Fighting For Harm Reduction

I've commented a number of times, and at length, on the tendency of health-related public consultations to be engineered in such a way as to marginalise the views of the, err, public.

There are many ways of doing this, the most popular ones being the straightforward exclusion of the public, the flooding of the process by state-funded pressure groups, the manipulation of responses to avoid the 'wrong' conclusion, or the use of clever wording designed to encourage the respondent not to object.

My! Having just re-read that ... we are East Germany, aren't we?

Anyway, back to the point. Of the methods described above, it is the last which is being employed by public health bodies in an attempt to ban e-cigs despite their carrying no risk whatsoever, as illustrated by this extract from the recent MHRA 'consultation' exercise.

In order to ensure there is no risk to public health from unlicensed products on the market that have not been assessed for safety, quality and efficacy and in the light of the developing extent of their use and familiarity we are consulting to elicit views on whether and how to bring all products containing nicotine into regulation.

Option 1 – Whether products containing nicotine should be considered by the Agency to be medicinal products by function and, if so, whether all unlicensed NCPs should be removed from the market within 21 days. Currently, MHRA operates a strict practice regarding the period of notice operators are allowed to comply with under the Marketing Authorisation Regulations following the classification of a product as medicinal. Given that these Regulations do not make explicit provisions for a staged withdrawal from the market of an unlicensed medicinal product, immediate cessation of the sale or supply is usually required by the Agency, with written confirmation of the same within 21 days.

Option 2 – Whether products containing nicotine should be considered by the Agency to be medicinal products by function and, if so, whether a notice should be issued to manufacturers that all marketing must cease by a certain date e.g. June 2011. After this date enforcement action would be taken against manufacturers not holding an MA for any such product on the market. This would effectively allow manufacturers a year from the end of public consultation to produce relevant evidence to support an application for an MA, submit it to the MHRA for approval and get the newly licensed products on to the market.

Option 3 – Do nothing and allow these unregulated products containing nicotine that have not been assessed for safety, quality and efficacy to remain on the market.

The MHRA’s preferred option is option 1, which is in line with current practice.

You see, e-cigs are a great tool for many who wish to quit smoking. It is also unarguable that they are safer than cigarettes so offer harm reduction potential. Unfortunately, though, they are not - tut, tut -manufactured by public health's chums in the pharmaceutical industry, plus e-cig users look like they're smoking. And that is just too offensive a sight for the righteous.

Still, e-cig users continue to fight for their right to 'vape' and, on Wednesday, delivered a hefty petition to Downing Street as a reminder that there are many who are quite happy to risk the non-existent dangers.

I wish them the very best of luck.

It will be interesting, in this new 'enlightened' era of the coalition, to see if the government are serious about personal liberties and decide to kick this ban proposal into the long grass, or whether they will continue with serially-proven public health policy failures like Labour.

Learn more at the UK Vapers Forum.

Ed West: A Word In Your Shell-Like

On Tuesday, I asked a question.

Who wants to pay more for their own goods because a very few are irresponsible?

So what's the difference with minimum alcohol pricing? No, really, I mean it. Why are so many average, everyday, non-righteous in most circumstances, people taken in by this crap?

As if by magic, up pops the Telegraph's normally rational Ed West.

I doubt anyone questions any more that alcohol abuse is a serious issue in Britain

I do, Ed. You see, alcohol consumption has mostly been falling for a decade.

I can see I'm going to have to update that graph to properly show the sustained downward direction of the line according to ONS figures.

[...] there are undiscovered tribes in the Amazon aware of how awful British city centres are at night. It is not just the health statistics Nice can effortlessly produce, showing the number of deaths caused by alcohol or of the various other social ill-effects – it’s the site (sic) of derelict men in high streets and the shrieks at half-eleven as jollity turns sour.

And yet again we see the misdirection of town centre anti-social behaviour being used to justify a minimum alcohol price. Despite the two being entirely unrelated, again covered here on Tuesday.

