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?

Secretary Of State For Health Says Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em

You may have watched this already, but the Science and Technology Committee of the House of Commons held a further session on e-cigs the other day. You can see the whole thing here.

Chaired by Norman Lamb, a former Minister of State, it was investigating the role of not just vaping but other harm reduction avenues. There were many revealing moments which tie in with my regular refrain that new nicotine products are scaring the living daylights out of the establishment because they simply cannot work out which way to turn. As disruptive technologies go, this new suite of nicotine products - for which e-cigs has been the catalyst - is causing entrenched and turgid civil servants a whole host of problems and they keep being tripped up.

Here, for example, is John Newton of Public Health England having to admit that snus - a product which his government funders fought to ensure remained prohibited in the EU at the ECJ - is the reason that Sweden has a lower smoking prevalence rate than the UK. By a country mile, by the way.

PHE guy explains the success of #snus ... the ban on which his funders at the UK government fought at the ECJ to prolong #NotAboutHealth pic.twitter.com/CSNaRwtrnS

— Dick Puddlecote (@Dick_Puddlecote) April 24, 2018

How embarrassing is that? Sweden is better at preventing people from smoking because "they have snus". Erm, which our government is determined stays banned. Isn't our government terribly committed to stopping people smoking? I'm sure I've heard the fuckers saying that quite a lot.

So why strive to stop snus being sold in this country? I've heard the arguments that we don't have a culture of it here, but does that mean the UK shouldn't even try? When did "if it just saves one life it's worth it" cease to be applicable in 'public health' circles? It seems to work very well for them when they want to ban something for some bullshit reason. Is it because the ratchet only turns one way, perhaps?

This was also very telling from Steve Brine - the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health - at Tuesday's hearing.

Got that? "Generally hospitals do not allow vaping however there is no legislation to enforce that". It seems that in trying to give an excuse to the committee as to why his department is so schizophrenic over vaping, with a nudge and a wink he has said vapers are free to ignore the pathetic rules. So a mischievous blogger, if there was such a thing, might suggest that he has implicitly implied that smokers are quite welcome to ignore bans on smoking in hospital grounds too.

The alternative, of course, would be that he would prefer the rules to be observed by everyone, including vapers. It's a tangled web, isn't it, once one tries to justify policies that simply don't add up to a coherent strategy?

The problem for Brine is that he has one set of taxpayer-funded people at Public Health England saying that e-cigs should be widely encouraged and even sold in hospitals, while another set of state-funded people under the DoH's control - the NHS - is busily installing bans on vaping.

So the department is funding highly-paid employees to issue guidance that vaping should be allowed, while simultaneously funding other highly-paid employees to completely ignore the guidance. We are paying for people to produce reports that other people we pay for will put through the shredder.

It truly beggars belief that anyone can think this is a decent way of spending our money.

He later went on to say that the NHS trusts ignoring the exhortations from PHE were "not short on guidance", as if they should probably be adhering to it, but at the same time defending their right to treat the guidance with contempt.

But then, I don't think Steve Brine is much of a fan of e-cigs anyway and appeared to be at the committee under sufferance. "I get a lot of criticism for not being a cheerleader for e-cigarettes, I don't think I should be", he said, seemingly completely forgetting that his department's Tobacco Control Plan - which he boasted about pushing through as soon as he was appointed - specifically talked about the importance of reduced risk products like e-cigs.

If he is not going to be a cheerleader for his own Tobacco Control Plan, then who the hell else is supposed to be bloody doing it?

And how about this, from the foreword of said plan, signed by Steve Brine himself?

For its part, the government will provide leadership and guidance on the most effective interventions, ensure that the new legislation is implemented well and that organisations with national responsibilities are joined up and effective. I know that this ambition cannot be achieved without a collaborative effort.

Erm, where's the leadership in saying that you can't really do much about one organisation saying one thing and another completely ignoring it? Doesn't sound like leadership to me, and certainly isn't a "collaborative effort".

Look, I don't think government should have any say in whether people smoke or not, they should just provide information and leave it up to the public to make their own decisions.

But if we have a government that wants to insert itself into every aspect of our lives, it could at least make some effort of being joined-up about it and get actions at NHS trusts which reflect the guidance they are given. We pay a shit load of money for them to do exactly this, it's laughable that Brine says

he has no power to make them. 

But, in the meantime, if you want to, just smoke on hospital grounds. As the Secretary of State says, there is absolutely nothing to stop you. 

Meanwhile In The Real World

Last week, BBC Radio 5 Live featured a spot on the new TPD regulations on tobacco (around 1 hr 8 mins here), along with the cowardly gold-plating which the UK government added by including pointless plain packaging to the mix.

Part of the piece included this very telling vox pop section with retailers and consumers in Haverhill, Suffolk. It is 2 minutes long so do have a listen.

You'll note that the real people spoken to were all of the opinion that none of these silly rules will have any effect on whether people smoke or not. Those who were in retail had first hand experience of how there was absolutely no effect at all except to encourage smokers to trade down ... as we all predicted but ASH etc denied.

You will also notice many other themes crop up which dominated the debate back in 2012 and 2013. That plain packaging will not make anyone quit; that it will lead to an increase in the black market, that smokers will just go for the cheapest product; that it makes people buy more; that it makes it difficult for retailers to find the packs; and that there will be no difference in sales whatsoever.

In short, everything that we warned about on these pages has come true. While everything that ASH and their similarly tax-funded propagandists predicted from their rose-tinted, funding-focused crystal ball, won't.

Predictably, though, later in the feature Hazel Cheeseman (you may remember her nonsense from last week) defaulted to tobacco control central's lamest argument and just stated that this was all bollocks, all just a tobacco industry lie. We've seen this before, including when an ASH trustee denied the most fundamental aspects of economics to say that black markets are not driven by price, and that this was also a tobacco industry lie. No, really, she did!

The people of Haverhill, I expect, know pretty much nothing about the debate that went on in 2012/13; they are speaking about their lived experience rather than models on a spreadsheet, manipulated research and bare-faced corruption that the tobacco control Goliath pumped out purely to ensure they received another round of funding the next year (because that is the very simple purpose of ASH, they have absolutely no care about health or they'd have waved through e-cigs in a heartbeat).

Cheeseman also resorted to lame tobacco control argument number two, which is to just say 'children' a lot. Of course, we know how plain packs went on that score, now don't we?

In fact, we know a hell of a lot about what went on in Australia following plain packs, and none of it is good. It's a story of obfuscation, policy-led evidence-making, desperate stuttering scrambling of state power to avoid awkward questions, unconvincing deceit and downright lies. If you have 22 mins to spare, I recommend you watch this presentation of how Australian officials wriggled and wriggled to avoid being transparent about plain packaging, which is odd considering they trumpeted its unmitigated success.

