Scottish Tobacco Control Plan Hypocrisy

On Wednesday, I promised to revisit the Scottish Tobacco Control Plan at some point, so better late than never.

In particular, let's examine this knuckle-headed nonsense from the document.

There is some evidence that dissuasive colour or dissuasive messages on cigarettes could reduce the attractiveness of, and therefore the potential demand for, cigarettes. Other studies have considered composition – reducing the nicotine level or flavours that mask the true taste.  

For the same reasoning which led to the introduction of standardised cigarette packaging, legislation could be made to make cigarettes less attractive. This could be done through changes to colour, composition and/or warning messages on each stick.

So what is this "some evidence" of which they speak? Well, it's the brainfart of one weird individual in New Zealand called Janet Hoek who is a botanist, zoologist and Beowulf expert and - amongst other ideas she hopes will launch her into global nanny state stardom - would like to see plain packaging for fast food and fizzy drinks and processed food to be treated like tobacco. Oh, she's not  a fan of vaping either, but that's hardly surprising from so-called 'public health' these days.

The "some evidence" is a study of 'Poo Sticks' in 2014 which drew on interviews with 14 adult social smokers aged 18 to 24, followed by another in 2015 which examined "two focus groups and 13 in-depth interviews". Compelling stuff, huh?

That's it.

Now compare that with the new advances in heated tobacco which have seen literally millions of smokers quit smoking in Japan and South Korea and which government inquiries in the UK, US, Russia, Germany and Japan have conceded will dramatically reduce harm.

Also, consider that there are approximately 40-50 new pieces of research on e-cigs coming out every single week, and none of them are finding any great danger, only hinting at innuendo and smears about those who use them, simply because the tobacco control junk scientists behind the research are shitting themselves at being out of a job.

Which does the Scottish government find compelling? Yep, the random isolated study of a handful of people by a zoologist obsessed with irony in an ancient text.

Their policy towards e-cigs is to further ban advertising and the approach to heated tobacco is to put it in plain packaging.

This is, quite simply, government by imbeciles.

It's almost like they find it more attractive to ban stuff and piss on the public's liberties than protect their right to make their own health choices by providing accurate information.

That's not government by consent and it's not evidence-based policy. It's authoritarian abuse of a population worthy of some backwards banana republic. If you're Scottish, I pity you. 

The Snobbery Of Banning Sweets At Checkouts

On an otherwise glorious day of electrifying sunshine and impressive football success, let's nail this distasteful sophistry from the embarrassing Department of Health and its massed ranks of tax-troughing government lobbyists, shall we?

Via the BBC:

[Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt] said the cost of obesity was too great to ignore. 

"Parents are asking for help - we know that over three quarters of parents find offers for sugary sweets and snacks at checkouts annoying. 

"It's our job to give power to parents to make healthier choices, and to make their life easier in doing so."

Parents are asking for help to, erm, say no? Government is now passing laws - and effectively creating criminal offences - because some parents find something annoying?

Jesus Christ, I find Coronation Street annoying but it's a minority view. So is the annoyance at the display of sweets at checkouts. And how do we know this? Because if it was a widespread problem with consumers, businesses would have got rid of them decades ago. The Conservative Party should know this, but then they seem to have abandoned conservatism in favour of big state interventionist stupidity of late.

The overwhelming majority of parents are perfectly able to say no to their children. The overwhelming majority of consumers are fine with sweets being sold at checkouts, maybe even finding it a nice impulse buy as a treat after doing the chore of a weekly shop. What is absolutely certain is that banning sweets at checkouts will have no impact whatsoever on the prevalence of obesity, nor on an 'epidemic' which is entirely fictional, and it won't save the NHS one penny of a gerrymandered and fictional cost.

So what is really going on here? Well, it's just good old-fashioned snobbery, as I have written about on very many occasions in the past couple of years.

If you questioned these parents who are apparently "asking for help" and asked why their parenting skills are so pathetic that they can't say no to their children, I wager you'd find that they tell you they're brilliant parents! And how dare you suggest otherwise! They are more concerned about "our children", as in everyone else's children.