The public has been suckered into believing the twin menace of a tangible cost to their own finances via national insurance contributions, and a threat of alcohol-fuelled violence to them and theirs.

The former is imaginary, and the latter isn't the prime target of minimum alcohol pricing.

Even NICE didn't claim it to be so in their carpet-propagandising this week.

Hook, line and sinker, Ed.

Cult Of The Now

It's a story which should really have been left but, try as I might, I can't help feeling exasperated at this.

The event was axed after 18 people were injured last year — 10 of whom were spectators. In 1997 at least 33 people were injured.

These horrendous arsewipes are trying to eradicate 200 years of heritage, eccentricity and fun, despite none but the willing wishing to take part or spectate. Two. Hundred. Fucking. Years.

Who on earth gave them such a right?

Child Of Our Time To Hamper Child Of Our Future?

Let's link this to Biased BBC in case they didn't see it.

I do try to avoid the goggle-box in the corner for the simple reason that it can make me quite irate at times, and that doesn't go down too well with Mrs P. Monday night was a case in point.

Now, I quite like Robert Winston, he's got a great tache and looks like he'd dish out the Werthers Originals quite liberally. But the BBC's Big Personality Test (5 days left to watch at the mo) was possibly the most irritating programme I've seen for quite a while. It was the first time I have witnessed a visual version of science by press release and I truly hope it will be the last (though something tells me this is the gut-wrenching future).

The whole thing, it would appear, centres around the insolubale nature v nurture debate. In this series, or at least the episode that I watched, Winston sits squarely on the fence as one would expect, yet editing was up to usual selective BBC standards.

Tyreese, who lives on a council estate, thought being clever was 'boring'. It was because he tested low on conscientiousness and this is affected by his environment. Not anything to do, you understand, with the fact that his Mum believes, and no doubt tells him frequently, that "black boys are this, black boys are that, you start believing it yourself [...] if they think that about me, I might as well not bother" ... followed helpfully by the BBC with the statistic that white people are more prone to being conscientious than black people. By a "small but significant margin", apparently.

Matthew on the other hand, who the BBC emphasise is from an "affluent part of Surrey", does well because he has a successful brother who pushes him.

Read between the lines there.

Highly entrepreneurial Megan is bright, imaginative and destined for success. But she was almost alone a few years ago in not wishing to share a cookie with her sister. She therefore scores highly in 'disagreeableness'. Proof of which is the BBC's experiment that followed, in a law firm that Sophie Raworth decribed as "smelling of success" and boasting people who earn "in the top 0.7% of the country".

The top third of those, of course, were firmly in the disagreeable category ... those nasty, selfish, high earners, eh?

Time to be thoroughly disagreeable if you wish your kids to be successful then, don't you think? Oh no. Because the Beeb ensure that you are told that 60% of those who are deemed in their survey to be 'disagreeable' (not that they are necessarily high-earners) say they are unhappy in their jobs.

The BBC then manage to source about the only archetypal (for Yank tourists) village in the country which has escaped modernity and finds, shock horror, that they are all agreeable. They then ask the entirely unscientific question "do you think you are healthy?".

82% of them say they are, so that's taken as fact. Agreeable people are more healthy. People who are 'disagreeable', it is threatened, suffer worse health than that diabolical benchmark ... people who smoke!

Just say no to disagreeableness, people. It may earn you lots of money but you will die when stats are contorted in the right direction. Got that?

If you're an extrovert? You have a better chance of being happy, which is good - it could boost your life expectancy by 3 years! But beware, as nothing so positive is allowed for thrill-seekers on the BBC. You will be more likely (about 55% as against 45%) to be hospitalised ... in accident and emergency, they tell us, as if anyone hasn't heard the scare words before. And, oh yes, 53% of 'binge-drinkers' are high on extraversion. What's more, those who have had 10 or more sexual partners tend to be extroverts (53%), though it's not revealed how many actually suffered as a result. Probably not that many considering they have told us that extroverts live for three more fucking years than others!

