wasn't approached about it.

It just made me wonder at the wisdom of such vaping bans, I mean, what's the point? They are so incredibly easy to ignore, and it was clear that apart from a futile plea from one barmaid, the management of that pub were battling against something which is not only unstoppable, but also counter-productive to their main role of bringing in business for the brewery. Why would the Manageress risk pissing off someone providing nearly £400 of business with a pointless policy thought up by some lazy suit at HQ, and why would any employee want to throw out a group of lads spending freely over the bar when no-one gives a flying fuck about their unobtrusive friend vaping?

At Christmas, it was pretty to watch a pub policy being shown to be so ignorantly crafted and so pathetically simple to ignore. As the numbers of e-cig users increase, and the evidence of their safety continues to pile up, only the most foolish in the pub trade would continue to fight an unwinnable war against vapers. Let's hope that in 2018 we see more pubs realising that it's pretty pointless, and either dropping their policies altogether or altering them to allow "considerate vaping" which is far more realistic.

And let's also hope that any who refuse to do either lose income and go bust, as they richly deserve. 

So Many Questions About Glantz

So ...

Following swiftly on from Chapman being excoriated in the Aussie parliament, let's talk about Mad Stan the aircraft mechanic. Because he's in a bit of a pickle, it seems.

A former UC San Francisco doctoral researcher Wednesday filed a lawsuit alleging sexual harassment by a prominent tobacco control activist and tenured UCSF professor Stanton Glantz that spanned nearly two years. 

The lawsuit also alleges that Glantz retaliated against his former mentee, Eunice Neeley, after she complained about him to the university’s administration by removing Neeley’s name from a research paper. 

Neeley accused Glantz of consistent inappropriate behavior that included staring at her body, making comments directed at Neeley referencing sex, making sexual remarks about other women to Neeley while at the workplace, and making racist remarks about Neeley, who is black. 

Pretty grubby stuff, huh? But this was the kicker for me.

Neeley purports that Glantz used his tenure to intimidate his students from reporting his sexual harassment and emotional abuse. According to the lawsuit, Glantz was known to have told multiple students that as a tenured professor, “You can rape the vice chancellor’s daughter and still have a job.”

Using a position of power to deter complaints about behaviour is quite shocking. If this turns out to be true (and it's important to note that Glantz has denied the charges) it's Harvey Weinstein and the #MeToo stuff on steroids!

I suppose only time will reveal more, but I'd like to ask a question. Considering that Kevin Spacey was quickly removed from a film and Netflix cancelled House of Cards at the whiff of impropriety, what will the FDA make of the fact they shovelled Glantz $20m recently?

UC San Francisco will receive a five-year, $20 million grant as part of a first-of-its-kind tobacco science regulatory program by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). 

The overall aim is to conduct programs of multidisciplinary research that will inform the FDA’s regulation of the manufacture, distribution and marketing of tobacco products to protect public health. 

The UCSF principal investigator is Stanton A. Glantz, PhD, director of the UCSF Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education. 

“We have identified serious problems in the way that the FDA has done cost-benefit analysis of major tobacco regulations, most notably warning labels on cigarette packages,” Glantz said. “In particular, the FDA underestimated the immediate benefits of smoking prevention and cessation, and based its behavioral assumptions on outmoded ideas. 

“By combining cutting-edge economic research with modern behavior studies, and studies of the immediate effects of smoke exposure on the cardiovascular and pulmonary systems, we hope to help the FDA develop more realistic cost-benefit models that will better support sensible regulation.”

It was a grant for a five year project which takes it up to 2018. Neeley was recuited in 2015. Now it's quite feasible that the FDA helped pay her wages while she was allegedly being mistreated in her time there.

But even if not, how can the FDA square giving millions of dollars to Glantz and his team when this might have been going on? Should they not be investigating the affair themselves considering taxpayer funds are tied up in it? Surely they would be ashamed if their funds were being used to indirectly facilitate abuse? If nothing else, their investment surely requires public comment? And what about Amazon? Will they pull his books, of which there are many?

Most importantly, if the allegations are eventually proven true, how can anyone trust the 'science' of someone who has been so manipulative and dishonest in his working life?

It's one to watch, isn't it? 

Fake News: Transport Edition

On these pages, we see a lot of old guff spouted by 'public health' about how big business is disingenuous and trying to con the public. The 'public health' industry which is, of course, funded by taxpayers' cash, so basically part of the public sector.

It regularly strikes me as a bit rich that public sector organisations bleat about private businesses lying when - in my experience - I've never encountered any branch of public sector which doesn't lie massively on a daily basis.

As a keen observer of transport stuff (if you're not into transport geekery, look away now), here is a perfect example of public sector fake news, just to show it's not just the 'public health' lot who like to lie.

Uber licensing costs in London to rise from £3,000 to £3m in next five years

Helen Chapman, TfL general manager of Taxi & Private Hire, said the cost of regulation is rising due to a “huge” growth in the industry. 

She said: “There has been a huge growth in the industry in recent years and it is only fair that the licence fee reflects the costs of regulation and enforcement.” 

TfL said that the costs of enforcement over the next five years will reach £30m, up from a previous estimate of £4m. 

According to the regulator, the number of licensed private hire drivers has grown from 65,000 in 2013-14 to more than 116,000 this year.

The first thing to ask is why an increase of 78% in licences leads to an increase in enforcement costs of 650%. Looks like a cash grab already, doesn't it?

Still, let's take that extra £26m they need to raise as gospel and see what the new fee structure is, shall we? This is from their website.