Tom Paine wrote most eloquently about this a few years ago when discussing a quite rancid authoritarian snob who was rightly termed "the all-round worst person at the Battle of Ideas" of 2012.

My choice is Dr Michael Nelson, director of research and nutrition at the Children's Food Trust (a "social business" working with the "charity" the Schools Food Trust). ... it wasn't the advice he would give parents as to what their children should eat but his contempt for their ability to make choices and their right to do so that was the problem. He ... complained that parents (as witness the contents of packed lunches they sent with their children to school) could not be trusted to make good choices for their children's health. Government attempts to improve nutrition by requiring catering contractors to offer healthy choices had failed because those choices were simply not taken up. If we care about "our children" he said (oddly as he and I have no children together) then we must help parents who;  

...we know from experience do not themselves have the the power of executive decision when it comes to their own diet... 

In other words, these people are too stupid to be parents. I asked myself (but did not dare to articulate the suggestion unless it gave him ideas) why he stopped short of taking all of British childkind into care. After all, their parents are too stupid to raise them properly and are jeopardising their families' health irresponsibly.

Now, if you put the views of Dr Nelson to those who Hunt says are "asking for help", you would find that they would agree. It is not their own kids they want help with, but other people's. If you don't believe me, try this experiment. As above, if you hear a parent say they are in favour of this policy, ask them why they are so bad at parenting they need a law to help them say no. I guarantee you they will instantly talk about other parents and children who are not their own.

How a Conservative government has contrived to place itself in a position where one of its core beliefs - personal responsibility - is being obliterated by its adherence to the vile and the judgemental in society who like to tut and sneer at other people's lives, is a mystery.

Still, at least it's made them popular with the tax-sucking bastards who pander to society's most repulsive snobs, eh?

Government's New Plan To Halve Child Obesity 'Is An Absolute Travesty', Say Health Campaign Groups

For pity's sake, when will these oak-brained politicians realise that appeasing 'public health' only excites them more? Just ignore them!

Fucking idiots. 

Scotland Plans To Gold-Plate The TPD And Further Restrict E-Cig Advertising

Yesterday I wrote about the tobacco control industry's habit of cherry-picking evidence and - more recently - disbelieving real life evidence because it doesn't agree with their wild, junk science-led fantasies of how the world works.

Today sees a new low, though, as the Scottish Government released its Tobacco Control Plan. Snowdon has highlighted some of the blinkingly barmy aspects of it, so do go read his piece.

He said that he had only skimmed it and that there is bound to be more crazy in there, and he's correct. There is. For example, how much does this send your hypocrisy detector buzzing?

In the ministerial foreword, Minister for Public Health and Sport Aileen Campbell boasts about NHS services and how "there are new, more effective medications and our services are now more e-cigarette friendly", while further down the document it states:

On the basis of current evidence vaping e-cigarettes is definitely less harmful than smoking cigarettes. So, e-cigarette use as a means to quit should be seen by health professionals as a tool which some smokers will want to use. 

It also says about "smokers in mental health settings":

Raising awareness of the need to take a new approach in these settings and particularly about the possibilities which e-cigarettes being made available in appropriate non-NHS prescribed ways could have a big impact on the physical health of these patients.

So what are they going to do about these products which they have obviously recognised as being something which smokers are choosing to use and which have led to smoking prevalence tumbling?

Well, they're going to ensure that almost no-one knows about them, of course.

Providing protection through regulations and restrictions 

We will consult on the detail of restricting domestic advertising and promotion of e-cigarettes in law.

The key word there is 'domestic' because the EU's article 20 of the TPD specifically banned cross border advertising, therefore broadcast and online media. Domestic advertising such as posters, leaflets, direct mail, cinema and ads on buses are not covered by EU law.

So, the Scottish government is consulting with a view to gold-plate the EU regulations by placing further restrictions on 'domestic' advertising; that very e-cigarette advertising which is currently not burdened by the ignorant, lobbyist-led stupidity of Brussels.