I think what I'm trying to say is that it is staggering to see government agencies throwing huge sums of our taxes towards people who are incapable of telling the truth.

Real life is showing them up to be incredibly dishonest organisations packed full of repulsive individuals who value their own salaries above truth, fair debate, and what might actually work towards the good of public health. They throw huge sums of cash at a pointless folly like plain packaging while fighting tooth and nail to protect stifling regulations on e-cigs .. which are proving in real life to be working.

Why the fuck are we paying these people to live in their lavishly-funded fantasy cocoon, while the the real world is proving them all wrong on a daily basis and will continue to do so. It's almost like, I dunno, it's not about health after all!

It's time legislators started listening to what the public thinks about these stupid and trivial policy interventions instead of hopelessly conflicted organisations like ASH who derive their income from promoting more and more irrelevance. Why not cut out the middle man, stick these hideous parasites on the dole and save the country a small fortune. 

The Staggering Hypocrisy Of ASH

Sometimes the hypocrisy displayed by ASH reaches spectacular levels, and today is one such occasion.

Via the BBC (emphases mine):

Some 1.5 million vapers are ex-smokers, compared with 1.3 million who still use tobacco, a survey of 12,000 adults for Action on Smoking and Health found. 

But Ash said the message that vaping was much less harmful than smoking had not yet got through to all smokers. 

Deborah Arnott, the campaigning health charity's chief executive, said the figures on vapers who had quit smoking were "excellent news" but that the rate of people switching to electronic versions had peaked. 

"The rapid growth in e-cigarette use has come to an end," she said. 

This is because more than a third of smokers have still never tried e-cigarettes, as a result of concerns about the safety and addictiveness of e-cigarettes. 

But research suggests that 26% of people think e-cigarettes are more - or equally as - harmful as smoking tobacco while only 13% believe they are a lot less harmful. 

"It's very important smokers realise that vaping is much, much less harmful than smoking," she added.

So what, exactly, has ASH been doing to get this "important" message across to smokers then?

Well, back in 2010, the medical community were arguing that e-cigs should be banned within 21 days or - ASH's preference - banned after a year if manufacturers had not applied for medicinal licensing.

Due to the power of vapers standing up for themselves, that failed. However, in 2013, ASH were still desperately attempting to destroy vaping by getting the whole market banned unless it was medicinalised, as their own emails showed.

In 2015 they were then caught enthusiastically cheerleading bans on vaping in hospitals, while their colleagues in Wales were proud to append their logo to a no vaping sign as they declared how they "fully welcome" a beach vaping ban. ASH have since been woefully inadequate in speaking up about pointless vaping bans as they have spread like wildfire in recent years.

Then, last year, a number of Lords engaged in a debate over the Tobacco Products Directive and its degenerate regulations on vaping. This encouraged Lord Callanan to put forward a fatal motion in the Lords which - in the face of disgraceful lobbying by ASH - was beaten down into a far less powerful 'regret' motion. Even this wasn't good enough for ASH, who then attacked the regret motion too.

They then dismissed the damaging consequences of the TPD by saying that a quarter of a million smokers turned away from e-cigs - because of an arbitrary and vacuous limit on nicotine strength - don't really matter.

The result of the TPD that ASH so furiously lobbied for is that a packet of coils for use with an e-cig now looks like this.

ASH will tell you till they are blue in the face that health warnings like that pictured above are highly effective at deterring use of the products they are attached to. So why did they lobby so hard for them if they're concerned that the "important" message gets out to smokers that e-cigs are far less harmful?

Talk of e-cigs being medicinalised implies to the public that there is something very dangerous about them; ASH desperately tried to class e-cigs as medicines. Health warnings will convince the public that e-cigs are "highly addictive" and dangerous; ASH lobbied in favour of them. Vaping bans tell the public that e-cigs must be harmful or the authorities wouldn't ban them; ASH support some bans and have done nothing to stop any prospective ban, let alone turn back the tide wholesale. And ASH lobbied relentlessly to burden vaping products with counterproductive, and entirely unnecessary, regulations which - yet again - send a signal to the public that there must be something very risky about them.

The sheer brass neck Arnott must have to wonder why "the message vaping was much less harmful than smoking had not yet got through to all smokers" is superlatively jaw-dropping!

If you want to know why that "important" message is not being understood by smokers, ASH, look in the mirror because it is entirely the fault of repulsive, anti-social, parasitical tobacco controllers like you.

UPDATE: 

The NNA has also written on this subject, quite rightly pointing out that today's news is an early indication of the TPD causing harm. They also agree with me about a cause of this abject failure.

It is certainly true that public misperceptions about the risk of vaping relative to smoking have played a significant role in discouraging many smokers to switch to the very much safer alternative. Vaping is estimated to be at least 95% safer than smoking for the consumer, and there are no known risks for bystanders. But what is driving that misperception? What do we do with potentially dangerous products? We restrict their availability, we restrict their use, we restrict the advertising of them, we stifle their innovation via regulations and we force the manufacturers to emblazon them with scary warnings - just as the EU TPD and its UK incarnation the TRPR plus a myriad of public and private space usage bans have done with e-cigarettes. It's hardly surprising that the public then seize upon every garbage media report of shoddy science that surfaces and believes it to be true - the government has all but told them so in its regulation of the products.

Indeed!

And every single one of those measures I have emboldened was heartily lobbied for and cheered along by ASH. Well done Debs and chums, well done. Congratulations for comprehensively blurring that message you have been saying is so "important" today. Was it pure incompetence on your part or have you finally embraced being part of the tobacco industry after all these years? 

It's A Good Country If It Agrees With Simple Simon

Simple Simon Chapman has been heroically doing his Canute impression at The Conversation by employing global cherry-picking on steroids to pretend a bunch of vaping truths are actually myths. Comical stuff like this for example.

9. There’s no good evidence for e-cigarettes being a gateway to smoking in young people 

Centers for Disease Control data from 2015 demonstrate a concerning sudden cessation and plateau in the previous decline of US high school students smoking tobacco, while e-cigarette use is skyrocketing.

Yeah OK, oddball.

Yes, the whole thing is as shit as that. Y'see, Simple Simon is one of the old guard of tobacco control who lied for decades about smoking and saw a bovine public actually believe them. So therefore now think all they have to do is lie outrageously about e-cigs and - hey presto! - they will again be lauded for protecting society from imaginary danger ... instead of hilariously destroying their ill-gotten reputations in favour of a place in history as an ignorant object of eternal ridicule.

The most interesting thing about Simon Chapman's article though - apart from his increasingly isolated battle with reality - was this exchange in the comments.

