Link Tank 15/06

So begins another weary day-e-ay.

Is big tobacco back as a big advertiser?

Where's the outrage at an MP demanding censorship?

Beyond the great firewall: How and what China censors

Belgium’s centuries-old beer producers are exporting at astonishing rates

Judges question legality of Nanny Bloomberg's soda ban

Meanwhile, New York now proposes a ban on anonymous online comments

Please think of the children! Lego figures are getting angrier!!

“Parody in porn is something that has been going on forever"

Mountain bikes and beer "go good together"

Airport security stops Chewbacca to inspect his light sabre

Fish on Prozac

Burnley Thrash Manchester City

I went to a football match at Manchester City's Etihad stadium once.

Nice ground and all that, but I remember the stewarding being pretty heavy-handed to say the least. I was with the boy and in seats at the edge of the pitch, meaning he didn't see the last five or ten minutes due to a ring of hi viz-bedecked, err, crowd control operatives blocking his view entirely as they stood arms folded looking menacingly at supporters who had stumped up a princely sum for their ticket.

I remember the supporters being in jubilant mood, so much so that one lit a cigar about ten rows back. He may as well have taken the pin out of a hand grenade as three stewards leapt seats and ignorantly sent innocent fans flying to get to him.

So it wasn't too surprising to read this a couple of months back.

A City supporter has been left fuming after he was banned from the Etihad Stadium – for ‘smoking’ an electronic cigarette. 

The Blues fan, who asked not to be named, was spotted by stewards with the device at their clash with Chelsea – which came in the first week he had not been smoking. 

He was told that the e-cigarette, which can be legally smoked anywhere, was not permitted at the stadium and was then escorted from the ground by police. 

And now the lifelong supporter has been written to by Peter Fletcher, City’s head of safety and security, who has told him that his season card has been suspended. 

The disgruntled Blue said: “I was on the concourse at half-time having a drink with a few mates. 

“I took a drag of it and was asked by security to come into a room – I just thought I was going to be asked to explain what it was. 

“I was told they were banned and asked for my season card which I handed over. I was then escorted out of the ground by police.”

Nice way to treat someone who has handed over hundreds of pounds a year in advance for the privilege, eh? It seems Manchester City FC are the latest in a very long line of petty authoritarians who are more than happy to enforce pointless rules under the guise of caring about health.

There still isn't a study worldwide showing any health problem from a whiff of real smoke in an outdoor environment, but now e-cigs are also banned just for the hell of it, and fans humiliated and marched off the premises when they use an alternative which doesn't produce the 'deadly' passive smoke the club has been conned to believe in.

Meanwhile, down the road in Burnley they employ a different approach.

The club has recently installed smoking pens outside the stadium exit gates on match days in order to comply with football legislation

Yes, unlike Manchester City, they actually cater for their paying smokers! Arranging their business to fit in with their customers' preferences? How very novel.

What's more, if you would like to try an e-cig instead, they're happy to see their club associated with it.

And even explain what they are for the uninitiated.

But then, why wouldn't they? It's a win/win all round.

[Anthony Fairclough, Director of Commercial Affairs at Turf Moor, said:] “We are conscious of the problems within the stands by fans illegally smoking cigarettes and contravening the stadium regulations. In tandem with Totally Wicked we feel we can approach this problem with a viable alternative and we look forward to working together on this and a number of future initiatives.”

Well, quite. But then, if you're more interested in cracking heads and marching fans out of the ground with a police escort, you'd never spot it would you?

Now, I don't know about you, but if I were in the north west I'd much prefer being treated as a human being - instead of a vaguely sentient form of livestock - while watching my football. As such, my personal choice of venue would be Burnley FC and not Manchester City.

I'd also suggest that Burnley are far more interested in the happiness and health of their fans than the "we've got your money, now fuck off" attitude of Manchester City.

They might have loadsa middle eastern cash (I swear I read that somewhere) and a place in the Premiership, but Championship Burnley thrash the pants off Manchester City for looking after their fans I reckon.

Bravo!