So, to recap.

If you're poor, it's your poverty which dictates your education chances, not your family's attitude. If you're rich, it's the opposite.

If your kid is single-minded, they will likely be a success, but they will become a rich arsehole, so best stop them. They'll only be deeply unhappy otherwise.

And if your kid is an extrovert, he or she may well be blissfully happy, popular, and live longer ... but think of the accidents, the binge-drinking and the sex! Far too risky.

This is serious science, or at least Comrade Beeb are taking it as such. You can even study their findings yourself.

Data collected for Lab UK experiments will be made available for academic research and educational purposes only.

Yes, I was being mischievous there. We can't have a look at all. Well, not till well after the show has been aired and its message properly digested.

Lab UK will make the scientific findings of all its experiments publicly available through the Lab UK website.

But really, what's the point? They've told the country, from 9pm till 10pm on Bank Holiday Monday, what they wish to be known, incorporating unscientific anecdotal evidence and selective righteous irrelevances. Any published peer review of the raw stats is obviously going to to be low key by comparison, and won't be focussed on rebutting the programme, as broadcast, itself.

This could have been a great opportunity to understand what makes the country tick. What works and what doesn't in pursuit of the nation's prosperity. How to increase the collective sum of our achievements by isolating which kind of people succeed and which don't.

But the BBC turned the broadcast highlights of their 'extensive' research into an exercise in nannying and right-on bias.

Science by press release is one thing. Science which, by the Beeb's own admission hasn't been peer-reviewed, being broadcast as cast-iron conclusions on primetime state-funded TV, is something else entirely.

Fortunately, Mrs P had installed the wire mesh in front of the telly before I sat down, otherwise I'd have been forced to buy one of those pre-World Cup £299 Bravias, that Sainsbos are offering, as a replacement.

Voices Of Freedom Tomorrow

Things may be a trifle quieter around here from tomorrow. I'm taking off for a short break until Saturday ... to Bolton! I'll be taking the laptop and the hotel offers WiFi, but my schedule is packed to bursting with good stuff to do so the keyboard may not get to see the light of a Greater Manchester day.

The trip has been planned for a while but, whilst looking forward to it, I'm also gutted to miss the first Voices of Freedom debate tomorrow. Especially considering the subject matter as described at Taking Liberties.

The first of five debates is on Thursday 3 June and is entitled The Freedom (Great Repeal) Bill: laws that should be repealed or amended.

The discussion, presented by The Free Society and the IEA, will be chaired by Mark Littlewood, director general of the Institute of Economic Affairs.

Speakers:

Professor Philip Booth (IEA)
Guy Herbert (general secretary, NO2ID)
Shane Frith (director, Progressive Vision)
Chris Snowdon (author, Velvet Glove Iron Fist and The Spirit Level Delusion)
Rob Lyons (assistant editor, Spiked)
Simon Clark (director, Forest)
Tim Cox (Liberal Vision)

The evening begins with drinks at 6pm, followed by debate from 7pm-8pm and it's not too late for you lucky people to attend, but you'll have to be quick and contact events@thefreesociety.org pronto.

Details of all the forthcoming debates in this series are available HERE

Talking of the Great Repeal Bill, if you haven't yet done so, please consider joining the 'Amend the smoking ban' facebook group linked to in the sidebar to the right. If you are already a member and haven't invited all your friends, err, please invite all your friends.

Ta.

Let's Pay More To Stop Others Doing As They Choose, Eh?

Let's take something which is almost universally consumed in the UK. Say, potatoes.

If the state suggested that everyone would be forced to pay more to buy potatoes because there are some who eat too many of them, thereby harming only themselves, I reckon the proposition would be opposed by just about everyone in the country.