Now, I've just run this through Excel and used the numbers TfL provide above. Taking as read that the variable cost for Uber and Addison Lee (the two operators at the top of the scale) will be in the region of £3m, it's fairly easy to see that the new income over and above what was gathered before this change is around £41.5m (to cover claimed increased costs of £26m).

That is an increase in fees income to TfL of 460%.

So how did they spin it? Well, apparently, this extra £41.5m will pay for an additional 250 compliance officers, which works out at an average of £33k per annum each. Quite a hefty salary for ticking boxes, don't you think?

But it was reported a bit differently in the Standard print edition.

"Will see larger firms pay higher fees to cover increased costs" isn't strictly true. Operators with only two vehicles will pay more for their licence than before, as will every other operator unless they are in the sweet spot of only owning between three and ten cars. Yet how many would have read that article and nodded about how the big guys are being bashed, eh?

If you are lucky enough to use a cab company in London which is in the three to ten vehicles bracket, they will be saving a princely sum of £838 over five years; if they are altruistic they might knock 10p off your journey. But the other £41.5m has to be paid for by someone and you know it will be the customer who will have to foot the bill, especially since the increased fees are so huge that they will drive many suppliers out of the market (which seems to be the point). And when fares increase across the board, they increase, well, across the board.

It's a simple transfer of funds from the public's wallets into the salaries of box-tickers and rubber band-flickers in the public sector, and it's done by using exaggerated costs, false information, and barefaced lies posing as PR.

Still, at least some highly-paid public sector desk jockeys will have some new - similarly well-remunerated - colleagues. You, however, will be paying more to get home on a night out.

How are those cuts coming along Chancellor? I think a new avenue would be to cull some managers at TfL to save us all a good sum*.

*Who have also banned e-cigs from all taxis, by the way, for no reason whatsoever. 

"Get Him Off The Island, Export The Problem"

Over the years, I've written a fair amount about John Dalli, the former Maltese EU health commissioner who was sacked over an allegation that he solicited bribes from Swedish Match to overturn the snus ban. The whole affair was very murky (you can read my articles about it here) and was never fully resolved, but the BBC have just aired a programme that investigates the case by talking to Dalli himself.

Along with eventually maintaining the ridiculous and damaging EU ban on snus, Dalli was also reported to have once said that e-cigs are "just as bad as traditional cigarettes" and he makes the same claim briefly at the start of this show. Allegations of crookedness aside, what comes across in this 60 minute film is just how incredibly incompetent the guy is. Yet, before his ignominious dismissal he was entrusted to deliver the TPD for 500 million people and was backed by the European tobacco control industry who never questioned him.

I would heartily recommend you pour yourself your favourite beverage and watch the show, Storyville: The Great European Cigarette Mystery, by clicking here. 

ASH's 10th Anniversary Begging Letter

As others have noted, the 10th anniversary of the most spiteful and damaging social engineering exercise England has ever seen - otherwise known as the smoking ban - slid past with surprisingly little fanfare from the tax-spongers in tobacco control. What there was of it, though, was mendacious cobblers as is to be expected.

What I found most curious, though, was the strange approach taken by ASH. Instead of relying on the reams of execrable and scientifically worthless junk research they and their pals routinely peddle, they chose instead to release a strange report referring to polls they have commissioned over the years from YouGov.

Now, any poll commissioned from YouGov by ASH should be treated with a huge pinch of salt considering its erstwhile President up to 2016 is also a member of ASH's board of trustees. His screaming bias has been on plain view for many years; he chaired ASH's editorial board for their 2008 'Smoking Kills' report, and has written openly to politicians and the public to demand support for prohibitionist laws. So a report packed full of such polls should be approached with extreme caution, as Sir Humphrey once explained.

Nevertheless, ASH's report was very illuminating. I say report, but it could more accurately be described as a commentary on how tobacco control bullshit has been swallowed whole by a largely under-informed public.

It tells us that ASH have been successful in turning a tolerant public into an intolerant one. This speaks volumes more about the disgusting nature of ASH than it does about the public. Each poll was followed by a further avalanche of trademark tobacco control media manipulation and the public tested again the following year. When the results were not compelling enough, poll questions were changed, and I fully expect junk science ramped up and targeted to bring a more favourable set of figures next time round.

ASH's choice of celebratory message is interesting too, why a review of their own polls? (They avoid entirely, of course, polls of equal provenance saying a majority still believe there should be an amendment to the smoking ban to allow separate smoking rooms). Well, the whole thing just reeks of rent-seeking from an organisation which has spent the past year demanding a new 'Tobacco Control Plan' that the government is slow in providing. As Snowdon highlighted last week, this is causing consternation at Misery HQ.

But ASH are now in a quandary. There hasn't been a Tobacco Control Plan for England for a year and a half. If there's no plan, how can ASH support it? And if there's nothing to support, why is the government giving them so much of our money? What have they been doing with the £250,000 or so that they have been given by the state in the last year and a half? 

It is only a matter of time before someone asks these questions. That, I suspect, is why ASH are getting so hot and bothered at the moment.

Indeed. What better way, then, to nudge MPs further than by releasing a résumé of their 'successful' lobbying, referencing their most trusted of biased sources, which screams "look at us and give us money cos we deserve it!" and "just imagine how much more we could could torture smokers if you did!".

With that goal in mind, in their boastful arrogance they have had to go out on a limb to attract MPs' attention, which has been very revealing.

For example, in the section on plain packs.

"Although the policy was principally designed to deter young people from starting smoking, existing smokers’ dislike of the redesigned packs is an additional benefit of the policy."