H/T Ta to long-time jewel robber Steve W for sharing the flyers

A Fellow Jewel Robber Writes

I've mentioned many a time before that the vaping lobby are highly motivated and certainly not slow to confront their elected representatives. MEPs throughout Europe discovered this after the announcement of the Tobacco Products Directive recently, with many expressing surprise at the large volume of angry correspondence they received. As a result, 120 amendments have been tabled and there is a real possibility that the silly de facto ban on e-cigs will be watered down or even ditched entirely.

Yesterday's announcement by the MHRA will undoubtedly prompt another avalanche of letters - this time to UK MPs - which I wholeheartedly support. The astonishingly cretinous proposal deserves to be strongly resisted for its incompetent lack of foresight and common sense. I hope others who read here will consider doing just that and demand that their MP asks some stiff questions of the MHRA and its decision to completely ignore the public.

Quick out of the blocks is long time fellow jewel robber Steve W, whose trenchant message to Rochdale MP Simon Danczuk was sent today and is reproduced in full below with permission. He makes some very good points which may come in handy for others who plan to put their objection in writing.

Dear Simon, 

I am yet to receive a response to any of my previous four communications (sent on the 18th and 19th of April and on the 6th of June).  I have, heretofore, been acting under the impression that, in a representative democracy, your job as my elected representative, having been elected to office to serve your constituents, included some form of (moral at least) obligation to both engage with and represent my views as one of said constituents.  It appears that I was sadly mistaken and you do not share my view of this forming part of your responsibilities.  I am, however, prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt on one more occasion and assume that one of your office monkeys is failing in their job to pass on to you certain correspondences from your constituents.  As an employer myself, I am aware how difficult it can be to recruit suitably qualified people with the appropriate level of integrity to perform such tasks. 

I am writing to you today concerning a related matter to my previous correspondence (to which I would still appreciate receiving your considered response). 

As I am sure you are aware, yesterday the MHRA finally, and belatedly, released their recommendations concerning the future regulation of electronic cigarettes (wrapped up under the monicker of nicotine containing products or NCPs).  They are intending to regulate all nicotine containing products as medicines within the UK.  This will have several (if I was being overly generous I would say, unintended) consequences which I shall attempt to outline below. 

I shall initially make some serious points regarding the likely outcomes of this activity, and then point out a few less serious, yet natural conclusions to be drawn. 

·         The costs and timeframes involved in applying for medical licensing will kill off all innovation in a fast moving field.  Currently a separate licence is required for every product at a cost running into the millions of pounds and unlikely to be granted in under three years.  In a marketplace which is both consumer led and driven by ever more innovative products this imposition will be catastrophic.  Rather than consumers being able to assess for themselves the efficacy of, for example, new atomiser arrangements, the manufacturers will be forced to back a greatly reduced product range and to predict in advance which products are of sufficient value and efficacy to be worth licensing.  At this point they will then have to spend millions and wait at least three years before there is even the potential for any sort of return on their investment.

·         The removal of these products from the general consumer marketplace will cost some tens of thousands of UK jobs, many of them in economically deprived areas such as your own and surrounding constituencies.  As I said previously, I have recently become an employer for the first time, but not only will I be forced to lay off my staff, I too will be out of work.  Bearing in mind the current state of the economy it seems very ill-advised to actively kill off one of the few genuinely consumer led growth industries in the country.

·         Pharmaceutical companies currently make in excess of £500 million from ‘sales’ of nicotine patches, inhalers and gums.  Why have I put the word ‘sales’ in scare quotes?  Because only a tiny minority of these sales are genuine, with the vast majority being funded from the taxpayers’ purse in the form of prescriptions.  This arrangement allows an enormous premium to be charged thereby providing these pharmaceutical companies with a de facto tax payer subsidy to provide a product with a demonstrated efficacy in the region of 2%.  This in contrast to an entirely end-user driven market where people are actually choosing to spend their own money on an alternative to smoking which early studies (notably that of Dr Lynne Dawkins of the University of East London, but other studies, such as those from Etter et al. suggest similarly high success rates) suggest being effective in over 50% of cases.  The devil in me concludes that both the anti-tobacco lobby and the MHRA are more interested in retaining their status as favoured pets of the pharmaceutical industry, thereby retaining funding and future job prospects respectively, than they are in actually serving the public from whom theiur funding is derived and who provide them with their raison d’etre.  MHRA is entirely taxpayer funded whereas the likes of ASH and other lobby groups funding is largely split between DoH/other government bodies and pharmaceutical companies (ASH annual accounts reveal an embarrassingly small amount of their funding, as a ‘charity’ is derived from genuinely charitable donations – they were initially set up by the DoH and act as little more than a mouthpiece for vested interests both within and outwith the DoH/pharmaceutical industry).

