Give Your MP A Nudge For A Change

MPs have been merrily nudging you into conforming to their idea of how you should live your life for over two years now. Here's your chance to nudge him/her back, and it'll only take a minute.

So, you signed up to the Hands Off Our Packs campaign, and maybe submitted a full response to the plain packs consultation, but civil servants will have read those and are not very keen on ditching authoritarian plans they have been paid out of our taxes to devise.

As a result, sadly, many MPs don't know that half a million responses were received by the Department of Health in opposition to plain packaging. Well, Nick Clegg certainly didn't, anyway.

So please do make sure your MP is aware by taking a few moments to write to him. As Simon Clark explains, it really couldn't be more simple.

To make it easy we have created a special standalone website, Say No To Plain Packs. All you have to do is: 

1. Visit www.no2plainpacks.org
2. Enter your postcode
3. Click 'Next'
4. Enter your name and address
5. Click 'Submit' 

To make the letter as personal as possible we recommend that you add a comment in the relevant box (but it's not essential). 

Please do it NOW! It should take no more than a minute of your time.

You can also reach the website by clicking on the image below, or at the sidebar on the right.

A pic of your MP will pop up so you know you've got the right guy/gal/hermaphrodite, and if you receive a reply - on House of Commons headed paper, I expect - I'd be very interested as to what response you get.

If you have a website of your own, do consider adding the image above in order to spread the word. If not, share the site on the usual social media channels and with like-minded friends. It's about time they got the message that a joke's a joke but we're all pretty fed-up with their petty interfering by now.

Minimum Alcohol Pricing Folly: What Is Success?

To continue with an occasional series on David Cameron's daft minimum alcohol pricing idea, let's look at what can be considered as 'success' if it were to be implemented.

The Home Office have stated that they are predicting a "just over 3%" reduction in sales if a 45p unit price is adopted. Of course, this is based on shoddy policy-based evidence commissioned from Sheffield University specifically for the government's purposes, but let's ignore that for now.

Here is how alcohol consumption is trending according to statistics on alcohol sold per capita.

From 11.5 litres per head in 2004 to 10.0 litres per head in 2011, consumption is already falling by a thimbleful below 2% every year.

So, say minimum pricing was installed tomorrow and there was a 3% reduction in consumption for the following year, would the Home Office claim that it was a success? I think we know the answer, don't we? Cos they is lying bastards.

But wait! The government has also been trumpeting the success of their responsibility deal, which they announced as having taken one billion alcohol units out of the marketplace. What percentage does that represent? Coalition MP Norman Lamb has helpfully provided us with the answer.

"One of the consequences of the responsibility deal is that by 2015, 1 billion units of alcohol - about 2% - will be taken out of the market, and that will help some problem drinkers significantly."

That's, presumably, an extra 2% on top of the ongoing 2% trend, yes?

But then, as we are constantly told, there is this 'epidemic' of drunkenness which for some strange reason isn't borne out by official statistics. Perhaps there is an imminent increase in wild, crazy alcohol consumption to come.

Well no, apparently not. You see, the independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has predicted that consumption will continue to diminish right through to 2018 [opens in Excel, table 2.11]  An 'epidemic' that has been declining for best part of a decade and is predicted to carry on spiralling downwards for another five years is not particularly scary, I'd venture.

Still, let's crunch the figures anyway.

My little iPhone calculator here says that - based on average strengths of beer, wine and spirits - we're talking another reduction in consumption of about 2.4 billion units by five years time. If one billion is 2%, that's another 4.8% or a percentage point per year, give or take.

Therefore, to achieve the fabled 3% reduction solely through minimum alcohol pricing, there would have to be a reduction in consumption in excess of 8% - or thereabouts - in the year after it is made law if minimum pricing is to be hailed as a success.

No, of course it won't happen. The current decline - which has been evident for at least seven years now - will be held up as proof positive that minimum alcohol pricing has worked. The minority who favour it (mostly public-funded health lobbyists) may even throw in a heart attack miracle or two as well, they like that kind of junk stat.

We've seen it all before, haven't we?

But more importantly, what's the point? If alcohol consumption is already falling; if it is predicted to carry on falling by the OBR; and if the responsibility deal is working as intended (despite alarmists saying it wouldn't, by the way), why the need for a deeply divisive policy whose design will undoubtedly take money from the less well off and give it to the not-so less well off?

