Public Health: The Anglosphere's Global Disease

You gotta laugh at the obsessive puritan mentality sometimes.

At @FedEuroAcadMed French MoH speaker lapses into English on "binge drinking" - is there a word in French? Tells you something

— Martin McKee (@martinmckee) May 13, 2015

The morbidly obese bubblegumphobe is referring to this meme going around 'public health' circles that binge-drinking is uniquely British; that it is a behavioural disease which has now spread to our neighbours across la Manche. So frighteningly swiftly has this happened (despite British drinking culture being thousands of years old) that poor Ministry of Health politicians in Paris have not had time to coin a French word for it, apparently, so have pinched 'le binge-drinking' instead.

He may have a point, you know. The French are renowned throughout history for being crap at wars because they couldn't pitch a tent until they discovered that the English were doing something called 'le camping' - if only Napoleon had known that, eh? Likewise, their poor workers were toiling for seven days a week without respite for centuries until some Gallic traveller visited our shores and dscovered that we enjoyed two days off which we called 'le weekend', and when cars were invented those tortured Frenchies were driving around throughout the day and night before someone told them about the peculiar - but brilliant - British invention of 'le parking'.

Similarly, we Brits had never experienced déjà vu until the French taught us about it; we had no businessmen in this country until a wandering French entrepreneur enlightened us as to how trade was done; women went commando as a matter of course because underwear was only sold on these shores once the French imported lingerie; Britain was devoid of art until our continental neighbours taught us to paint; we couldn't beat eggs without the French teaching us about omelettes; and British people cast no shadows until we'd discovered people in France had seen mysterious things called silhouettes.

It all makes sense now, doesn't it?

Of course, there might be another explanation. You see, the French have always been pretty relaxed about their booze, it's why we like to go there and buy the stuff at dirt cheap prices. Wine is a family thing and is available in supermarché wire baskets at knock-down prices compared to here.

In Britain (and other English-speaking countries), however, we've always had finger-wagging temperance lunatics who like to sneer at the choices of others, and embark on moral panics about the hellfire and eternal damnation that will ensue if you dare to consort with the demon drink. Our history is sadly riddled with the rotten anti-social nerks. And the terminology these puritans create to support their irrational moral crusades necessarily involve terms like 'binge-drinking' to describe something as inconsequential as a couple of pints of Stella on a Sunday afternoon.

The only thing being imported into France is that twisted and illiberal mindset by way of the globalisation of miserabilism, whereby charmless and disloyal grunts like McKee attend international summits and run down his own country in order to spread the dictatorial 'public health' disease to other - previously relaxed - nations so that their people can suffer too.

That's why the French don't have a word for binge-drinking; it's because their own snobby social engineers aren't as imaginative with their self-aggrandising and illiberal vocabulary as the minging, long-practiced, career neo-temperance shitsticks we are cursed with in Britain.

As If Prohibition Never Happened

While Australian anti-smoking lunatics continue to pat themselves on the back for installing the utterly pointless policy of plain packaging, BAT Australia has announced some astonishing news.

British American Tobacco Australia (BATA) is considering launching a Make Your Own (MYO) cigarette brand to try and capture the growing number of illegal chop chop smokers.

'Chop chop' is the colloquial name for bags of loose unbranded tobacco sold on the black market in Australia by criminal gangs.

BATA spokesperson Scott McIntyre said chop chop or illegal loose leaf tobacco now makes up the majority of the illegal black market and we are being forced to compete with organised crime for market share due to the government’s failed excise system. 

“Currently the illegal trade in Australia makes up 14.5 per cent of all tobacco consumed in Australia which is nearly 2.6 million tonnes and a big opportunity for us to steal back consumers,” Mr McIntyre said.

By 'failed excise system', McIntyre is referring to two obscene and irresponsible 12.5% increases in tobacco duty which have hugely distorted the Australian tobacco market.

Governments tend to dislike tobacco, we all know that, but such has the hysteria over smoking been whipped up in Australia that they seem to have abandoned all knowledge of the Laffer curve, the principles of Pigovian taxation, and the wise words of J S Mill on sin taxes.

“Every increase of cost is a prohibition, to those whose means to not come up to the augmented price"

Two crippling 12.5% excise duty rises would make legal tobacco unaffordable for large sections of any population, so it is hardly surprising that the gangs producing chop chop are doing brisk business. It's like the Aussie government is completely oblivious to the effects of Prohibition in 1920s USA.

Of course, their dozy politicians will probably point out that tobacco is still legal, just a little bit more expensive. But, as Mill accurately describes, if you price the less well off out of the legal market where else have they to go but the black one?

Mill also had this to say about the legitimacy of massive tax hikes on such products.