·         A large number of those who have found electronic cigarettes to provide, for them, a satisfying and even pleasurable alternative to smoking have previously tried and failed to quit using patches/gums etc…  these people will likely be encouraged back to smoking should the devices they have become accustomed to over the previous few years no longer be available.  If, as claimed in the MHRAs press release, cigarette smoking is responsible for 80,000 deaths in the UK per annum, then driving in excess of 1 million currently non-smokers back to cigarettes means that those responsible will have blood on their hands.  If this now forms part of the remit of the ‘public health’ industry then we must have fallen so very far from the days when public health was about preventing the spread of communicable diseases such as cholera or dysentery.  On the bright side, I am sure the tobacco companies will be more than pleased at the prospect of regaining so many customers.

·         Whilst these proposed regulations will make the manufacture and sale of electronic cigarettes within the UK much more difficult, the same cannot be said of the remainder of Europe, with whom we share a free trade agreement.  The recent court decision (which I sent to you previously and regarding which I have received no response) in the TARTU Administrative Courts of Estonia where a similar directive was proposed, suggests that the legal position of such a regulatory framework is very questionable and that at least some EU member states will not face similar restrictions of business.  Is it now considered to be the place of the MHRA to interfere in cross border trade within the EU, or is it simply a desire to drive manufacturing and distribution jobs, as well as the revenues and taxes they generate, out of the UK, as this will surely be the end result of such an action.

·         As well as the above, I do not believe the borders agency has either the wherewithal or the manpower to prevent individuals from purchasing equipment and fluids of far more questionable quality direct from China, where you will find the standards and quality control framework is far less rigorous than our own.  However, I am sure that they too will be grateful for the increased trade and the further job creation that this would entail.

·         As the decision from the TARTU court highlighted, if these are to be regulated as medicinal products, perhaps one would care to highlight which medical condition they are being used to treat, then explain how the pharmacological effects derived therefrom differ in any meaningful way from the pharmacological effects of nicotine delivered via a traditional cigarette?  If, as in Estonia, there is demonstrated to be no material difference, perhaps one could then explain why cigarettes should benefit, by government edict, from an explicit trade advantage over a product which is likely 99% + safer, in as much as it is widely accepted within the medical community that the vast majority of harm caused by cigarettes has nothing to do with nicotine, rather it is to do with ‘tar’, particulates and carbon monoxide, none of which can be present in the vapour produced from a device which generates no combustion (therefore no combustion by products), said vapour being produced from a fluid of known composition. 

On top of these issues, the following would make for an interesting argumentum absurdum: 

·         Suppliers of tomatoes and aubergines are going to struggle to adequately define the levels of nicotine present in their produce, as the biochemical processes within these species of plant are, at best, ill-defined and subject to the vaguaries of both the weather and other growing conditions.  I also suspect that pharmacies are going to have some difficulties in handling the levels of fresh produce to which we have become accustomed to being able to buy freely and easily in markets and supermarkets all over the country.

·         The multinational tobacco companies will be overjoyed at the prospect of being able to provide cigarettes on prescription via the NHS, although, in this instance I envisage the bartering over the medical licence will be quite amusing to watch. 

There are several other issues I would like to raise around this regulation, however, in view of the fact that I wholly expect this correspondence to be ignored in similar fashion to my previous attempts to communicate with you, I shall leave it at that for now.  As a result of the fact that my previous correspondence has gone unanswered I have taken the liberty of copying this letter to the Office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, not a step I have taken lightly, rather one borne out of the frustration at what I perceive as a breach by you of your “…general duty to act in the interests of the nation as a whole, and a special duty to their constituents…” as detailed in section III, clause 6 of the ‘Code of Conduct, together with The Guide to the Rules Relating to the Conduct of Members’ (2009) updated May 2010. 