It does beg the question, doesn't it? Is this a class thing?

EU Puppets On A Pharma String

There is an enlightening article at HuffPo describing an EU approach which won't surprise we jewel robbers.

Let us take an example: a current and apparently very technical affair sheds some light on the complexity of the European machinery and how this complexity can be used by private interests to hijack Europe. The case concerns ORPHACOL, a medicine for the treatment of two extremely rare and serious types of orphan liver disease which can be life-threatening, often very soon after birth, if not treated. This medicine is a product of academic clinical research of a hospital in Paris. A marketing authorization was requested to make it available not only in France but all over Europe. 

Despite more than 20 years of use in France, despite the unanimously positive opinion of the European Medicine Agency's (EMA), despite a qualification of the medicine as having a "notable public health interest," despite the repeated expression of a favorable opinion from Member States, the marketing authorization was refused by the European Commission. 

The European Commission has no scientific expertise whatsoever. It systematically follows the opinions of European Agencies and expert committees of the Member States. In the history of centralized marketing authorization of medicines, it is the first time that a series of scientific opinions are not followed suit by the European Commission.

It may have been the first time, but certainly not the last. Nor, in fact, is it anywhere near as damaging as the worst example.

This unprecedented case must lead to the question: Why? What are the motives of the European Commission and who stands to benefit from these protracted procedures and refusals? 

As I have raised at the European Parliament during several committee meetings, everything leads to the conclusion that the aim is to favor an (American) pharmaceutical company that has belatedly requested a marketing authorization for a similar medicine.

The EU in hock to pharmaceutical interests? Say it ain't so!

Now, this was written by lefty EU parliament member Gilles Pargneaux, and was prefaced with a couple of paragraphs which seemed to imply that the resignation of John Dalli was somehow the fault of tobacco lobbying rather than a bribe which was definitely solicited by Dalli's closest political ally.

Of course, Dalli's tobacco products directive was a disgraceful abuse of scientific evidence in its own right, as well as a document which wilfully treated EU citizens who responded with utter contempt.

Of the citizens who submitted their opinions, more than eight out of ten, 84 percent, support lifting the export ban on snus. 86 percent of government representatives and 74 percent of industry representatives wish to lift the ban. Only among lobbyists and NGOs is there a slim majority, 56 percent, who want to keep the ban on snus. 

The EU Commission, however, dismisses a significant portion of the responses from the 82,000 citizens on the grounds that two-thirds are from Italy and Poland, where tobacco merchants organised petitions. 

But even if we exclude these two countries, the majority is still for lifting the export ban on snus, 10-6, when respondents are broken down by country. 

DN's review of the 400 responses in this group shows that even among the responses from parliamentarians, municipalities, government agencies and ministries a large majority, 71 percent, support lifting the export ban. 

Even when only EU governments and ministries are included, there is still no majority against snus, but rather 3-3.

Yet the EU tobacco products directive still concluded that snus should remain banned ... to the relief of the pharmaceutical industry and the detriment of the hundreds of thousands of people (by the EU's own estimates) who will die as a result of alternatives being restricted. And that's not adding in Dalli's proposal to effectively ban e-cigs too.

The European Commission's health directorate claims to have received responses from governments who in other ways support the ban on snus, but refuses to show them.

But that, apparently, is democracy in action and perfectly acceptable. Not a whisper will be raised about it.

Listen, Buster, while we can all agree that your example is appalling, if you want to talk about how pharma interests are buying the EU, it might be worth pointing an accusatory finger at Dalli's directive which is now being hastily bludgeoned through the procedures before investigations of corruption have concluded.

Notwithstanding, he does raise an interesting point. Who exactly is running the EU? Vast business interests seem to be pulling strings in the Commission, and - contrary to daft claims from venal fantasists in the tobacco control industry - all indicators tend to point to big pharma as the puppeteers.

A Great Day For Italy!

As if to further prove that e-cigs are now big business rather than a cottage industry, if you were eagle-eyed you may have noticed a pitch-long advert which appeared repeatedly on animated hoardings during today's Six Nations Italy v France match.

Click to enlarge and look for the simple message "Fumare Digitale - Smokie's". This is their website.

Try as anti-smokers might to appease their pharma masters by producing junk science and outrageous lies, e-cigs continue to gain global recognition. If not for the tobacco control industry's corrupt chums at the EU, these clever little devices would be set to stomp all over the nicotine market like Andy Ripley running at a full back from St Stephens' Elementary second XV in 1972.