Jenny

Prof Chapman said; “But 18 nations ban e-cigarettes outright,…”

To expand on that using the link provided, the 18 countries who have banned ecigs are: ARGENTINA, AUSTRIA, BRAZIL, BRUNEI, INDONESIA, COLOMBIA, JORDAN, MALAYSIA, MEXICO, OMAN, PANAMA, QATAR, SINGAPORE, TAIWAN, THAILAND, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES, UAE, including Dubai, URUGUAY, VENEZUELA. 

By contrast the UNITED KINGDOM, UNITED STATES, and the EUROPEAN UNION, along with a few other western democracies are all in the list of countries that permit (and in some cases encourage) the use of ecigs. 

CANADA and NEW ZEALAND are both in the process of liberalising their current restrictions on use. 

I don’t think I need to expand on the meaning evident in this information, but I will say that tobacco harm reduction seems to be favoured by more progressive, western nations.

Fellow commenter Mark haughtily objected to what he saw as disrespectful insinuation.

Mark

From what I can tell from your post you are suggesting that countries in which which legislation reflects your own views on vaping are “more progressive” while those that don’t reflect your views are not.  You should try and explain that.

Yes, what a terrible argument! I mean, who but a fool would dismiss entire nations simply because they disagree, eh?

You don't often see articles where a commenter defends the author while indirectly calling him a bellend, now do you? 

Tobacco Control Is Like The Wild West, Urgently Requires Regulation

In my entry at the Tobacco Tactics website, there is a section entitled "Denigrating Health Professionals". As you can imagine, I am extremely proud of this, so much so that it features prominently in my Twitter banner.

You see, this is because they fully deserve the abuse for the extensive catalogue of lies they have told over the years. It's a shame that my page hasn't been updated since 2012, but I sometimes think that could be because others are starting to see that I'm right. Simon Chapman, for example, is now viewed by even some of his own 'public health' colleagues as a dangerous crank and spreader of blatantly false bullshit.

He's not alone, of course, as The Sun's front page splash proved the other day.

Now, I've been writing about this stuff for a long time, but I am struggling to remember anything worse than that from any tobacco control or 'public health' source. It seems that - despite the internet exposing their practices to more scrutiny than ever - they have not cleaned up their act, but instead strive to be increasingly worse. Many sections of the tobacco control industry, it seems, believe that the answer to their lies being exposed is just to lie even more than before!

The 'research' that led to that study has already been skewered comprehensively by others (see here, here, and here), quite an easy task (apart from if you're a journalist) since it is truly desperate stuff.

However, I'm more interested in what this says about 'public health' in general and tobacco control in particular. By that I mean what punishments are there for disseminating execrably false information such as this? The 'public health' movement is forever telling us that we need regulations to stop the damaging excesses of industry, but they have arguably far more potential to harm the public if they come out with garbage which directs the public wrongly, yet are totally unaccountable!

In my business, if someone I employed was lying to primary or secondary customers, I would be calling them into my office and disciplining them harshly if not dismissing them for gross misconduct. Reason being that such actions could undermine the company's integrity and put our revenues and future contracts in jeopardy.

In tobacco control, though, it is the other way around; lies are applauded by fellow tobacco controllers and they derive more revenue from the lies (by way of increased publicity and grant status), rather than less. If controls were the same as they naturally are in the private sector, they should be losing their integrity too, but don't because they self-describe as 'experts' and everyone believes them ... even though many of them knowingly lie through their teeth every day.

As I've mentioned many times before, though, the reaction by tobacco controllers to the behaviour of some of their colleagues - ranging from unprofessional to gross misconduct I'd venture to say - has ranged from mild rebuke (as the maximum) to deafening silence. At times, they have even jumped on the lunacy bandwagon themselves!

Under the line at Clive Bates's article, Linda Bauld despairs at having to constantly defend vaping, rather like the Dutch boy and the dyke. That's all well and good, but it is tobacco control which punched the holes in the dyke in the first place with thoroughly disingenuous and regularly mendacious claptrap, as I've described before.

However, the world's prime promoter of such things - Mad Stan Glantz - has been a star in the tobacco control industry firmament for a very long time. Bauld and the rest of the UK tobacco control community have known he's a weapons grade lie machine for decades, but have been quite happy to let it all go without comment.

Glantz has been falsifying data and producing jaw-dropping junk research (like this, for example) since many of the current crop of career tax-sponging anti-smoking prohibitionists were in nappies, yet not one of these fine upstanding 'experts' and 'scientists' has ever bothered to pull him up on any of it before.

So there is some vague hint there by Bauld that some tobacco controllers like Glantz have been a bit naughty, but that'll be all it is; a vague hint. To make it any more than that would - quite rightly - call their own expertise and impartiality into question.

@CaeruleanSea His previous junk has been very useful to PH people. They can't suddenly admit that he's a clown.

— Christopher Snowdon (@cjsnowdon) May 7, 2016

What is urgently required is some serious oversight of the 'public health' Goliath. Tobacco control, especially, has to whipped into line and told that this isn't some jolly little club where lying is allowed with a wink and a smile, but is supposed to be professional and not run and operated by people with the professional acumen of Del Boy and the morals of Alan B'Stard.

All the while tobacco control was calling for more regulations on e-cigs with the glib and inaccurate sound bite that a perfect and successful free market was "like the Wild West", the only industry which has truly acted (and continues to act) like the Wild West has been the totally unregulated and entirely unaccountable tobacco control industry; where black is white; economic principles are inconvenient and to be ignored; and where truth is a lie and vice versa.

In Bauld's comment, she also hints that this is an international problem so, therefore {shrug}, what can we do?

I do think there is someone somewhere worrying about this. This includes funders as well as researchers and others. The problem is that funders operate largely within a domestic (national) sphere in public health and the international environment (beyond a few countries) is overwhelmingly opposed to tobacco harm reduction. That is not the full story but it is part of it.

Well, it would be some kind of start if the UK could show some leadership (tobacco controllers like that word, don't they?) and actually do something useful.

Let's look at the organisations who are supposed to oversee 'public health' in the UK. The Faculty of Public Health is run by lunatics who are - along with the Chief Medical Officer - complicit in the deceit being forced upon the public regarding e-cigs; the different branches of ASH pay lip service while permanently trying to destroy vaping (after already having destroyed snus); and PHE are so limp that it looks like they just want to take government cash and not ruffle any feathers.

Where is the outrage from the lucrative 'public health' community towards such absolute crap being fed to the public by news outlets they usually despise such as The Sun, Telegraph, Daily Mail and The Times? Why are angry letters not being publicised by 'public health' grandees even now, two days after the damaging headlines.

If you were a cynic, you'd think it wasn't about health or something, wouldn't you?

So, there's a reason why I denigrate health professionals. It's because it is not an honourable industry so they deserve no respect, in fact it is arguably fundamentally corrupt.