In conclusion, I would like to ask both for your views on the issues raised above and also for your support in opposing the imposition of these regulations, which, if enacted will likely be responsible for in excess of 1 million ex-UK smokers returning to traditional cigarettes. 

Kind regards 

Dr Steve W

The MHRA Kills The Golden Goose

Proving yet again what is fast becoming a certainty of life along with death and taxes, the MHRA today finally concluded their deliberations on e-cigs by completely ignoring public responses to their {cough} public consultation.

All nicotine-containing products (NCPs), such as electronic cigarettes, are to be regulated as medicines in a move to make these products safer and more effective to reduce the harms of smoking. 

The UK Government has decided that the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) will regulate all NCPs as medicines so that people using these products have the confidence that they are safe, are of the right quality and work. 

Smoking is the biggest single cause of avoidable death - killing 80,000 people in England each year. Making safe and effective products available for people who smoke can help them cut down or quit.

This is wordplay and sophistry of world class proportion.

The Guardian report that there are now around 1.3 million e-cig users in the UK, which makes it quite clear that e-cigs are an incredibly successful tool to "reduce the harms of smoking"; that 1.3 million people find that they "work" and "can help them cut down or quit".

The MHRA should know this from their own public consultation back in 2011 during which they received 1,217 responses from the general public. An overwhelming majority of these - if not all of them - were from satisfied e-cig users pleading for the MHRA to leave the devices alone and allow vapers to, indeed, "cut down or quit". On the other hand, they received just 9 responses from the usual bansturbatory elite demanding medicinal licensing.

In the face of such a landslide - and identical to the process employed for the EU's consultation on snus -  the MHRA chose to side with the 9 and toss out the views of 1,217 members of the public. Because, you see, the term 'public consultation' is a bit of a misnomer; the description they are seeking is more like 'organised fraud with a pretence of involving taxpayers and electors'.

The MHRA know very well that their proposals will do the exact opposite of helping smokers to "cut down or quit". They also know that medicinal regulation will make e-cigs considerably less "effective" by stifling innovation, raising prices and obliterating choice, thereby vandalising the very incentives for a product which has huge market support - and which has cost the taxpayer nothing. In short, they won't "work" any more.

Instead, what we are now promised is - be in no doubt about this - an effective ban on e-cigs in the UK, as explained by E-cig Politics.

I refer to pharmaceutical licensing as a ban, because it is. There are at least 5,000 products on the market now, the majority being refill variants. All will need to be removed from the market immediately licensing comes into force (within 21 days is the usual requirement). A license can only be applied to one product or product combination: a single hardware model, or a single liquid type/flavour, or a single device plus one liquid type. There is no possibility of a single license for several products. Each single product takes at least 3 years and at least £2m to achieve a license for (as that is what it has cost Intellicig in time and money to get their license so far, with no result as yet). Intellicig famously underestimated the cost and timescale, and have had to modify their time plan by a factor of 2 (initial estimate was 2 years), and their cost estimates by a factor of 20 (initial budget was £95,000). And it's not over yet. 

If either the EU or the MHRA achieve a ban via the pharmaceutical licensing or tobacco product classification routes, legal e-cigarette sales are finished in the UK, and a huge black market will ensue.

Quite.

But then it has all been so predictable, hasn't it? Once the revolution of e-cigs took hold, those who claim to be interested in health have clutched at multiple straws to deride, demonise, smear and undermine them.

We've seen attempts to invent passive and thirdhand vaping as a concept; heroic conspiracy theories claiming that millions of successful quitters are just an illusion; attempts to rig legislation at EU level; and junk science promoted as fact.

In the end, the pharma enthralled tobacco control industry have fallen back on justification so weak as to be laughable. That they vary in quality and that kids might use them.