No, it was the ONLY reason for the policy, as tobacco controllers will admit privately - in fact, ASH do later in their document - but considering politicians were told it was solely to deter young people from smoking, ASH emphasise this to make absolutely sure MPs haven't missed it. If you have a {cough} friendly poll, you don't have to go into the evidence which is far less convincing with plain packs ... for the simple reason that it has been a damp squib where it has been tried before (eh, Australia?) and will continue to be so here in the UK.

There is also a proud shout-out to smoker-hating bullies in parliament, by boasting about how totalitarian ASH are in attacking law-abiding members of the public consuming a legal product.

"‘Denormalisation’ is a clumsy word but it captures the reality of what has happened:"

No, denormalisation is a fascist word, and ASH are fascists for thinking it is a decent thing to encourage. Their hideous fans may be ecstatic at the new environment where it is now almost government-approved to shit on smokers, but it doesn't make it right. It just tells us that ASH are indecent and exactly the kind of people we should ostracise from society well before smokers.

In the absence of a tobacco control plan to tailor their future plans towards, then, their report also sees ASH detail what they would like to do in the next ten years, again backed up by their pet pollster.

"In the ten years since 2007, smoking prevalence in the adult population in England fell from 21% to 15.5%. This is a major achievement but smoking remains a huge burden on the health of the nation: 6.3 million adults still smoke in England. The following proposals for further action are supported by a majority of the public: 

- licensing the sale of tobacco products, supported by 76% of respondents in 2017;
- banning smoking in all cars, supported by 62% of respondents in 2017;
- charging tobacco companies a levy to fund stop smoking services and preventive work with young people, supported by 71% of respondents in 2017."

You'll note that there is no proposal for relaxing the rules on e-cigs which ASH demanded. Only more coercion and bullying. Attacking small businesses; attacking smokers; attacking industry. Absolutely nothing to enhance the free market option which has been the defining success of the past decade, a success which ASH tried their very best to strangle at birth and continue to subtlely undermine.

They, instead, focus on the old, failed, policies of bullying and coercion.

"There is a strong case for licensing the sale of tobacco products in order that local authorities and the police can act swiftly against those who abuse current regulations, especially in relation to underage sales."

They already have powers. All a licensing scheme will do is give powers to the authorities to act without any proof of wrongdoing. As fascist an idea as you can possibly imagine. This would be yet another burden on small retailers, many of whom could go out of business as a result, and it will undoubtedly force others to stop selling tobacco because of the increased overhead. It is a fundamentally nasty idea designed solely to use the bullying of small businesses to restrict supply of a legal product to smokers. No fewer packs will be sold, but it will suit large supermarkets down to the ground.

Having destroyed local communities by taking away their pubs, now ASH want to handicap or destroy their local shops too, and for no health benefit whatsoever.

Side note: ASH have already done the same by supporting article 20 of the TPD which imposes huge costs on vaping businesses. Dressed up as caring for 'the children', their legislation against e-cigs is exactly the same as they are proposing with tobacco licences and they know very well that some e-cigs businesses have gone to the wall because of it, so they will know very well that this proposal will kill off some corner shops too. But they simply don't care.

They also have no care whatsoever about personal liberties.

"A ban on smoking in all cars would address this universal risk while also eliminating the risks caused by the distraction of smoking while driving."

So finally they admit that it wasn't about 'the children' after all.

More bullying, and a complete disregard for personal property rights. If someone pays £20k for a car it should be up to them what happens in it, not ASH. This was another appalling piece of sophistry from ASH, the ban on smoking was never about children, and they only now admit it once they feel their salaries are threatened. What vile people they really are!

"Public support for a ban on smoking in all cars has grown since the policy was first presented to respondents of the ASH Smokefree England survey in 2009. Then, overall support stood at 45%. Ten years later, this had increased to 62%"

This just says to me that 62% of those YouGov surveyed are repulsive, interfering snobs, but ASH are actually proud of it! They have, as I have maintained for a decade now, managed to turn the country from a largely tolerant one, into one which now believes it is legitimate to tell other people what they can and can't do in their own fucking car. ASH has always catered to the most disgusting in society, and this signals that they will continue to do so in the future. Basically, if you're an anti-social hateful bigot, ASH has got your back.

Lastly, the attack on industry.

"The [polluter pays] levy is a relatively new idea and was only tested out in the 2017 ASH Smokefree England survey. Respondents were asked whether they would support or oppose a measure ‘requiring tobacco manufacturers to pay a levy or licence fee to Government for measures to help smokers quit and prevent young people from taking up smoking’. Overall, 71% of respondents in England supported this measure."

It was tested out in the 2017 poll because ASH had already demanded this levy and were knocked back by the government in 2015. So now they are trying to play the emotional blackmail card by asking a question with "tobacco companies" and "young people" in juxtaposition.

However, there are very good reasons why the idea of a levy is desperate barrel-scraping from ASH. Firstly, it's impossible to extract money out of tobacco companies which are not based in the UK, and secondly those that are would be financially hampered so much that they'd be tempted to move elsewhere. Government would be bonkers to risk losing two of the country's top performing FTSE companies in the middle of an austerity debate when they are under pressure to find funding. Besides, why would they need to? The 2015 budget commentary described why it isn't even remotely necessary anyway.

"Analysis of the responses shows that the impact of a tobacco levy on the tobacco market would be similar to a duty rise, with tobacco manufacturers and importers passing the levy onto consumer prices," the government said in its budget. 

