Kerching! 11 More Years Of Failure Please

Yesterday, The Sun wrote of a report on when the England might go 'smokefree' according to tobacco control criteria.

ENGLAND could be smoke-free by 2040, a new study has claimed. 

The goal, which means less than five per cent of adults using cigarettes, is getting closer due to new tech such as e-cigarettes. 

Current quitting rates mean it will take another 23 years to hit that level. 

But the Frontier Economics research funded by tobacco giant Philip Morris Ltd says if an extra 210,000 quit each year the target could be reached as early as 2029.

What is most interesting about this is that it chimes in with something published in the Tobacco Control comic in December.

The glaring omission in the rhetoric is the most obvious alternative for PMI to meaningfully contribute to achieving a combustion-free world: announce a date by which the company will phase out combustible products entirely.

This is a classic straw man. Suggesting an insane policy position, not to mention impossible for many practical and legal reasons, just to knock it down. However, although the year cited by Philip Morris's research isn't exactly when all cigarette production will cease, now we at least have a date when - at least in the UK - it might be a vaguely viable proposition, don't we?

Will the tobacco control industry now change emphasis and support the pretty clear motive behind this then? Of course not, because for them it's not about health. They just don't like industry.

So their reaction, again in the joke that is Tobacco Control, is to just double down on their objection to someone parking the tanks on their smoking cessation lawn.

The surprise announcement by the former head of the World Health Organization’s Tobacco Free Initiative, Derek Yach, that he would head a newly-established organization called the “Foundation for a Smoke-free World” to “accelerate the end of smoking” was met with gut-punched disappointment by those who have worked for decades to achieve that goal. Unmoved by a soft-focus video featuring Yach looking pensively off into the distance from a high-level balcony while smokers at ground level stubbed out Marlboros and discussed how hard it was to quit, leading tobacco control organizations were shocked to hear that the new organization was funded with a $1 billion, twelve-year commitment from tobacco company Philip Morris International (PMI). PMI, which has been working for decades to rebrand itself as a “socially responsible” company while continuing to promote sales of its top-branded Marlboro cigarettes and oppose policies that would genuinely reduce their use, clearly believes this investment will further its “harm reduction” agenda, led by its new heat-not-burn product, IQOS.

You won't be surprised to learn that the entire article omitted to mention e-cigs at all. The "gut-punched disappointment" is solely down to the fact that these hideous human beings realise their 'quit or die' brand is in decline and, with it, a whole load of lucrative finger-wagging salaries are direly at risk.

In Sweden, snus has been hugely responsible far the lowest smoking prevalence and lung cancer rates in the world; tobacco control helped to ban it across the EU. In Japan, tobacco sales and smoking prevalence are in freefall due to stunning uptake of heat not burn; tobacco control is fighting against it. And in the UK, e-cigs are demonstrably having a huge effect; tobacco controllers opposed them all the way and - although some have since seen sense - many still do.

You also have to remember that in most of the jurisdictions where tobacco control claims that tobacco companies are promoting smoking, it is because their hysterical screeching about Big Tobacco has meant cigarettes are the only product that is allowed to be sold. Turkey is just the latest country to follow World 'Health' Organisation advice and ban e-cigs, for example. It is difficult for a global company like Philip Morris to cease production of cigaerttes while tobacco control runs around getting any alternatives prohibited, isn't it?

For tobacco controllers, reducing smoking prevalence has long since been kicked to the gutter in favour of destroying tobacco companies. The report that The Sun refers to - out today - shows exactly how harmful, again in their own parlance, their rent-seeking threatens to be.

This graphic tells a story.

To explain, the unprecedented recent decline in smoking prevalence happened not due to tobacco control's inane nannying, but instead after e-cigs went mainstream around 2012. This is quite simply undeniable.

However, instead of welcoming this, the efforts of many dinosaur tobacco controllers have been to focus on destabilising harm reduction; spreading doubt - exactly as they accuse the tobacco industry of doing decades ago - and promoting scare stories and junk science.

Or, as the vacuous Tobacco Control comedians put it, place emphasis on what doesn't work instead of what does.

What is required is leaders who have the humility to work with the movement and policymakers with the backbones of steel needed to stand up to the industry to enact and implement strong tobacco control measures, including high taxes, smokefree laws, effective media campaigns to denormalize both smoking and tobacco companies, and marketing, packaging and retailing regulations to make these deadly products less ubiquitous.

Do you notice how all of those approaches carry a nice juicy payout for tobacco controllers? Whereas the market solving the 'problem' without their interference doesn't? Just follow the money.

Anyway, the upshot is that creating doubt about reduced risk products which are proven statistically to be making a difference can only have one effect, according to the tobacco control industry's own propaganda. Creating doubt - according to the rhetoric they incessantly spout - will kill people, and the difference between welcoming a new approach instead of adhering to policies which lend themselves more to psychopathic bullying and self-interest for tobacco control is another 11 years. Yep, tobacco control would prefer another 11 years of failure than to relinquish their cosy cartel in favour of helping smokers quit using something that works.

You can go read the new report here. When you do, remember that we are on the side of the angels now, tobacco control - by contrast - has sunk to the depths of depravity. For many of them, failed policies which enrich them are preferable to hugely more successful products encouraging smokers away from lit tobacco, simply because industry makes them.

Have I ever told you it's not about health?