ASH welcome regulation to stop kids using e-cigs despite their own study finding 0% of kids using them; the BBC seeks out a head teacher who banned e-cigs in their usual agitprop coverage, despite no student ever having been seen using one; and everyone else cites obscure and unrepresentative negative studies while ignoring the overwhelming benefits to health of over a million people cutting down on tobacco consumption.

It was all telegraphed beforehand too. With the MHRA abomination looming, state bodies redoubled their denialist efforts. The NHS Choices site - purporting to be a neutral fact-checker - displayed the underlying agenda perfectly by publishing this article yesterday.

Carefully cherry-picked junk science - and even this absurd Guardian article - were presented as proof that pharma produced NRT was absolutely brilliant, while e-cigs were dangerous and useless.

Written by someone who doesn't have much understanding of the devices (e.g. they all look like cigarettes; are triggered by air flow; batteries only last 2 to 5 hours), it contained 'neutral' info which clearly showed which side of the fence they were coming down on.

It’s not certain whether e-cigarettes deliver as much nicotine as forms of nicotine replacement therapy such as patches, so they may not be as effective at curbing nicotine cravings.

Hence why 1.3 million smokers have shunned e-cigs in favour of NRT with its 98.4% failure rate ... oh, hold on.

If you want to try a safer alternative to cigarettes but are concerned about the uncertainties surrounding e-cigarettes, you may wish to consider a nicotine inhalator.

A product which has been so successful that it hasn't attracted millions worldwide like, err, e-cigs despite being free and backed by saturation TV advertising.

Because e-cigarettes can be smoked in public places such as bars, restaurants and public transport, some people feel they may be normalising what has come to be seen as an unacceptable activity.

For 'some people', read 'a tiny minority of state-funded lobbyists and fake charities'.

And just in case you didn't get the message, they produce a neat infographic to make sure you make the, ahem, correct choice.

Today is the apex of tobacco control industry stupidity. Ultimate and resounding proof of what I have been saying for years. It has never, ever, been about health. And now they have illustrated it beyond reasonable doubt.

Anything that has gone before can now be disregarded, they have negligently provided all the evidence needed.

So they installed a smoking ban, so what? They have produced rules which could force 1.3 million vapers back to smoking. They banned vending machines. So what? They are effectively banning a revolutionary product which was reducing tobacco harm worldwide. They banned tobacco displays. So what? Their lapdog big pharma loyalty is the best thing tobacco manufacturers have heard for a long time. They intend to bring in evidence-free plain packaging. So what? They are also intending to obliterate a smoking alternative which carries global, real life evidence of overwhelming success.

It can never again be claimed that these people have any care for health. Ever. Just as we can now conclude with 100% confidence that public consultations are nothing but an elaborate and costly sham.

As one tobacco industry observer put it today, they have "killed the golden goose" before it's had a chance to lay many more priceless public health golden eggs. It was, as ex-Director of ASH Clive Bates dolorously described, "a good day for the cigarette makers".

But what does the tobacco control industry care? It was never about health anyway.

The 'Myth' That Keeps On Giving

Deborah Arnott is being shown up again.

[T]he “domino theory” i.e. that once a measure has been applied to tobacco it will be applied to other products is patently false. The same argument was used against the ban on tobacco advertising, but 9 years after the tobacco ban in the UK, alcohol advertising is still permitted with no sign of it being prohibited.

Erm.

A charity has called for a complete ban on alcohol advertising at music and sports events.

Alcohol Concern wants the action to protect children and young people from what it describes as "excessive" exposure. 

The charity wants a ban on alcohol advertising in the trailers of films shown in cinemas with less than an 18 certificate. 

Dunno about you, but that looks like a 'sign' to me, especially since every proponent I've heard on TV or radio this morning has referenced tobacco ad bans as their inspiration.

Plain packaging of alcohol is merely a few steps further down the line, that's all.

Doctors Confused About Nicotine

Via Nursing in Practice comes this quite shocking revelation.

A survey of GPs has revealed some falsely believe one of the greatest health risks from smoking is nicotine. 