To borrow one of their oft-employed arguments, self-regulation has signally failed with 'public health' and tobacco control, their profession is like the Wild West; it ignores extremist views and they all urgently require harsh regulation to curb the public health harm their excesses cause.

I'm sure many will agree, just not publicly in case they get attacked by the most corrupt in their echo chamber or it results in a loss of the state funding they all parasitically crave.

So, in the meantime, I shall watch the inevitable tumbleweed emanating from the likes of PHE, RCP, ASH, FPH etc over recent headlines with amusement, while they laughably describe other industries as unregulated, negligent and harmful.

Pretend Harm Reductionists

Having been busy, I only yesterday read an excellent article published by Carl Phillips on Friday. This section in particular is very well drawn on the subject of harm reduction (emphases mine).

But notice that the IHRA/HRI definition — and that of anyone else who really believes in harm reduction — refers to also reducing the “economic” (read: financial) and social costs of drug use. In the case of tobacco use, as with many drugs, the great majority of the financial and social costs come not from the drug use itself, but from government actions. Smoking is expensive because of taxes and restrictions on the free flow of goods. More social harms from smoking are caused by government restrictions than by the act itself. Unlike with illicit drugs, few people are imprisoned or executed over tobacco (though not none), but unavoidable punitive taxes are not necessarily less harmful than rolling the dice on a small chance of getting arrested. 

And yet, many people who fancy themselves supporters of tobacco harm reduction actively support most of those caused harms. They actively support punitive taxes on cigarettes, social opprobrium heaped on smokers, prohibitions against publicans being able to offer smoking sections, etc. Indeed, those individuals often celebrate or advocate for the caused harms because they create further incentives for the only aspect of harm reduction they actually support, switching products. It reminds me of the Orwellian themes of about half the anti-smoking propaganda I see these days: “Quit because it is so expensive and forces you to take breaks from hanging with your friends!” Um, yeah, and whose fault is that? It is the same as those messages of “if you smoke weed, you might lose your student financial aid and future employment prospects, so don’t go saying it is not bad for you!” Needless to say, you will never hear a peep of condemnation of this hypocritical “concern” for users’ well-being from the faux supporters of harm reduction. 

The bottom line is simple: Anyone who supports punishing smokers does not actually believe in tobacco harm reduction. None of those “but for the greater good we need to…” protests changes this. Causing harm is not harm reduction.

Indeed.

This is what happens when you have a colossal state-funded machine which views life solely through the lens of health. Other pleasures and benefits in consuming the products in question are completely ignored, therefore the prohibitionists simply cannot comprehend the huge social and financial damage their rancid policies are causing ... as I have mentioned before occasionally.

1.1 million people in England are in poverty because of tax policies demanded by @ASH_LDN https://t.co/4Yvx03yUE1 pic.twitter.com/kG1fL91NxS

— Dick Puddlecote (@Dick_Puddlecote) November 3, 2015

... along with others.

ASH admit their tobacco taxes have plunged a "dramatic" number of smokers into poverty. https://t.co/YL5uPZDVQH pic.twitter.com/6egbGAdA3G

— Christopher Snowdon (@cjsnowdon) August 5, 2016

But I'd go further than that. You see, tobacco controllers are also often very happy to land body blows on even the one part of harm reduction - switching to low risk products - that they claim to support, as long as it means increasing the harm they wish to inflict on smokers. Pointlessly bullying smokers is considered far more important than supporting products which deliver reduced harm.

Here is ASH Scotland view on smoke-free children's playparks.... https://t.co/CkfFTr2JK9

— ASH Scotland (@ASHScotland) July 12, 2016

The full tobacco control fake charity set is complete when you remember that ASH Wales also "fully welcome" bans on vaping in outdoor, windswept settings for the purposes of denormalisation. No, these are not my words, they are theirs.

And, as far as we know, ASH Wales's logo still proudly and shamelessly sits on a "No Vaping" sign on a beach in Pembrokeshire.

Nothing is too extreme for these people. They will happily throw vaping to the wolves as long as their drive to impose harm on smokers by any means necessary is protected.

No-one, but no-one, in any of the three UK ASH branches can ever claim they are supportive of harm reduction while these vile priorities still prevail. They should be reviled every time they try to pretend that harm reduction is in their future plans. They may believe they are supportive, but - as Phillips rightly says - they betray themselves and reveal the truth every time they stigmatise and inflict harm on smokers with financial punishment, prohibitions and ostracism.

Other tobacco controllers are even worse! Not only are they happy to turn a blind eye to the junk science which is behind the harm visited on smokers, but certain Scottish/Canadian tobacco controllers, for example, also want to extend that harm onto the lives of those who enjoy a drink and those who choose to eat food they disapprove of. And they are far from alone!

As Phillips explains very well, none of these people can ever claim to even understand the concept of harm reduction, let alone say they are supportive of it or are advocates. All the while their only approach is to punish the public for making free choices which 'public health' believe to be wrong they are anything but.

Puritans, yes; prodnoses, yes; prohibitionists, yes; hypocrites, yes; ghastly bullies, yes; repulsive anti-social arseholes, yes; but supportive of harm reduction? Absolutely fucking not!

Hey PHE, Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Earlier this week I touched upon PHE's new 'guidelines' on vaping in workplaces and public spaces.

Well, since then the government's prime 'public health' advisory body - for it is they - has tweeted a clarification of some of the wording they were using.

@brainyfurball 1/3 We’re clear that vaping is not smoking, and they should not be treated the same…

— PublicHealthEngland (@PHE_uk) July 21, 2016

This should be pretty clear if you read the guidelines, it has to be said, because although it is buried in amongst public sector makework gobbledegook, they do say that this should be a prominent feature of any policy.

Yet, as I have pointed out before, this is the precise opposite of what is happening with policies in almost all social settings. A few hours after PHE posted that tweet my BFF and I were told by stewards at Lord's cricket ground that "you can't smoke those things there" (we weren't using them at the time) and directed to the smoking area instead. The same is true of all Premier League football grounds and all Arriva Premiership rugby grounds too. Hence my hint to PHE that some action may be useful on their part if they are to be taken seriously.

.@phe_uk Erm, how about telling @premierleague, @premrugby and @ECB_cricket that & giving @healthystadia a deserved slap? @brainyfurball

— Dick Puddlecote (@Dick_Puddlecote) July 22, 2016

For those who don't know, Healthy Stadia are a bunch of repulsive north west England-based pharma-funded charalatans who have been badgering sports clubs and stadium owners with misleading - and arguably fraudulent - information about e-cigs in a deliberate but successful campaign to get them banned.

So we have one cheek of the tobacco control arse saying that vaping should be encouraged while the other (infected and unwiped) one runs around advocating that e-cigs should be prohibited just about everywhere.

It's not just sports grounds either, for example here's one policy tweeted to me just yesterday from a 'leisure' park in Cornwall which prioritises petty and pointless rules over the enjoyment and free choices of its customers.