"As tobacco duties have already increased this year and will continue to increase by more than inflation each year in this parliament, the government has decided not to introduce a levy on manufacturers and importers."

Of course, ASH want this money not for altruistic reasons. Rather it is their second attempt at pathetically holding out a begging bowl. Like a tax-gobbling Mr Creosote, they want the levy as they hope it will raise money for them and their mates, irrespective of whether it is good money well spent or not.

"Over the past three years there have been major cuts to English local authority budgets for stop smoking services and tobacco control work. Budgets for stop smoking services, which offer smokers their best chance to quit, were cut in three fifths (59%) of local authorities in 2016/17, following cuts in two fifths (39%) of local authorities the year before. In some areas, specialist stop smoking services have been decommissioned altogether. These budget cuts are principally due to reductions in the public health grant and to wider central government cuts to local authority budgets"

Quite rightly so! Because the use of stop smoking services has plummeted due to the e-cigs phenomenon which ASH would prefer to pretend wasn't happening. If ASH actually cared about health, the answer is not to steal from the tobacco industry to prop up increasingly irrelevant stop smoking services, but to instead acknowledge that the public is changing and are more likely to visit a vape shop than a soulless smoking cessation clinic. That would mean reallocating attention and resources to the promotion of vaping, but then ASH and their pals don't get paid for that, so it's not even on the table.

"An additional levy on the tobacco industry, based on market share, would ensure that smokers who want to quit can access the best means available to do so."

Except that ASH don't mention the best means available to do so in their entire 27 page report. I mean, not even once! E-cigs and vaping are completely ignored, both in the impact they have had on smoking prevalence, and in the impact they could have in the next ten years.

Instead, ASH declare that the decline in smoking prevalence has been a "major achievement" and imply that it is all due to their previous policies. And why wouldn't they? The last thing they want to admit in a begging letter to MPs is the fact that it has been a free market initiative driving the rapid recent decline in smoking rather than the tired, prohibitionist approach which they can get paid for.

ASH are effectively appropriating praise for something which had very little to do with them and it is a disgrace that they are doing so. I disagree entirely with commentators who say that we should be happy tobacco control don't recognise the role of vaping in the decline in prevalence, because - like it or not - it is the tobacco control industry who policy-makers and the public listen to. Go to any comments section and try posting valid science on tobacco issues and you will generally get a reply including a link to CRUK, BHF or any of a number of other disingenuous organisations.

By ignoring e-cigs, ASH are tacitly denying the huge impact vaping has had, and claiming credit for the efforts of a vast number of e-cig advocates up and down the country. Far from being glad they don't acknowledge vaping having a role, we should be absolutely furious about it. They will, for example, be over the moon with tweets such as this suggesting that the ban is entirely responsible for 1.9m fewer smokers (despite there being 1.5 million former smokers now exclusively using e-cigs in the same period)

It’s 10 years on from the smoking ban – but what impact has it had on health? 🚬https://t.co/UQMSd5TKbb pic.twitter.com/Kkpt2VEZqm

— BBC Radio 5 live (@bbc5live) June 30, 2017

This is just part of a joint effort by the tobacco control industry this week to airbrush e-cigs out of the public record. Cancer Research UK also quoted the 1.9 million figure without mentioning e-cigarettes or vaping, and Lord Rennard - another of ASH's poodle politicians - claimed "the lowest level on record" of smoking in the UK was a "huge achievement" in the Queen's Speech debate, again completely failing to reference e-cigs at all.

For many people, e-cigs are considered just another form of smoking, ASH are happy for that misconception to continue as long as MPs - who this report will be sent to - continue to feather their nest with taxpayer cash. ASH are putting personal gain above endorsing what is actually working. They are an organisation which has never had any care about health, only their own bank balances.

It is quite staggering that - on the tenth anniversary of the smoking ban - ASH chose to beg for more cash to implement even more pointless coercion and social vandalism, instead of assessing objectively what has been working over the past 10 years and what has not.

They have wreaked a trail of bile and intolerance throughout the country in the past decade, and far from reducing the punishment meted out to everyday people as the smoking rate declines, they have become ever more shrill and socially violent in their pursuit of funding. As results become naturally more meagre due to the lesser numbers of smokers to preach at, their respect for property rights, freedom of choice and truth has exponentially declined. They should be ashamed of themselves or even jailed for the appalling things they have done to society, yet still seem to believe that they are entitled to more of our cash to continue being obnoxious.

We can only hope that this latest report - probably the longest begging letter in history - will be roundly ignored by MPs. 

Where Were The Vapers?

I find this truly staggering from ASH. They had a stall this week at The Chartered Trading Standards Institute conference and were giving out information about e-cigs. So who did they invite to do it?

We're having a great time at #CTSIConf! Today we have @breathe2025 joining us to discuss e-cigarettes - come find us at F7. @ctsi_uk pic.twitter.com/JAiDr1cqCB

— ASH (@ASH_LDN) June 27, 2017

Erm, why didn't they invite some vapers?

Tobacco control, especially ASH, have no real idea about e-cigs whatsoever. The extent of ASH's knowledge is so bloody piss poor that they lobbied ferociously in favour of Article 20 of the TPD which - in their own parlance - will kill hundreds of thousands of people.

Now, I happen to know that ASH know very many perfectly capable vapers who could have given some great insights into e-cigs at this event, far better than anything Breathe2025 could possibly have done.

It would also have been a very good opportunity for Trading Standards Officers to meet vapers first-hand and hear truly expert testimony as to how unduly harsh enforcement of the TRPR could have some dire unintended consequences for both freedom of choice and public health.