Who wants to pay more for their own goods because a very few are irresponsible?

So what's the difference with minimum alcohol pricing? No, really, I mean it. Why are so many average, everyday, non-righteous in most circumstances, people taken in by this crap?

Because doctors say so? Perhaps, but then doctors said the MMR vaccine was perfectly safe yet hundreds of thousands of mothers were quite willing to ignore them.

Because the country has a 'problem'? It doesn't, of course, but how does that affect anyone but the user?

The public has been suckered into believing the twin menace of a tangible cost to their own finances via national insurance contributions, and a threat of alcohol-fuelled violence to them and theirs.

The former is imaginary, and the latter isn't the prime target of minimum alcohol pricing.

I type till I'm blue in the fingers about the futility of such nonsense, and Tim Worstall, again, has produced something of a reference resource for use in rebutting any argument used by faux-fretting deludos.

A group of experts convened by the organisation [...] has spent almost two years studying how best to reduce alcohol-related disorders, which between them cost an estimated £27bn a year.

That figure covers the cost of healthcare, crime, disorder and lack of productivity attributable to alcohol, including the £2.7n the NHS spends treating the chronic and acute effects of drinking.

The direct costs are more than offset by the £8.4 billion HMRC gets in booze duty (think it's nearer £10bn but who's quibbling?).

The indirect costs have to be offset by the joy and glory that people get from consuming alcohol. Estimating this is not simple but we can indeed put a lower bound to it. As people voluntarily hand over their cash for the buzz from having drunk the alcohol, this joy and glory must be worth at least what is paid for the alcohol which produces the joy and glory. That’s somewhere north of £50 billion a year.

The benefits are therefore larger than the costs: we do not have a problem here.

Indeed.

NICE aren't, you notice, claiming that anyone will be any safer by punishing heavy drinkers, just that yer average Joe will benefit financially. Yet who in their right mind really believes that even if these mythical 'costs' to the NHS or the Police were reduced, the savings would be handed back to the public in their payslips?

Anyone? Is that a hand up at the back? No?

Thought not.

Quite apart from the fact that national insurance payments haven't been hypothecated simply to pay for healthcare for some considerable time - they just go into the big pool of government pocket money - if the £2.7bn was eradicated tomorrow, they'd just direct those funds somewhere else. NI rates will come down once the economy can afford it, and that ain't happening anytime soon. And most certainly not because minimum alcohol pricing stops a few (and I mean a very few) drinking a couple of pints less per week.

The policing precept amounts to less than 10% of council tax bills in general, so even if policing itself was eradicated tomorrow the maximum saving per household would only be around a tenner a month; savings from patrolling drinkers in the High Street at weekends would amount to pennies, if at all. That's if it was passed on to the taxpayer, which is highly unlikely.

The productivity in business? A red herring. These are 'sunk' costs which are anticipated by most industries. If absenteeism was eradicated tomorrow, businesses would be more lean, yes, but they wouldn't produce cheaper goods unless they shed staff to do so, and you can imagine the whining that would ensue if that were to happen. Of course, harking back to the economy bit, if such jobs were lost, it would mean even less chance of national insurance rates being reduced.

So, to anyone who tells you that 'we' need minimum alcohol pricing because 'we' have a problem, I ask this question:

What on earth has it got to do with you? How will it benefit you, or the country at large?

The simple answer is that it won't, and as Tim explains (please read the whole piece), there isn't a problem in the first place.

All that will happen is that the public will be asked to pay more for something in order for others to be stopped from doing as they choose to. Everyone loses.

Oh yeah, and it's also illegal under EU law.

It's a veritable smorgasbord of bollocks, isn't it?

Good Money After Bad

Having recently surmised that his fuckwittery cost the country in the region of £4bn during his twelve years in office, the government now tell us that we paid saggy-arsed Liam Donaldson around £2.5m for the privilege.

Who says the public sector doesn't offer value for money, eh?