Nicotine is the addictive component of tobacco smoke, but unlike some other constituents of tobacco smoke, it is not carcinogenic (cancer-causing) and according to the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) 'medicinal nicotine is a very safe drug.' 

The majority of survey respondents (96% UK, 98% Sweden) said that they regularly discussed smoking cessation with their patients, but less than half believe that long-term nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) is preferable to smoking (31% UK, 48% Sweden). 

The survey findings show that a substantial proportion of GPs (40%) believe nicotine to be the first or second riskiest component of cigarettes, incorrectly identifying it as more harmful than smoke. 

Many (44% UK, 56% Sweden) also wrongly believe that nicotine in tobacco products is associated with cancer, while 15% in the UK and 22% in Sweden believe the same for pharmaceutical nicotine.

One wonders who they must be listening to, because it doesn't appear to be the RCP.

"Nicotine itself is not a particularly hazardous drug," says Professor John Britton, who leads the tobacco advisory group for the Royal College of Physicians.

Nor does it seem to be ASH.

In 1976 Professor Michael Russell wrote: “People smoke for nicotine but they die from the tar.” Indeed, the harm from smoking is caused almost exclusively by toxins present in tobacco released through combustion. By contrast, pure nicotine products, although addictive, are considerably less harmful. Electronic cigarettes consequently represent a safer alternative to cigarettes for smokers who are unable or unwilling to stop using nicotine.

Their thinking is also not in accordance with guidance from NICE.

Prof Kelly added that the guidance endorses cutting down on smoking with the help of licensed nicotine products such as patches and gum to help reduce the harm caused by tobacco. 

He pointed out that while nicotine is a 'relatively harmless' substance, there is a lack of clarity over the safety of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) and what substance actually causes death. 

the guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence  says doctors seeking to help smokers can advise ‘these products (e-cigs) are likely to be less harmful than cigarettes’. 

Professor Aveyard said he will tell patients that using e-cigarettes is ‘better than smoking.'

Remember, then, that next time some GP harangues you about smoking (or even e-cig use), he might not have the first clue what he is talking about and could be just reacting to confused messages being delivered by idiot politicians and their civil service arm-benders.

The only question remaining is who has led idiot politicians and their civil service arm-benders to produce such confused messages in the first place. Could it be that the past decade avalanche of anti-smoking denormalisation tactics has convinced doctors that anything contained in a cigarette is on the same danger level as the black death?

Well, yeah. That's about the sum of it.

It's Not About Health In Italy Either

Just two weeks ago, I wrote about how the French had gone off message and admitted that tobacco control has nothing to do with health.

The French government could be set to ban the use of electronic cigarettes in public places and at work because of health precautions, it emerged on Monday. The ban threat comes as the nicotine-filled ‘vaporisers’ experience a boom in sales in France.

This blog's official France-based official theologian commented at the time that a truly bizarre debate was going on over there.

I did read or hear that it was because people with visible e-cigarettes 'do not set a very good example' to the general public.

How naughty of them to disobey their masters like errant schoolkids, eh?

Bans are needed to "protect workers"? Pah! That Trojan horse is long gone.

Well, now it is becoming a European epidemic of idiocy. Italy has also come out of the closet and decided the coast is clear enough to admit health justification is nothing but a sham.

Rome: The Italian health ministry's top advisory body has recommended a ban on the smoking of electronic cigarettes in public places and their sale to pregnant women and minors. 

The recommendation by the ministry's Superior (?) Health Council came after France's Health Minister Marisol Touraine said she was planning similar restrictions.

So the Italian government is also either run by idiots or driven by wads of cash in pharma industry brown envelopes, then (As an aside, I don't believe I've ever seen the word 'superior' used in more undeserving context!).

Such a shame after visual evidence that Italy's emerging e-cig market was making great strides during their Six Nations match against, yes, the French in February (click to enlarge).

The advertising hoardings say "Fumare Digitale" or, electronic cigarettes

How dare 'Smokie's' rub the Italian government's nose in it, eh? Something obviously had to be done about the impudent upstarts.

We are living through significant times. One day, history will view utterly incompetent policies like these in the same way we laugh at the stupidity of medieval quacks.