So why did ASH not ask the vapers that they know very well, and speak to very often, to come along to this conference? I'm pretty sure they would have jumped at the opportunity.

A bit whiffy, isn't it? 

Authoritarians Left And Right

The Foundation for Economic Education published an interesting essay last week on the nature and politics of authoritarianism and how it is not the sole preserve of the politically left or right. The tract is primarily focussed on the US but it works just as well for this side of the pond.

Here are some extracts which will be easily recognisable by fellow jewel robbers. 

What exactly is authoritarianism, though? It’s rather hard to defeat an enemy that one cannot define, let alone understand. 

Broadly, authoritarianism is the desire to impose one’s own worldview on others in one’s society by institutionalized coercion. Authoritarians, therefore, see punishment as an appropriate response when members of the group with which they identify (the United States, in this case) diverge too far from values that the authoritarian believes are best for society – even if the punished person has neither caused direct harm to another nor infringed another’s rights.

Yep, "leave us alone" is no longer a defence against the people we despise here, they insist on doing things to you for your own good. 

Authoritarianism becomes a significant force in the politics of a society when a psychological disposition to authoritarianism is activated among enough of the people who possess it. Any large country has a significant minority that score highly for the authoritarian psychological disposition. Usually, however, that disposition is latent, driving neither behavior nor political preferences.

There used to be an insignificant minority who peered through their curtains and didn't like what other people were consuming, but they were insane, anti-social, and thankfully powerless.

'Public health' massaged their bigotry, encouraged their misanthropy, and turned them into a vile throbbing mass of seething anger about the inconsequential choices of others. In an era where racial, sexist, homophobic and religious hatred has been largely reined in, the legions of self-enriching 'public health' professionals nurtured the bile and redirected it towards the harmless choices of friends, family, acquaintances and strangers so much so that online comments such as "the only good smoker is a dead one" are not only not unusual, but almost endorsed by the state. 

Authoritarians – whether they lean left or right – justify their politics, like everyone else, by arguing for particular positions on issues they care about. But if your goal is a free and kind society, then arguing an issue on its merits with an authoritarian may often be to shoot yourself in the foot. Doing so can mean buying into the unstated assumption that underpins all authoritarian politics – that an argument that X is right is automatically an argument for using force to make people do X. 

It isn’t.

Quite.

Specifically, the fact that “X is morally right” is a long, long way from, “It is morally right to compel people to do X,” because the latter actually means, “It is morally right to harm someone for not doing X”… and whether that is true can only be determined by an unprejudiced comparison of the harm caused by not doing X vs. the harm done by the enforcement.

And, as we know, on lifestyle issues, the 'public health' racket never, ever, even considers harm done by enforcement, just as it also ignores the benefits of the behaviour it is paid to hate. 

In any political argument with an authoritarian of any stripe, the real issue – the meta-issue, if you will – is whether, even if he is right about the best way for people to behave in a certain situation or for society to organize itself, what makes it right to cause physical harm to compel it?

It isn't right, obviously. And this is a truth which was universally held to be true from the teachings of J S Mill for over 150 years before the current crop of repulsive state-funded prohibitionists resurrected a new age of obnoxious hate-filled puritanism against respectful and law-abiding citizens. 

You can read the whole thing, "Authoritarians to the Right of Me, Authoritarians to the Left", here. 

Oi! EU! Tax On Vaping? NO!

You may remember that last month was the closing date for an EU consultation on the taxation of manufactured tobacco products. The EU being the meddling EU, this naturally included their initial fumbling towards abusing e-cigs by taxing those too ... despite the devices and the liquid not containing any "manufactured tobacco" whatsoever.

The first results of the consultation have now been made available here, and there are some interesting discussion points.

Firstly, out of 7,686 responses, over 95% of them were submitted by members of the public, with only 3% coming from industry and a mere 1% from NGOs such as those in tobacco control. When tobacco controllers like to paint themselves as a David to the industry's Goliath, that pales into insignificance when it comes to their importance when the public itself gets motivated (more on that later).

Because on the subject of e-cigs especially, the answer to the EU's suggestion of adding tax to vaping was pretty emphatic. And the answer was NO!

As usual, click to enlarge

Yep, a whopping 90% of replies said that the EU should keep their snouts out of vaping and just forget the idea (not that they will, from my educated guess).

Now, it's true that a large majority of the respondents were vapers - to be expected as there was a lot of social media encouragement to take part - but it's significant that those declaring themselves to be e-cig users only accounted for 68% of the responses. So there was also substantial agreement from smokers (4%), non-smokers and even perhaps governmental and non-governmental bodies to reach such a high level of consensus.

The UK featured prominently in the published statistics, making up 8.44% of the total (649 fine upstanding individuals), but were pushed into 3rd place behind Germany (40.48%) and Poland (23.8%).

As you can imagine, with so many logging on just to register their objection to taxation for e-cigs, the post-consultation report's 67 pages are full of tables showing around about 70% of respondents understandably not giving an answer on subjects such as waterpipes, cigarillos and raw tobacco, so the EU will be playing with meagre percentages on a lot of their subject matter.

However, one thing that was quite disappointingly clear is that the theory of harm reduction doesn't extend to new 'heat not burn' technology amongst vapers. To illustrate, asked what a prospective tax rate on vaping should look like, presumably all vapers and another 12% on top thought it should be much lower than cigarettes.

But when the same question was asked about heat not burn, the picture looked very different.

