Canadian Minimum Pricing Advocate Is A Serial Bullshitter

Dr Tim Stockwell is a Canadian with a bit of a beef about alcohol. You may remember that he was behind the BBC's heroic claims about minimum pricing earlier this week.

Snowdon described it as "lying with statistics".

It is a bald-faced lie to say that there have been any "significant changes in alcohol-related deaths observed in British Columbia".

Well, via Crampton, it appears this was no fluke. Stockwell turns out to be a serial abuser of evidence and data.

Despite the absurd contortions he was forced to perform in order to reach a pre-determined result on minimum pricing, he has gone on record criticising other researchers who found that moderate consumption of alcohol is largely beneficial.

[...] in a letter to Addiction, he keeps wondering if it's possible ever to derive any evidence of protective benefits from population epidemiological studies because of potential uncontrolled confounding.

His targets have responded by pointing out that Stockwell really should take that plank out of his eye before accusing others.

[...] we sense a desire by some in the field to apply tough standards on protective effects and more lenient standards on other effects, where sometimes the responses to very simple survey questions such as ‘Did your partner’s alcohol consumption contribute to your marriage problems?’ are accepted as causal evidence.

So, it appears he doesn't just lie with statistics. He also lies by emphasising research - however dubious - which agrees with his agenda, while dismissing other research - however strong - which doesn't.

Another dangerous, dishonest crank gets through the BBC's {cough} rigorous, {cough} world-respected health team, then.

E-Cigs: Follow The Money

With a tagline of "when caution can kill", former ASH Director Clive Bates has written another very intelligent - and important - article on e-cigs and the unintelligent EU's disgraceful plan to kill them off.

"E-cigarettes represent an amazing market-based, user-driven public health insurgency. From nowhere to €500m in Europe, the market is growing rapidly and already almost equals the market for NRT, according to the European Commission’s consultants (see chart and Matrix report p21)"

Little wonder, then, that big pharma are doing everything in their power to get them banned.

"Without anyone in the professional public health field doing anything and without spending any public money, smokers have been quitting, switching and cutting down using e-cigarettes."

And that is why the tobacco control industry are also doing their utmost to heavily regulate them or render them ineffective.

It's a simple follow the money exercise. Right there is all you need to know about the e-cigs debate. Remember it whenever you read or hear any of their rotten junk science.

It's never been about health, you know.

Do go read Clive's article in full here.

UPDATE: From the comments. "Cancer Research UK continues its remorseless promotion of cancer by pretending that nothing is known, when in fact we know that none of the toxins present in cigarette smoke is present in vapour in any meaningful concentration."

This is, of course, the CRUK with half a billion income and 30+ individuals pulling in a yearly salary of over £100k. I do believe they have some links with pharmaceutical companies. Just saying.

Link Tank 09/02

The weekly selection is now into a fourth year involving over 1,500 links.

E-cigarettes are not your father’s smokes

Some charitable institutions are a lot more interested in government hand-outs than our good

Pregnant women who smoke are easy targets for the morality police

Australian McDonald's offers waiter service, plates and cutlery

Hey NSPCC, when a parent smacks his child, it is not 'violence'

Using beer to generate electricity, and then using that electricity to brew more beer

"The anti-Big Food story suits the outlook of a certain kind of middle-class food campaigner"

It's finally legal for women to wear trousers in France

Watching porn boosts support for same-sex marriage

Drink diet mixers, get drunk quicker

Talking ants

New Zealand Public Rejects Plain Packaging

So, we've seen half a million oppose plain packaging in the UK against just under 60% fewer in favour.

But, there has been a consultation on the same hideous policy in New Zealand too, if you remember. It was run on carbon copy lines to ours but there were early signs that things might not be going to plan there either.

A month after consultation on its plain packaging regime for cigarettes closed, the Ministry of Health will not say how many submissions it received. 

The government has agreed in principle to introduce plain packaging laws for tobacco products, subject to the outcome of a consultation process. 

Yet the October 5 deadline for submissions passed unannounced, suggesting the number received in opposition could be huge.

That was four months ago, but here's the latest news from government owned national broadcaster TV New Zealand.

Indeed, this is so. The NZ government has just revealed that - despite a state-funded campaign in favour - responses received on the spiteful idea were almost 60% against.

The TVNZ reporter seems to think we should be surprised by this. I mean, doesn't everyone know by now that if any policy bashes smokers it is a good thing?

He also mentions something else which is quite revealing.

"The association representing convenience retailers [claim] some of those submissions supporting plain packaging were made multiple times by the same person" 

Hmm, sounds familiar. I believe we saw the same principle with the UK consultation, didn't we?

"You can only vote once on each petition, but I would seriously doubt that there will be cross checking between charity petitions so it may be worth signing all of them to get your money's worth"

So, perhaps it wasn't only the UK template for campaigning they copied, then.

Minimum Alcohol Pricing Folly: Goodbye Clubcard And Nectar Points

The more one looks into the implications of minimum alcohol pricing - and I've only just started - the more of a sinister minefield it turns out to be.

By minefield, I mean a legislative nightmare as well as unnecessary costs to small businesses (odd that; aren't Tories supposed to like them?). For example, signage will be required; stock may have to be removed from sale and renegotiated on price with suppliers (more on that another time); and many products will cease to be profitable, not only for the retailer, but for the producer too. This will inevitably lead to an increase in your shopping bill somewhere along the line, whether booze is bought or not.

Current advice from retail bodies is to err on the side of caution or face crippling fines. And that's where you come in because, if you buy drink responsibly, you will still lose out.

When you go to Tesco, Sainsbo, whatever, do you get loyalty card points on tobacco? No, course not, it's bad for you, right, so it's banned. Well, hey presto! With minimum alcohol pricing, this is exactly the result that is likely to happen for alcohol too.

Firstly, if you buy a minimum alcohol priced bottle of wine for around £4.20, those four Clubcard/Nectar points you earn will represent a subsequent value, however small. If you were then to redeem that value, the saving technically drops the cost of your bottle below the minimum price. It is most certainly the end of vouchers before Valentine's Day offering 50 bonus points if you buy a bottle of Baileys, that's for sure.

There is also the issue of saving vouchers or points up for other special occasions. If, like me, you hoard your rewards for a big blow out at Christmas, you could end up buying - say - £100 worth of alcohol and redeeming vouchers/points for £80, for example. That means you are buying alcohol - any alcohol - well beneath the minimum price.

It's a grey area, but retailer associations are advising that the best course is to not award loyalty bonuses to purchases of alcohol at all. Why devise an complicated system to get round the problem when it is easier just to exclude alcohol entirely, eh?

Tesco, of course, are 100% behind minimum pricing so will happily deprive you of your Clubcard points. Others will almost be, I dunno, "nudged" into it by people who have been asking for exactly that for a long time.

Dr Brian Keighley, chairman of the BMA in Scotland, said stopping UK supermarkets offering loyalty points would at least send the "right message". 

"Most alcohol bought for consumption is from supermarkets. There is a need to send the right message on drinking behaviour by not allowing 'rewards' for buying alcohol."

Minimum alcohol pricing is touted as tackling irresponsible drinkers but - as a sage website bluntly asks - why should responsible drinkers pay more?

Of course, if the true plan is to move towards a policy of denormalisation of alcohol, it's just dandy.

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?