And, of course, we have the ban on smoking and vaping on a Pembrokeshire beach which is "fully welcomed" and endorsed by ASH Wales as well as a similar ban on smoking and vaping which London's ASH think is absolutely fabulous. Meanwhile, in the past couple of weeks ASH Scotland has confirmed that it too is very happy with vaping being treated exactly the same as smoking. You know, like PHE is adamant should not be the case.

Here is ASH Scotland view on smoke-free children's playparks.... https://t.co/CkfFTr2JK9

— ASH Scotland (@ASHScotland) July 12, 2016

Now, can you see something wrong with this picture?

If you're a vaper I'm pretty certain you will have come up against this kind of policy yourselves. And if you've ever asked why the policy exists - in open air - you'll have been met with a lot of ignorance. The general excuse is that "they look like smoking" which is equally deranged because there is no law against smoking in the open air either, for the simple fact that it is not a danger to anyone's health outdoors, as I've written before.

The ban on smoking in stadia is purely a vile bullying policy imagined, lobbied for and supported by grubby, tax-sponging organisations such as ASH and others in the same mould. 

There is, and never will be, any measurable harm to others from passive smoking outside, it is a fantasy demon that the tobacco control industry has created amongst the public. Worse still, those in tobacco control who promote this fear are very clever with their words because they know very well that they are purposely lying about the potential 'dangers'. 

So what if someone slips under the radar and smokes amongst others who are vaping? Neither is any kind of a problem we should be worrying about. If it is, we sure as shit need another war to illustrate what discomfort is really all about, and to remind many that a lot of people fought very hard to protect the freedoms that the selfish and affected amongst us are now seemingly content to flush down the toilet. 

Ah but, I hear you say, some people don't like the smell of smoke, so it's only fair they be catered for. Well of course, but did anyone consider smoking and non-smoking areas? Well of course not because that wouldn't sit with ASH's chosen policy of bullying and 'denormalisation' of perfectly law-abiding people consuming a legal product. It is only the effete, snobby and repellent who ASH cater for. 

Besides, if the smell of smoke is so rancid and identifiable, it wouldn't be much of a problem to spot, now would it? 

No, the drive by tobacco control tax-spongers is based solely on the 'denormalisation' strategy; to bully and shame smokers into submission. They have deliberately created ignorance to encourage policy-makers to wrongly believe there is something dangerous about smoking outdoors, and the compounded ignorance of e-cigs has encouraged venues to ban vaping too as a matter of course.

A direct result of tobacco control extremism towards smoking has therefore resulted in the widespread 'denormalisation' of vaping as well, at the same time that PHE are declaring that the opposite should happen. Way to go 'public health', you cretins.

So what can PHE do to - as their Martin Dockrell claimed was the goal earlier this week - avoid "policies that end up doing more harm than good"?

Well, they could start by telling their own tobacco controllers that it is completely unacceptable to support any bans on vaping in outdoor spaces. Healthy Stadia should be told to go back to the sports clubs they have lied to and fix the damage that they have created or be closed down. If they refuse to do so, well PHE receive half a billion pounds a year to deliver their policy objectives ... a few stamps and a firm letter to the clubs that Healthy Stadia have shamefully misled would cost pennies and is the very least they could do.

PHE could also advise the government that if it is serious about its support for vaping - which I sincerely doubt - it should order any organisation which receives state-funding to cease blithely allowing vaping bans but instead to oppose them, and that supporting them like ASH Wales did will be a serious offence for the individual concerned which will result in their instant dismissal.

It is empty rhetoric and a crass waste of taxpayer funding to produce reports and issue 'guidelines' if you're just going to sit back and allow shit counterproductive policies on vaping in order to not derail the vile, dictatorial and entirely unnecessary 'denormalisation' campaign against smokers.

Tobacco control seem very quick to speak to organisations and demand smoking bans everywhere, but slow to the point of inertia in opposing vaping bans. You could be forgiven, in fact, for believing that they actually like them on the sly.

Anyone can say that they support vaping, but actions speak louder than words. So come on PHE, put our money where your mouth is, what are you waiting for?

End Of An Error

The Guardian has reported on the departure of the Faculty of Public Health's nagger-in-Chief John Ashton. Staying true to the ethos of 'public health' - and comparing the country's kids to "livestock" - he has marked the occasion by being a pompous sneering prick.

The government should give parents lessons on how to raise their children, according to Britain’s leading public health expert.

I'd say he's going out with a bang but regulars here will remember one of his even more arrogant and condescending moments one Saturday back in 2014.

So as he makes way for someone equally appalling, let's reprise John Ashton's biggest hit.

Last week, the BBC rolled out their latest e-cig 'expert' to regurgitate the fantasies of Big Pharma and the irrational prejudices of rent-seekers - you can listen to his bizarre claims here and here. Said expert - the head of the Faculty of Public Health, no less - was naturally challenged with facts and proper evidence to counter his stark scaremongery such as that e-cigs cause blindness, amongst others. 

He wasn't impressed on Wednesday.

This "abuse" was something of a surprise to vapers on Twitter seeing as the tweets were merely ones questioning his evidence and offering opposing views. It was even more bizarre considering he had pre-blocked a slew of prominent vaping tweeters so couldn't have seen what they said anyway. 

Some discussion ensued but it had moved on by the following day and Ashton was largely forgotten. However, last night, sober thoughtful public health industry spokesman Prof John Ashton unfathomably decided to trawl some of the accounts he had blocked and offer contemptuous replies. It must have taken him a while since he went back six months to find this one!

And nearly three weeks to find this innocent tweet to attack.

But that was just a small indicator of the astonishing meltdown to come. About the time it takes to down a bottle of Merlot later, the unhinged insults began ...

... and continued for a further hour.

In a riveting Saturday night tour de force, Ashton toggled between the astounding ...

... and the truly surreal.

One of his own side tried to get him to tone it down, but to no avail.

You can read the whole article here. How he wasn't sacked for that episode is anyone's guess, but it seems 'public health' have lower morals and standards than the rest of society.

So farewell then John Ashton, waning star in the smug condescending people-hating 'public health' firmament, you will be sorely pissed missed.

Gosh, No Idea

Yesterday I saw a tweet which fair astounded me.

Wonder why these harm perceptions just keep going in the wrong direction? Gosh, no idea :( #UKCTAScpd pic.twitter.com/1nqHTl4HLt

— Linda Bauld (@LindaBauld) May 9, 2016

Bauld is no doubt referring to those in her industry who like to spread misleading information, junk science and lies about e-cigs, and she is correct to do so.

However, the world's prime promoter of such things - Mad Stan Glantz - has been a star in the tobacco control industry firmament for a very long time. Bauld and the rest of the UK tobacco control community have known he's a weapons grade lie machine for decades, but have been quite happy to let it all go without comment.