With the UK's advertising regulator recently having given evidence to the UK government's Science and Technology Committee that they are looking at allowing e-cig vendors to make truthful claims about the safer nature of vaping - as in, relaxing the regulations - the Scottish government is planning to go the other way and make sure as few people know about vaping as possible.

The Calvinist puritanism being displayed in Scotland right now is jaw-dropping, but this takes the biscuit. We have a tobacco control plan for England committing to "maximise the availability of safer alternatives to smoking", at the same time that Scotland has decided it only wants safer alternatives available via state-run channels. If they can't control it, they'd prefer you don't even try.

There are also sinister hints that they intend to go even further down the rabbit hole of anti-vaping moral panic.

Over the course of this action plan it is likely that the markets for e-cigarettes and novel heated tobacco products will develop further. This could mean that the current focus of tobacco control enforcement changes over time to take account of these newer markets. For example if there were changes to the law on restricting the sales of non-nicotine containing e-liquid for e-cigarettes this would have implications for enforcement.

If markets for e-cigs and heat not burn increase, that is a good thing! But not for Scotland, it seems. There is also a hint there that there might be more regulations on the horizon for nicotine free e-liquid, again not covered by the EU TPD.

Have I got your attention yet, Scottish vape reviewers? Yep, that could be the end of short fills.

There may also need to be programmed initiatives on ensuring e-liquids are authorised products ...

Well, considering the TPD created a new category for e-cigs so they are already kinda "authorised", could they mean yet another gold plate layer on top of EU regulations? Or maybe they just mean the whole hog and enforced medicinal licensing. We shall have to see.

... and perhaps even on whether these age-restricted products are being marketed in a way which primarily appeals to young people. 

They've really swallowed the anti-vaping Kool Aid in bucket loads, haven't they?

And as for this ...

During the summer of 2018 we will work with health boards and integration boards to try to reach a consensus on whether vaping should or should not be allowed on hospital grounds through a consistent, national approach.

It's not illegal, it's not dangerous, the same document talks about smokers using e-cigs to quit. Where is the debate?

I reckon the best take I can offer to you is that if you are Scottish and a vaper, remember that ASH Scotland - who will have advised the government in detail on production of this plan - is not your friend. Neither, I would suggest, is the SNP. Worth remembering next time some politician asks for your vote.

Like Snowdon, I have only skimmed the document and - like him - I think "these people are off their heads". I'll leave it there for now, though, but I'm sure I'll be coming back to this utter insanity, maybe tomorrow. Watch this space. 

Inconvenient Evidence For Tobacco Control

Life is still overwhelmingly busy at Puddlecote Inc hence the lack of content here of late, plus I've just got back from Poland after another interesting GFN conference. There is lots to write, but sadly not much time to write it.

For now, your humble host would invite you to read this article at Reason which neatly highlights some textbook tobacco control fraud.

Three days after more than two-thirds of San Francisco voters agreed that mandating flavorless e-liquid was a reasonable response to the rising popularity of e-cigarettes among teenagers, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published survey data showing that in 2017 vaping declined among middle school students and remained steady among high school students after falling in 2016. E-cigarette alarmists were so flummoxed by reality's failure to fit their narrative that they insisted the survey must be wrong. "Study Says Vaping by Kids Isn't Up," read the Associated Press headline, "but Some Are Skeptical." 

The skeptics had heard that teenagers are Juuling in schools across America, and they figured all that press coverage should translate into higher vaping rates. They suggested that survey respondents might not have realized Juul e-cigarettes are e-cigarettes.

It seems we are seeing a new application of the customary spreading of misinformation and lies. For decades tobacco control has deliberately spread falsehoods by way of quack science, misdirection and hysterical exaggeration of tiny risks. They have been doing this relentlessly in the US towards e-cigs but the evidence refuses to comply with their scare stories.

So their answer now appears to be - instead of looking at the real world evidence and changing their approach - to deny that the real world evidence is reliable.