This isn't altogether a surprise. Only 81 people identified as users of HnB - which is to be expected due to the market not being established in Europe yet - so there isn't a great deal of understanding about the concept, and also much distrust about products like iQos, most notable of which being that their emergence might be conflated with e-cigs and sway public perception so far as to favour prohibition and bans on vaping too. This has some merit, but if being consistent the same could also be said about sub-ohming huge clouds in public.

I get the nuances, but vapers have two arguments; freedom choice and health, and the health one relies heavily on the very powerful tobacco harm reduction aspect, especially when talking about recreational use. While it's clear that many respondents were only interested in lending their support to vaping because that's the device they use, it's disappointing that so many are so distant from the harm reduction debate that they are not confident in saying that HnB excise should be set as lower or much lower than tobacco, which is quite obviously the case. Maybe my personal view is not widespread, but if using the harm reduction argument to facilitate being left alone with recreational use of nicotine, picking winners within the harm reduced category is not the way to go.

You have to idly wonder what would have been the result if snus was included in this consultation, I have to say. We will never know, of course, because snus is officially banned by the EU despite the TPD consultation in 2011 showing 84% of the public saying the ban should be lifted. Just as now in 2017, back then a large proportion of the responses came from Poland, which led to the EU throwing out 82,000 of them on the corrupt premise that they were from the tobacco industry. It was clear back then that tobacco control was a tiny David in comparison to the Goliath of public opinion, but that didn't matter to the EU, who listened to a few small dictatorial voices and perpetuated the stupid and science-free ban on snus anyway. Remember that next time some tobacco controller bleats that they are overwhelmed by industry power, because it is proof they are lying to you.

I expect the EU and their hideous NGO chums will probably try the same kind of anti-democratic shenanigans again, but will be more sorely tested with 90% of respondents saying e-cigs should be left alone, from a hefty cohort of 7,686, 95% of which are ordinary citizens.

Some people say that the EU isn't very democratic. This might be an interesting experiment to prove or disprove it, doncha think? 

British Vapers Leading Europe

One of the 'Big Four' accounting firms, Ernst and Young (EY), has today released a report on e-cig use in seven 'core' countries between 2013 and 2016. The results are quite interesting, especially for UK vapers ... take a bow boys and girls.

The British public are switching from traditional cigarettes to vaping devices (e-cigarettes) faster than anyone in Europe. In the last four years, the British have switched to vaping at the rate of one person every four minutes.

The EY report shows that 2.2 million British people now use e-cigarettes – this is up by 55% in just three years. In total, 4.2% of British adults vape. France has the next highest penetration at 3.1%.

In your face, cheese-eating surrender monkeys!

There are many other revealing stats in the report, such as how the vaping market has more than doubled in size since 2013 and - much to the chagrin of 'public health' dinosaurs who like to pretend e-cigs are a plot by 'Big Tobacco' to drive tobacco consumption - how dual use is declining rapidly in favour of sole use.

As usual, click the images to enlarge

Meaning that if tobacco companies really are investing in e-cigs in order to encourage dual use and therefore revive tobacco sales - as many deluded (or deliberately doubt-fostering) tobacco controllers claim - their cunning plan looks to be failing spectacularly. Something the industry-hating tobacco control community will duly celebrate, no?

EY also report that over two-thirds of e-cig users prefer to buy 'modular' devices, described as "can be refilled by the user, but also allows the user to regulate the power delivered from the system’s batteries to the atomizer". This must also come as a bit of a blow to tobacco control conspiracy theorists who like to tell the world that 'Big Tobacco' is a majority supplier of e-cigs to consumers; they aren't, because the tobacco industry sells very few devices which fit that description.

However, probably the most damning statistic EY has presented is on the drivers of e-cig use. In the UK, prevalence is still climbing despite furious scaremongering tobacco control junk science being published regularly in the media. However, it has declined in France where the government has been joining in with the hysteria.

The EY report discovered that around half of smokers enjoyed smoking and didn't believe that e-cigs would offer them the same experience, which is understandable. However, the research also revealed that, for around 30% of smokers, "I think e-cigarettes might be harmful to my health" is given as a reason as to why they had not tried, or did not intend to use e-cigs. Now, I don't know what the percentage switch rate is currently, but that means that tobacco control hysterics have convinced between 3 million and 4 million smokers that they should steer clear of vaping because it is equally or more harmful than smoking.

It's never really been about health, has it?

The good news, though - as I've said many times since I first wrote about them in 2010 - is that the more vapers there are, the more shrill and absurd detractors become and the more the public will realise that governments and 'public health' are lying their arses off about smoking alternatives. This EY report has assessed that the e-cigs market is currently worth around £6.1bn, up from £700 million in 2010, and predict that this will increase to around £12bn in 2020.

Just imagine how much that must smart for certain insane moon-howlers in California, Sydney and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, eh? 

The Much-Ignored Pleasure Of Smoking

There is a report out today from the Centre for Substance Use Research (CSUR) in Glasgow which should be compulsory reading for anyone and everyone in the tobacco control industry. Sadly, it will be largely ignored.

Entitled "The Pleasure of Smoking", the report canvasses the views of 583 'confirmed' smokers; that is, smokers who enjoy smoking and are mostly resistant to demands to quit. Lead author Neil McKegany explains why this research should be heeded in the Executive Summary.