Glantz has been falsifying data and producing jaw-dropping junk research (like this, for example) since many of the current crop of career tax-sponging anti-smoking prohibitionists were in nappies, yet not one of these fine upstanding 'experts' and 'scientists' has ever bothered to pull him up on any of it before.

So there is some vague hint there by Bauld that some tobacco controllers like Glantz have been a bit naughty, but that'll be all it is; a vague hint. To make it any more than that would - quite rightly - call their own expertise and impartiality into question.

@CaeruleanSea His previous junk has been very useful to PH people. They can't suddenly admit that he's a clown.

— Christopher Snowdon (@cjsnowdon) May 7, 2016

Of course they can't, they've feasted on his crap for years and actively encouraged him. And that includes Robert West who produces the Smoking Toolkit study that the slide in that tweet is taken from.

The hypocrisy is staggering enough on its own, but let's consider something else. Y'see, for a long time the tobacco control industry has considered bans on the use of tobacco as being a prime tactic in the 'denormalisation' of smoking. Read World Health Organisation documents and public bans are regularly praised as being instrumental in making smoking unacceptable in the eyes of society.

Here's a good explanation of the concept.

Smoking restrictions, in addition to protecting non-smokers from the harms of environmental tobacco smoke, can contribute to denormalisation because they reduce the acceptability of smoking (Albers et al. 2004;Department of Health and Human Services 1991); in fact, some commentators regard smoking restrictions as the most effective way of denormalising tobacco use (Bell et al. 2010a;Brown et al. 2009). Many countries have now adopted legislation that bans smoking in work-places, restaurants and bars (Mackay et al. 2006) and, more recently, bans in outdoor spaces have also been considered (Chapman 2000; Bloch and Shopland 2000; Thomson et al. 2008;Colgrove et al. 2011). 

One mechanisms through which smoking bans can contribute to denormalisation is by reducing the general visibility of smoking. One study finds an association between the frequency with which youth observe smoking in different locations and the perception that smoking is socially acceptable; the authors conclude by recommending smoking bans specifically as a means of reducing the social acceptability of smoking (Alesci et al. 2003). Smoking bans in bars and restaurants also help undermine the association between smoking and exciting life-styles promoted by tobacco marketers (Hammond et al. 2006). Thus, smoking bans help establish non-smoking environments as the ‘norm’ (Brown et al. 2009). 

In addition, introducing smoking bans can in itself express and promote a negative attitude towards smoking and contribute to its denormalisation. As Glantz suggests, ‘clean indoor air legislation reduces smoking because it undercuts the social support network for smoking by implicitly defining smoking as an antisocial act’ (Glantz 1987, my emphasis).

Yes, that's the same Glantz in case you were wondering, 29 years ago!

The ways in which such bans are communicated can contribute further to these effects. For example,Chapman and Freeman emphasise that smoking bans on flights are announced in a way that emphasises that smokers are addicts:

At the start of every airline flight to, from and within Australia passengers are warned via onboard announcements that smoking is banned in-flight and, evoking memories of warnings given to schoolchildren about toilet-block smoking, an added warning is given that they must not smoke in aircraft toilets … When each flight ends, it is then seen as necessary to remind smokers that they cannot light up until they get outside the airport buildings. Again, the subtext of the message is plain: here are desperate addicts counting the seconds until they can smoke. (Chapman and Freeman 2008).

And there is Simple Simon too, presumably one of the people Bauld would blame for the public perception of vaping due to his Luddite attitude towards harm reduction.

Now, consider recent bans on vaping that we have seen. Erm, where was the public condemnation from those tobacco controllers who claim to be "supportive for quite some time" of e-cigs? They all know very well - because they have plotted for years to make it happen - that the smoking ban is the single most important measure for conning convincing the public that smoking is dangerous to bystanders.

Prior to the UK-wide ban there was an avalanche of articles pumping the line that passive smoking was harmful but the public really didn't care. They went about their daily lives watching soap operas, going to football, attending Weight Watchers, avoiding the news like the plague, all the usual stuff, but the vast majority would have barely read past a headline of a passive smoking article, and most just dismissed it anyway. They still went to pubs, met and socialised with smokers and simply weren't concerned.

There's a reason why ASH and the rest of their tobacco control chums were cock-a-hoop about the implementation of smoking bans in the UK ... because all of a sudden the state had legitimised what the tobacco control industry is well aware is a purposely-created myth. Few bothered to listen to them though, until the power of the state sent a loud message that a wisp of smoke is lethal.

Of all people in our society, ASH and the tobacco control industry are the most acutely aware of how damaging vaping bans are to the acceptability of e-cigs; yet they have sat on their hands and said absolutely sod all as ban after ban is installed. In Wales they even "fully welcome" such things and are unapologetic that the ASH Wales logo is on signs that tell the public that vaping has now been deemed a dangerous and abnormal habit which should be hidden from the eyes of children.

So Linda, if you want to know why "these harm perceptions just keep going in the wrong direction", it's very little to do with a few sparsely-read articles and the quotes of a few lunatics, it is far more the public perception which comes with vaping being banned on trains, buses, NHS premises, pubs, restaurants and just about everywhere else while your fellow "supportive" tobacco controllers do nothing about it. See, I'm pretty sure ASH and others know very well that the rantings of an aircraft mechanic from San Francisco will have far less influence on a housewife in Aberdeen than a vaping ban in a car park which, unsurprisingly, ASH Scotland have stayed staunchly silent about.

So why are those graphs going in the wrong direction while vape-friendly tobacco controllers say nothing? Why is public perception of the safety of vaping deteriorating, all the  while what tobacco controllers know very well is the most powerful denormalisation tool is employed against something they claim to support? Gosh, no idea!

Majority Schmajority, Who Cares?

Yesterday Simon Clark reported that Swansea Council held a Consultation on Smoke-Free Public Spaces ... and promptly ignored it.

In other words, even though less than 15% of respondents were current smokers there was still a clear majority opposed or strongly opposed to extending smoking bans to public beaches. 

Ignoring that small detail, Swansea Council has gone ahead and introduced a 'voluntary' smoking ban at Caswell Bay with the support (naturally) of ASH Wales and other interfering busybodies. 

The Caswell Bay policy is described as a one-year pilot scheme. I imagine it's what they intended all along. The outcome of the consultation was a minor hiccup.

Indeed, because anti-smoking is a pseudo-religious crusade. It is nothing to do with health and the tobacco control industry has never been remotely interested in the public good. Despite undoubtedly knowing the results of the Swansea Council consultation ASH Wales, for example, couldn't give a badger's tit what the public think.

“We support Swansea Council in implementing their first smokefree beach – only the second of its kind in Wales. 