It takes a special kind of liar to rubbish hard data from unimpeachable sources and continue to advocate for fantasy and fairy tales instead. This would be bad if it were, say, in the field of finance or transport, but to urge governments to ignore what is happening in real life in an area which will have an impact on the public's health is beyond the pale.

It also shows that tobacco control either cannot, or will not, understand the concept of market share. Just because Juul is taking off in the US it doesn't mean the market is increasing. It is a tool they used disingenuously in the campaign for plain packs in the UK, as I have written about before. The trick was to highlight a tobacco industry document talking about how their market share increased and pretend this was an increase in the market as a whole.

It's bunkum, of course. The scam centres on confusing (deliberately?) the tobacco industry with a monopoly instead of a collection of companies who fight like cats with each other for market share. Only in a monopoly is an increase in one product's sales volume an indicator of an increase in the market. And tobacco control is very happy to promote this confusion in how businesses work because they are never interested in the truth.

However, it's up to you to decide, in this case, whether this is a purposeful thing or that US tobacco control honestly doesn't have the first clue about what market share is, so have therefore confused themselves.

If it is the former, they are recklessly playing games with the public's health; if it is the latter, they are woefully fucking stupid, should be roundly ignored by policymakers and defunded immediately.

But there is a deeper flaw in all this mendacious guff from American anti-vaping organisations. Because whatever they morally think about youths using e-cigs, it doesn't matter one iota.

Despite the constant warnings that increased experimentation with e-cigarettes would lead to more smoking, consumption of conventional cigarettes by teenagers stubbornly continues to decline, reaching a record low last year in the Monitoring the Future Study, which began in 1975. According to the NYTS, the incidence of past-month smoking among high school students fell from 15.8 percent in 2011 to 7.6 percent in 2017.

If all those anti-smoking organisations are so interested in people quitting smoking, why on earth are they fighting this?

Here is how youth smoking looks in the US according to the latest government data.

You'd think they'd be pleased, wouldn't you?

I can only agree with Reason when they say that tobacco control in the US is "only pretending to care about public health". Sadly, 'twas ever thus worldwide. 

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?

Keep Smoking Tobacco, Says Finland

In case you are not on social media so missed this, have a gander at something quite staggering!

Remember I've said for years that one day the lies of tobacco controllers will come back and bite them on the arse? Well, I kinda relished how they seemed unable to cope with e-cigs. I always presumed that it would be that kind of harm reduction which would expose them, simply because they are too dim to understand the nuances of a concept where smokers are gently encouraged to switch - when they are ready - to something which would evolve into a valid and satisfying alternative.

They have tried their utmost to demonise vaping - leading to many jaw-dropping and amusing episodes on the way where they reveal themselves to be just a bunch of prohibitionist parasites rather than people interested in health, but with the world now boasting an estimated 44 million vapers they are fighting a losing battle.

There are still some stick-in-the-muds, but they are increasingly seen as stark staring bonkers. The proof of concept of harm reduction has been thoroughly proven with the inconvenient habit vaping has in reducing smoking dramatically wherever it is allowed to flourish.

This has, sadly for tobacco controllers, merely intensified interest in their previous crimes against humanity. Remember the ban on snus?

Snus was banned by the EU in the 90s after the UK govt had listened to absurd scare stories by ASH (yes, we should never forget this because ASH have never apologised for it). The exemption was Sweden, who made it a pre-condition of joining the EU that they be exempted from the ban. Sweden now boasts by far the lowest smoking prevalence rate in the EU and Norway - outside the EU so able to allow snus - is seeing the same effect.

All of which makes this tweet from nutters in Finland utterly astonishing!

I've screenshotted it because I still can't believe they have left this up for so long without deleting it out of shame.

They are actually saying smokers should be dissuaded from switching to snus - which carries just about no risk whatsoever - and should carry on smoking instead.

Yet tobacco companies are supposed to be the bad guys? Fuck me! What kind of messed up people are we dealing with here?

This is the modern state of play in the nicotine debate, sadly. They can complain all they like about the tobacco industry being economical with the truth 40 or 50 years ago, but tobacco control and its acolytes are are lying on a daily basis now! 