This research has provided considerable detailed information on the way in which smoking is viewed by a group of confirmed smokers. This is a group whose opinions are rarely articulated. The implications of these findings from a smoking cessation perspective are significant because there is a clear gulf between the way smoking is typically viewed as a negative, somewhat reprehensible behaviour, and how the smokers themselves saw their smoking as a source of pleasure, a choice rather than an addiction. Whilst it might be objected that "Smokers would say that, wouldn't they?", if stop smoking services are going to succeed in engaging with those smokers who continue to smoke in the face of the extensive efforts aimed at encouraging smoking cessation they are going to have to be prepared to engage with smokers on the terms upon which those individuals view their own behaviour. This includes being willing to recognise the pleasurable elements of smoking. 

Indeed.

There are two things to observe about that introduction. Firstly, tobacco control has never been remotely interested in articulating the views of smokers, instead they have sought every avenue by which they can ensure the views of smokers are silenced or ignored.

Secondly, if any tobacco controller were to admit that smokers derive pleasure from smoking rather than merely being addicted, they would experience an avalanche of abuse and threats from their colleagues who are driven solely by the need to actively denormalise smoking and cast smokers as third class citizens incapable of rational independent thought. The report points out how such vile behaviour from tobacco control would never be tolerated in any other policy area.

In other contexts we recoil at the suggestion of excluding individuals from social gatherings on the basis of their gender, race, religion or sexual identity and yet we positively embrace the notion of excluding smokers from gatherings in enclosed public places. The increasing marginalisation of smokers means that we are less and less inclined to ask them about their views on smoking or their views on the evidence of smoking harm, of addiction, and their interest in changing their behaviour. As a result we understand less and less about the experience of smoking as seen through the eyes of smokers themselves. 

Yep. Those who wish smokers to quit have never been prepared to "engage with smokers" at all, a tactic that vapers might recognise too. It is why tobacco controllers have never, and will never, understand smokers or other users of nicotine. Simply because they don't want to.

Denormalisation has been a stated tactic of tobacco control for many years now, they are quite open about it. Ignoring smokers is just one facet of that approach. Considering this is an attitude endemic within the anti-smoking industry, it is no surprise that the smokers surveyed by CSUR find nothing of any interest when they come into contact with the "well-meaning people but bloody useless" (from the report) staff at stop smoking services.

 “I had worried that quitting smoking would be bleak dull soulless and righteous. Everyone I dealt with through stop smoking services confirmed that view. Not wanting to be like them is one of the reasons I started smoking again”, “It was rubbish and I was rather stunned when it was pointed out to me that ‘By now you are supposed to be using weaker patches and close to quitting’. I was not aware I was on some kind of timetable and they witter on so much at you. They turn it into something much bigger than it needs to be and pepper their speech and information packs with so much negativity and wittering on that it just isn’t worth continuing.” 

Smokers commented that they had found a judgemental attitude on the part of staff within the smoking cessation clinics that had a negative impact on their contact with the service: "I felt the advisor was condescending and holier than thou", "Weak, of little consequence, and coming from a position of sanctimony and patronisation, anti-smoking products are a placebo, they don't work", "Pseudo sales person for the pharmaceutical industry products. Promoted by quit smoking advisors who lacked any knowledge of smoking other than the anti-smoking dogma", "Negative vibe because I am a smoker".

I'm sure staff who profess to be committed to stopping people smoking might not like the idea that their attitude isn't helping, but just like any other industry it is the messages from above which are responsible for it. In an atmosphere, created by the extremists in tobacco control, where smokers are denormalised and society treats them with contempt - merely 'nicotine addicts' who imagine pleasure instead of experience it - it's hardly surprising.

Of course, there is another way.

Successful models of engagement of smokers need to recognise and work with the enjoyment and pleasure that can be found in smoking. If smoking cessation services solely or principally stress the health harms associated with smoking and lay strongest emphasis on an addiction model to explain continued smoking in the face of those acknowledged harms, they will simply continue to find themselves very distant to the sorts of smokers we were surveying. 

The report also details how these committed smokers are very well aware of the health risks involved but - contrary to every policy justification the tobacco control industry has ever suggested - make value judgements based on the (exaggerated) guidance they are given and choose to smoke anyway. In the section on willingness to try harm reduction products like e-cigs, for example, a concern for health was way down in fifth place behind the ability to use them in public places, the fact they are cheaper, and preferences about flavour and smell.

In fact, the CSUR report covers this counterproductive tobacco control idiocy too.

A small number of smokers drew attention to sanctions on public vaping and some people's negative reactions to vaping as having undermined their experience of using the devices. "Same social stigma as as smoking so what's the point, may as well keep smoking the real cigarettes as much more pleasurable", "Still had to stand outside to vape, often right next to rubbish bins, this made it pointless to switch hence not using now", "Restrictions on use" and "Vaping bans"

In light of this, I shall digress briefly and remind you that there are individuals around who believe smokers should quit smoking and use e-cigs instead; are head of organisations which have policies supportive of e-cigs; yet still go to national newspapers like, oh I dunno, The Times, and say that vaping should be banned in all public places. I mean, how cretinous do you have to be to come out with ignorant garbage like that, eh?

It's especially counterproductive when the CSUR research also found that smokers who had tried e-cigs "reported enjoying cigarettes significantly more than those who had not". By attacking vaping simply based on their stupid prejudices, anti-smokers could therefore well be actively harming the chances of committed smokers switching to e-cigs.

Of course, they have no way of knowing that because they won't talk to smokers - instead being determined to ignore them - and will also dismiss today's published report. How do we know this? Well, because they have done so already.

In October, ASH Scotland prepared the way in a blog entitled "The “smokers survey” that can’t tell us anything about “smokers”".