But then the first, you may remember, was "fully" welcomed by 'vape-friendly' ASH Wales despite (or maybe because) it included vaping. Their logo now sits proudly on signs designed to 'denormalise' e-cigs in the minds of the public. It's pretty clear that the only people ASH Wales really care about are those who derive state-funded salaries from ASH Wales.

Well, actually it's not strictly true that tax-sponging anti-smoking sock puppets always ignore the public. If it suits them they are more than happy to use us as lobbying tools, as we saw in September last year.

Sheila Duffy, from anti-smoking group Ash Scotland, said in a 2014 survey, 73% of Scottish adults agreed smoking around hospitals should be outlawed.

So, if the public want smoking banned, ASH will call for a ban; if the public doesn't want smoking banned, erm, ASH will still call for a ban.

This is, of course, not even close to being the first time all branches of ASH have completely ignored the wishes of the people whose taxes pay their salaries, the same was true with plain packaging and all UK smoking bans to name but two occasions of many.

In short, here is the tobacco control industry's policy towards the public, in full.

"If the public is useful for what we want, great; but if not, fuck 'em"

Along with their loose definition of 'evidence', and their adherence to junk science and blatant lies, this policy should really be quoted prominently at the top of all tobacco control industry headed paper.

It's way past time that these malevolent, dictatorial, insulting genital warts on democracy and decent society were cut off without a penny. George, get to it!

There's Only One Person To Blame, Drakeford

The BBC has carried some pretty awesome news this evening.

A public health law which includes a ban on e-cigarette use in some public places has been rejected by AMs after a row between Labour and Plaid Cymru. 

Plaid voted against the bill in a last-minute move, meaning the assembly was tied 26-26 and the bill failed. 

It comes after Public Services Minister Leighton Andrews said a previous deal with the party was a "cheap date". 

Health Minister Mark Drakeford said he was "deeply disappointed" that the bill would not become law.

So that's the ban on vaping in public places binned then, possibly for good.

Now, I'll reserve comment about how pathetic Welsh politics must be if an appalling law was tossed out not because it was appalling, but instead because of puerile "he said, she said" piffle you'd expect teenagers to have grown out of, let alone those entrusted with government.

But Drakeford's response is an incredible display of cognitive dissonance which is as amusing as it is staggering.

“There will be widespread anger that opposition parties, who had exerted a real influence on the Bill, failed to support it into law and abandoned all the important protections for the public it would have put in place, preventing a range of public health harms. They chose not to do so and they must answer for their conduct. 

“It would have introduced important new measures to improve the provision of pharmacy services across Wales and the provision of public toilets for the young and old; it would have introduced a ban on intimate piercing for children under 16 ..."

Yes it would have, but it's not opposition parties who are to blame, now is it Mark?

No. The person at fault is the one who initiated ignorance-based policy-making, ignored the scientific consensus on benefits of e-cigs, and knowingly lied to the Welsh Assembly in a desperate - and now ultimately vain - attempt to install one of his personal pathetic and evidence-free prejudices as Welsh state policy.

The culpable person could have removed the utterly daft vaping ban provisions - the major divisive sticking point - from the Health Bill at any time during its passage through the Senedd, but steadfastly refused to do so. Instead - seemingly determined to reserve himself a place in history as one of the most ignorant and comical politicians to have ever lived - he ramped up the lies and deceit to ever more preposterous levels the longer the farce went on. His own bigotry and irrational hatred was evidently more important than pharmacy services, public loos and piercing safeguards for children.

So if you want to see who is responsible for the failure of your Health Bill, Mark Drakeford, look in a fucking mirror.

Sock Puppet Outraged About Curbs On Sock Puppetry

Boy did this make me laugh!

Via The Observer:

“We know the tobacco industry funds the IEA to do its dirty work and has been trying for years to undermine public health charities,” said Anna Gilmore, professor of public health at the University of Bath and director of the Tobacco Control Research Group. “In other words, the IEA is the tobacco industry’s sock puppet here. This policy change will only serve to increase corporate influence while silencing those acting in the public interest.”

In the public interest, eh Anna? Uh huh. And where does the Tobacco Control Research Group - a blatant political lobbying organisation - get its cash from, do you think? I'll afford you one guess.

Long time readers might remember the name of Anna "anything for a grant" Gilmore. If I were to publish each and every time she received government funds for projects which were designed exclusively to lobby government, this place would become the Anna Gilmore show. I pointed out just a few in 2010.

European Commission. Seventh Framework Programme, €3,000,000 (Grant), Health in Times of Transition (HITT), May 2009 - April 2012
Gilmore A, McKee M et al

European Commission. Seventh Framework Programme, €2,991,656 (Grant), Pricing Policies and Control of Tobacco in Europe (PPACTE), 2009 - 2012
Gilmore A, with Clancy L, Perkurinen F, Godfrey F, Fischbacher C, Levy D, Boffetta P, Gallus S, Fernandes E, Ross H

NHS Southwest, £165,284 (Grant), Smokefree South West: Research and evaluation support, 2009 - 2011
Bauld L, with Gilmore A.

Cancer Research UK, £30,000 (Grant), Studies of the impact of passive smoke exposure on child health, 2009 - 2010
Gilmore A, with Britton J et al

CIHR (Canadian Institutes of Health Research), £146,767.50 ($286,769) (Grant), Upstream Determinants of Smoking in Low, Middle and High Income Countries participating in PURE (Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology study), 2008 - 2010
Yusuf S, Chow C, McKee M, Sankaranarayanan V, Teo K, Gilmore A.

Bloomberg Initiative, $1,092,000 (Grant), Development of sustainable structures to promote ratification of FCTC and advocate for stronger tobacco control legislation and compliance, 2007 - 2010
Gilmore A with Danishevski K, et al on the behalf of the Russian FCTC Coalition

European Respiratory Partnership, £150,000 (Grant), Tobacco industry influence on European Union Tobacco control policy making, 2007 - 2009
Gilmore A, with Collin C

Islington Primary Care Trust, £30,000 (Grant), Evaluation of the impact of smokefree legislation amongst different ethnic groups in Islington PCT, 2007 - 2008
Gilmore A, with Lock K

Health Foundation Clinician Scientist Fellowship, £576,195 (Grant), Developing and evaluating policies to reduce tobacco use and harm in the UK, November 2006 - 2011
Gilmore A

National Cancer Institute, US National Institutes of Health, $1,564,280 (Grant), Globalisation, the tobacco industry and policy influence - grant extension, 2006 - 2010
Gilmore A, with Lee K, Collin J, McKee M

Open Society Institute, US$300,000 (Grant), Public Health Leadership for an Open Society, 2005 - 2005
Gilmore A, with Coker R, Atun R

Cancer Research UK, £80,000 (Grant), Centre on Global Change and Health (support for tobacco industry document work), 2003 - 2004
Gilmore A, with Lee K, Collin J

National Cancer Institute, US National Institutes of Health, US$1,628,225 (Grant), Globalisation, the tobacco industry and policy influence, 2001 - 2006
Gilmore A, with Lee K, Collin J, Bissell K, McKee M, Vaughn JP

The Wellcome Trust, £1,000,000 (Grant), History of Medicine tobacco document archiving project, 2001 - 2006
Gilmore A, with Lee K, Collin J, Berridge V, Black N

Did you notice Smokefree South West up there? You know, the ones who have just had their funding rightly switched off for blatantly using government funds to lobby government with?