Forza Smokie's, I say, and congratulazioni!.

UPDATE An excellent article at the ECITA blog describes how this global phenomenon is now going pleasantly viral. Do go have a read.

Let's Quadruple The Scope Of The War On Drugs

Some statist lunacy for a Saturday night from ReasonTV.

200 B&H and a solicitor please, white van man. Good grief. 

Link Tank 02/02

And now for something not remotely different.

Cuba ready to end the 50 year ban on professional boxing

Is Bloomberg the Machiavelli of our time?

Health Canada and Canadian Lung Association bizarrely want to kill people

Paternalism goes fizzy pop

Man bites dog! South Australia considers relaxing a ban on wine in supermarkets

The Fawlty Towers that is the BBC

Beer: Is there nothing it can't do?

Clicking online ads 182 times more likely to infect your compute than porn

Seven dangerous myths about weight loss

Lost homing pigeons

And an older link well worth a read ...

A glimpse of our temperance future from a century ago?

A Truth Becomes Even More Inconvenient

For a Friday chuckle, shall we have more fun with some of the tobacco control industry's finest fantasists?

You may remember I've mentioned Joy Townsend before. She is a member of ASH's editorial board despite not possessing even the most tenuous grip of basic economics.

BBC: There must be a tipping point where you are forcing poorer people to buy their cigarettes without paying duty. 

Joy Townsend: Well, it's very interesting because [...] the tobacco companies always say that. If the tax goes up, this is going to increase smuggling. And they say it, it's one of their many deceits as it's not true.

Now, you could believe she is an 'expert' in financial affairs if you like. You know, fiscal pressures on supply and how they affect buying patterns, that sort of thing. In Joy's case, she believes that price rises are irrelevant; smokers will continue to buy from the same sources ... or quit. It's really that story-book simple in her world.

Or, you could trust the Independent's business correspondent, Nick Goodway.

Two distinct messages come out of Imperial Tobacco's latest trading update. The first is that cash-strapped smokers are turning to the black market in numbers probably not seen since the Second World War.

Unlike ASH propaganda, trading updates will be pored over by market analysts for whom inaccurate information might mean the difference between millions earned and millions lost - none of that 'peer review' getting your mates to give it the once over crap. Claims from listed companies - quite the opposite of junk stats burbled by unchallenged professional anti-smokers - are tested to destruction for veracity.

According to Imps, the last few weeks have seen the proportion of cigarettes smoked in the UK which have not had any tax or duty charged on them shoot up to 20 per cent from just 16 per cent late last year. 

That means the Chancellor, George Osborne, is missing out on one in five fags smoked. The cost to the Treasury is now well above £3bn a year. He should now start worrying about the diminishing returns he is getting, having added an extra 70p on a packet through his last two Budgets.

The 16 per cent figure matches that reported by the Sun in October.

And official statistics?

HMRC data shows that tobacco duty raised £9.1bn in 2010, £9.6bn in 2011 and an estimated £9.7bn in 2012. Could 2013 be the first time total tobacco duty raised actually falls?

Err, don't those duty receipt figures - considering smoker prevalence has flatlined in those years while tobacco duty has soared like never before - show categorically that illicit trade must have increased as a result? There is, after all, no possible other conclusion even for the likes of Townsend.

In fact, so worried are the government about the increase in illicit trade - which hasn't happened according to tobacco control, remember - that they are setting up an inquiry according to The Times.

A parliamentary committee is to investigate the illicit trade in tobacco for the first time. 

The intention of the Home Affairs Select Committee to launch an inquiry into the black market comes as the world’s fourth-largest tobacco company warned yesterday that first-half adjusted operating profit would be dented by “increasing levels of illicit trade” in Europe.

Which is kinda funny when you consider this tweet.

UK tobacco tax rises followed by falls in illegal tobacco use. @batpress how can this be true? cancerresearchuk.org/cancer-info/ne…
— Simon Chapman (@SimonChapman6) October 22, 2012

The answer, cup cake, is that CRUK's arrant nonsense wasn't 'true' in any sense of the word, mostly because  they were using two year old figures to describe the effects of current year taxation.

Sadly, economic truth is an uncomfortable concept for tobacco controllers ... I wonder if they still believe in the tooth fairy?