The stated aim “To find out what smokers really think” seems to have missed this crucial point. Surely FOREST is not intending to use the results of this survey to make claims about smokers as a whole? To allay our concerns, will they state clearly that their survey cannot be taken as representative of the views of all smokers and will not be presented as such?

As is customary, attempts were made to make it clear that this wasn't the intention of the report, something that CSUR are open and transparent about in the Executive Summary. However, ASH Scotland were the very opposite of open and transparent, and two months later have still refused to publish comments on their article.

This is because the tobacco control industry, as I have said, don't want to hear about the views of smokers and will wriggle and squirm to make sure they never have to. The CSUR report is very revealing and could be useful to an industry wishing to help smokers to quit. Sadly, the tobacco control industry isn't interested in that at all. It doesn't care about why smokers smoke and definitely doesn't want to hear about what smokers think, far less to engage with them.

So this report will be widely ignored; lessons will go unlearned; and it will all be dismissed as being a tobacco industry plot. This, my valued fellow jewel robbers, is why it has never been about health. 

COP7 Delegates Smoked Nearly Half A Million Fags

You may remember that last weekend I wrote about the WHO's finest elite anti-smokers turning up in New Delhi, just in time to see what a real public health crisis looks like.

A researcher was quoted by the New York Times as equating the pollution in terms we can understand.

Sustained exposure to that concentration of PM 2.5 is equivalent to smoking 40 cigarettes a day, said Sarath Guttikunda, the director of Urban Emissions, an independent research group.

On this basis, I did some calculations.

There were 180 countries in attendance, each comprising three delegates, and with other accredited attendees it is reported that around 1,500 were there. Over 8 days that means that the COP7 contingent 'smoked' between them the equivalent of around 480,000 fags!

Yet while waiting for three and a half hours for my pass to enter the venue, I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of delegates - you know, the ones who panic about a few wisps of smoke or vapour - worried enough about the danger to take precautions in the form of a mask or other prevention measure. Just saying.

I took some video and pictures while I was there and the boy P has edited it into a concise one minute film. It's a taste of the city under the smog; enjoy.

Meeting Asian Vapers

Following on from yesterday's article about the bizarre chaos at COP7, I mentioned that I had later attended an extremely useful event designed for vapers from a number of countries in Asia.

The first thing to note is that I finally saw an Indian vaper! His name was Nikhil, and a very personable young lad he was too. 

When I say finally, I mean that prior to that event I had not seen a single vaper in Delhi - and apart from Monday night's gathering, still haven't. In short, they just don't seem to exist. I quizzed Nikhil as to why this was the case and he told me that the police often arrest vapers if they vape in public, primarily on the grounds that they believe that the devices are being used to inhale cannabis juice. 

This is most likely because general awareness of vaping is scant. To give you an example, when I arrived at the airport at the weekend, the hotel had forgotten to send the car I requested to pick me up. Two representatives of the hotel - suited and booted - were apologetic and called another which could be with me in 15 minutes (it was a bit longer than that in the end). They took me to the road outside with my luggage and I got my e-cig out for the first time since Heathrow; that's when the questions started. 

I tried as best I could to answer them but it was clear they were unfamiliar with the products and they both admitted they had never even heard of an e-cig let alone seen one. In fact, as I vaped and let out a small cloud on a low-powered device, one of my helpful shepherds actually stepped back in astonishment. That gives you a clue as to how much work Indian vapers have to do get established in the country. So it was immense that quite a few determined vaping afficionados turned up to discuss what can be done about it, especially in the shadow of COP7. 

It was a very successful networking session which also included vapers from The Philippines, Hong Kong and Malaysia that I know of.

It was a whole new world for me and emphasised that - although vapers in the UK have their problems - the difficulties we face pale into insgnificance compared with these guys.

Having said that, many of the problems are identical to the ones UK vapers have come up against and, in many areas, still do. The most prominent being, of course, an inability to properly get the message out that vaping is all but harmless because there exist repellent tobacco control dinosaurs failing to live with the times and instead producing junk science and pinheaded ideological reasons to object to vaping.

And the interests of the Asian vapers will be instantly recognisable by those who vape in the UK. Very sociable, these vapers were talking devices, juice and regulations before we had even received our first cup of tea. The e-liquid testing scene below, for example, doesn't look dissimilar to one you might see in a vape-friendly UK venue too. 

Anyone who watches VTTV will know that I recorded some interviews on the night as a pre-arranged exclusive for Dave Dorn and the gang (you can watch the whole show here). They went remarkably well, especially the one with Tom Pinloc of The Philippines who gave his thoughts on how he saw the future of vaping under the rule of murderous dictator - and COP7's best friend - Ricardo Duterte. What also surprised me about his tale is that there are apparently around 100,000 vapers in the Philippines, served by a number of different consumer groups. That is quite a force to be reckoned with, but it will have to be while extreme prohibitionist Duterte is in charge down there.

Indian vapers boasted of the same kind of high numbers as the Philippines, so I also interviewed two Indian vapers and a representative of the newly-formed Association of Vapers India. These short video stories (on average about 5 mins each) were received very warmly in the chat area of VTTV and I've had requests to make them available widely. I always meant to do so anyway, so embedded below (in the order I filmed them) are the thoughts of vapers living far away in hostile environments but still fighting their corner admirably. They are well worth viewing to get an idea of the challenges being met in that area of the world. 

It's been a very busy week so far out here, but check back for the next blog which will be discussing a very special award for the WHO and the night I met A Bilion Lives Director Aaron Biebert. Oh yes I did, and have pics to prove it!