Well yes, you would have done, because Anna really isn't the best person to talk about sock puppetry.

As I said before, SFSW are central to any daft idea pumped out by the UK tobacco control industry, simply because they are awash with cash. One such initiative is the woefully inept mud-slinging Tobacco Tactics website, as detailed in their business plan from the time of its inception [pdf page 20].

You know the drill, click to enlarge

So Smokefree South West were funnelling £350k to the University of Bath for their wiki, eh? The same university which boasts Anna "junk for hire" Gilmore, one of the most adept tobacco control grant magnets of all time.

And what do we find from Anna's Bath University web profile?

Look at the entry at the foot of the screen shot

Yes, that's correct. Anna Gilmore is part of the committee which decides Smokefree South West's policy. The same Smokefree South West which is channelling hundreds of thousands of taxpayer funds to the University of Bath ... for initiatives which Anna Gilmore benefits from.

Isn't that hilarious?

Someone who is mostly responsible for Smokefree South West becoming politically toxic for their appalling abuse of taxpayer funding - and benefited professionally from it - is actually complaining that someone else is not acting in the public interest.

You really couldn't make this up, could you? What is it that her side say about the scream test? Hint, see here, here, and here.

A Vapid Anti-Vaper Writes

Following on from yesterday's article about vapid anti-vapers (the term was stolen from an admirable editorial in The Times on Tuesday), you just knew it wouldn't take long until the point being made by The Times was proven in real life.

To explain, let me point you to an article by Carl Phillips where he accurately describes the difference between tobacco industry science and tobacco control industry junk science. Making a good call by comparing 'public health' pronouncements with the parody Twitter account @DPRK_News, he highlights an accurate observation.

The @DPRK_News comedy includes treating one-off problems from the news of the day as being representative of all life in Western societies. “Public health” treats transgressions by cigarette companies that occurred two generations ago, by no one who is still active today, as if they have a bearing on the quality of current research. What makes @DPRK_News particularly funny, more so than if similar jokes came from a mock Mother Jones or Rush Limbaugh feed, is the contrast between the supposed Western problem and the reality of North Korea, which is worse by most any measure. The parallel with the accusations from “public health” should be clear: A huge portion of “public health” research is utter junk science, blatantly tortured to serve their special-interest political goals, while research done by the tobacco companies is honest and consistently high quality, and has been for a few decades.

This is true. By way of example, just have a look at the report BAT released today about innovations in tobacco harm reduction here. The striking thing about it is that it is written by people with degrees in proper science such as molecular virology, medical oncology, molecular cell medicine and polymer chemistry. Not, you notice, people trained in sociology, marketing and fixing aeroplanes like you'll find in the parasitic and counterproductive tobacco control industry.

Phillips goes on to suggest a spectrum of scientific credibility, on tobacco harm reduction specifically but can be extended to tobacco too, which - although probably a revelation to most of the public who like to believe in QI-style myths - makes perfect sense if you have the wherewithal to think through the motivations at play.

If you were doing to do an ad hominem ranking of the probability that a research study conclusion is overstated or out-and-out wrong, it would be: major tobacco company at the low end (they wouldn’t dare); e-cigarette company or advocates in between (they have truth on their side and are truth-seeking, but have less to lose and more to gain from pushing beyond what is really solid, and are unlikely to get called out for it); and “public health” people worst by far (their discipline is inherently dishonest, so they have absolutely nothing to lose from lying, and they know the truth is not on their side).

Quite. The proof of this is that you will never see tobacco controllers trying to replicate results of industry science, because they know it is sound (they also lack the required skillset, being sociologists and mechanics etc). Instead, they will always, but always, just scream that it is performed by tobacco companies so should be ignored entirely, and strive to make sure it isn't published anywhere.

So how do we test this hypothesis?

Well, as Phillips was publishing his article, the very scenario was playing itself out in the letters page of The Times. First up is career anti-smoker Mike Daube, a "Professor of health policy" who effectively banned the classic opera Carmen because it is set in a tobacco factory, and then lied about it.

Dropping words in there such as "much debate", "cautious", and "potential harmful", Daube is employing exactly the same 'merchants of doubt' tactics his profession claims were appalling when long-dead tobacco industry execs did the same. In fact, all the doubts and scare stories about e-cigs have been created by him and his charlatan colleagues, and there is no credible science behind any of them. Daube's is a lucrative industry which has long since forgotten what science actually is.

I'm sure I don't have to also remind you that the tobacco industry is not "in the forefront" of anything to do with vaping, in fact they are miles behind the independent sector on e-cigs and their trade accounts for only a small fraction of the market, but Daube doesn't concern himself with that. His only motivation - stung as he is by being called, rightly, a "vapid anti-vaper" - is to ignore any science and instead hark back to decades old actions by tobacco companies to try to pretend e-cigs are some kind of nefarious plot. It doesn't matter that his scare stories are not backed by any evidence whatsoever, and he doesn't even bother - nor has his kind ever - to try to provide real science to justify his stance. Nope, ad hominem all the way.

Exhibit B is on the same page, by the guy who is in charge of all those scientists we spoke about earlier.

As Phillips points out, this is in keeping with how industry operates, and so far removed from tobacco control's cartoon portrayal of tobacco companies that Daube should be embarrassed to raise his head above the parapet and write such vapid nonsense.

Of course they are researching products in their space, along with associated behaviors and health effects, with an expectation that it will help them be more successful in the future — help the individual company, that is, not the mythical unitary “the tobacco industry” the public health people seem to think exists.

BAT are employing specialist scientists not to collude with their competitors and fit in with tobacco control's fantasies, but instead to stay relevant and continue selling stuff when the market is shifting towards harm reduced products. It's not rocket science but vapid anti-vapers - like Daube has self-identified himself as being by writing such a laughable letter - understand business less than they understand science, which is quite astounding considering they don't even have the first clue about the latter.

One day this will be something that is understood widely, but in the meantime we will have to continue to suffer comprehensively stupid old farts like Daube exposing themselves as vapid anti-vapers in response to an article entitled "Vapid Anti-Vapers". Congrats to The Times for helping that along with such an irresistible carrot to mud-hurling lunatics like Daube.