Tobacco Control Carnage

Still very busy in Puddlecoteville, but I've found a window to get down a few scribbles from what's been in the news of late.

For example, here is the kind of appalling shambles you are left with when you let ideological lunatics determine public sector policy.

Smoking will be fully banned at the Royal United Hospital in Bath by the end of the year. 

It is currently advertised as a smoke-free site but there are designated shelters for lighting up that will be removed to end the ‘conflicting messages'.

Conflicting messages? What would they be? That smokers should be bullied or else it sends the message that people at NHS institutions might be in the caring profession? Yes I suppose they have a point.

Vaping will be allowed but anyone wanting to smoke will have to leave the site - a move expected to upset neighbouring residents.

So having annoyed one set of taxpayers - smokers - this NHS trust is now going to piss off locals who pay council tax too. Isn't it far easier to just have some shelters somewhere which makes sure everyone is happy?

Of course not, we are dealing with extremists here.

"By the end of this year we have to be smoke free."

Why? There is no law saying you have to. Nor is there any danger to bystanders (please look up J S Mill).

"We have some work to do to build support for our staff around smoking cessation. 

"Probably the most challenging aspect is enforcement."

Yes, because there is no law about it so you have none.

“What expectation do we have on our staff? What sanctions could there be for repeat offenders? Enforcement is the key to this."

Ah I see, so you're going to write into your employment policies that anyone using a legal product in their spare time where no-one can be harmed by it will lose their job.

Sometimes I feel like linking a dynamo up to George Orwell's grave, it could provide free light and heat for the entire country.

James Scott, the trust’s chief executive, said: "This is a significant challenge for us and every hospital I've ever been in, including abroad. 

"Don't think this is an NHS problem. 

"We will be forcing smokers off-site - that's our patients and staff. 

“The consequence is we will get more and more complaints from our neighbours. 

"That's what's happened every time we've done this in the past.

Erm, so don't do it then. Seriously, no-one will care.

“Legally, provided staff are outside our curtilage, they can smoke."

Yep, sadly for authoritarian arseholes, this is true. And long may it continue to be so.

He said some doctors may object to the ban because of the calming effect that smoking can have in stressful situations.

Good, there are still some people in the health service who are human and haven't completely turned into vile interfering cultists.

Public Health England recognises vaping as an effective tool for quitting smoking but Mr Scott said there is some emerging evidence that it "isn't as harmless as it's currently thought to be".

What a clusterfuck of ignoramuses our NHS is.

Nigel Stevens, a non-executive director of the trust, asked if there had been any research into how smoking bans affect staff retention - which is an issue for the RUH. 

He was told the trust would look into it. 

A survey showed that staff are divided on the issue. 

49 per cent thought the RUH should go smoke free, while 49 per cent thought it should be permitted in some capacity. 

Some 90 per cent of smokers thought that smoking should be allowed. 

Those against the ban said that shelters were a good way to contain smokers; staff, visitors and patients may be under a lot of stress and need to smoke; and that people had free choice over whether they smoke. Those who supported the ban said the RUH had a responsibility to promote healthy choices.

Of course, if they just ignored the whole non-problem most people wouldn't give a shit and they could spend their apparently meagre resources on healthcare rather than blathering on about fripperies like this.

Still, plenty of objections there, maybe they will decide that way anyway, who knows?

The trust backed the ban.

Of course they did, the knuckle-dragging cowards. All objections were completely ignored; no compromises were allowed; there is absolutely no middle ground with 'public health' campaigners, it has to be a binary all-or-nothing.

A report to the meeting says that patients, visitors or residents have not yet been consulted but this is planned for later in the year.

As if that's going to make any difference. Or, as someone said in the comments ...

They tried this once before...it failed. What makes them think it will work again?

Brainwashed ideological morons will never, ever see sense. An NHS administrator recognising and addressing the needs of their visitors is about as rare as a BNP member embracing black history month.

I think we need a few more elections where we collectively vote none-of-the-above-screw-everything-and-hope-you-all-burn before these elitists get the message, don't you?