"To tax stimulants for the sole purpose of making them more difficult to be obtained is a measure differing only in degree from their entire prohibition, and would be justifiable only if that were justifiable.”

Now, Australia obviously doesn't believe it justifiable that tobacco be banned outright or they would have the balls to have done so by now. So instead they are witnessing the bizarre situation whereby a legal industry has been railroaded into competing with the criminals that the government have empowered by their hysterical fascist policies. Incredible stuff!

There's more though, because - despite this being an entirely predictable turn of events - anti-smoking lunatics are still trying to pretend that their unsustainable policy wet dreams are not insane in practice.

I've reported before on the stunning stupidity of these people in the UK, and how they consider the laws of economics not to apply to tobacco, but Australia has its own mad denialists too.

Australian Council on Smoking and Health president Mike Daube said it was a desperate and bizarre suggestion. 

"It's also a cynical ploy to get around curbs on cigarette promotion and to appeal to the most vulnerable sectors in the community," he said.

This Mike Daube, of course, is the same geriatric extremist anti-smoker who forced a production of Carmen to close because the 1875 opera is set in a cigarette factory ... and then lied about it; who believes passive smoke is more dangerous than exhaust fumes; who denies the benefits of e-cigs due to his anti-industry obsession; and who is so cowardly as to attack a part-time Cornwall waitress for daring to engage in debate.

He's now apparently worried about "the most vulnerable sectors in the community" - exactly the sectors in Australian community who his policies have forced into buying chop chop from organised criminals who don't care about age restrictions, and are not regulated by government. Blithely ignoring the effects of prohibition by taxation he encourages, and the perils of smokers buying their supplies from an unregulated market, instead he is attacking the legal one for daring to try to reel these people back in. There is a special place in hell reserved for rancid psychopaths like that.

In the meantime, we are actually at that point now where legal businesses are jockeying for position with organised crime for market share. Everyone in Australia who has allowed such a situation to develop should feel deeply ashamed, but then shame takes a back seat while they still have their snouts in the tobacco control trough, eh?

Experiences Of Vaping - Your Views Wanted

Read any article about e-cigs and you'll have seen some tobacco control gobshite talk about how they "just don't know" anything about them. This, of course, is just wild thrashing while they come to terms with an insurgent to their cosy self-enriching world of bullying, bans, restrictions and denormalisation of smokers.

In truth, there are hundreds of studies already released on vaping and literally hundreds more studies being performed, as I write, to populate what was once a void. This is why 'public health' dinosaurs the world over - such as Chappers, Bubblegum and Mad Mechanic Stan - are getting their lies in early before they are overwhelmed by undeniable facts about the benefits of vaping.

Many of the ongoing studies are clinical trials which you might not have access to, but the Centre for Drug Misuse Research in Glasgow has embarked upon an ambitious project which you can take part in. They have produced an online survey to explore perceptions and experiences of using e-cigs and want to receive responses from anyone who has even taken a few puffs of one. The survey is global and is aiming at a target of 10,000 responses or more so do spread the word.

You can take the survey by clicking here, which also gives you the chance (if you choose) of winning one of three iPad Minis just for answering a few questions. A mirror survey is also being handled by the University of Catania's Dr Riccardo Polosa for Italian speakers, which you can access by clicking on this link.

Dr Polosa presenting to Mark Pawsey, and other MP members of the APPG on e-cigs, in March

These kind of initiatives should be supported, in my opinion, because the more information gathered means the more will be known about e-cigs and vaping ... and the less tobacco control liars can pretend that they know nothing.

I submitted my responses earlier today, which took around 10 minutes, so do go to the link and add yours before sharing widely. If you don't use e-cigs yourself, please send the survey to someone you know who does.

Election Reflections

A few days ago I wrote about how the election may affect the cause of vaping and e-cigs based on evidence from the archives here at Puddlecote Towers. Not particularly forensic, but events since make me fairly optimistic about the future.

E-Cigarette Politics has offered a considered view of how the election changes matters, and I would go along with most of it.

How this affects vapers

Surprisingly, Cons are probably the vapers' best bet. [They] voted 19 out of 20 MEPs against the anti-ecig TPD, and this is a good record for honesty and organisational skills. Lab and Greens have a 3-line whip against vaping and will do whatever they can to ban it in order to protect tobacco tax revenues and pharma profits. 

Essentially this means that we can expect a sympathetic ear when the the new TPD is transposed, though for all practical purposes vaping faces some degree of ban in the UK via restrictive regulation. As the law comes from the EU, the most corrupt political structure in the world, nothing else can be expected. We won't know what degree of ban will be imposed until around 2017 - 2018, when the enforcement structure is finally in place and the regulations are fully enforced. As the Dept of Health is owned by pharma and will control enforcement, we can expect that EU regulations will be enforced to the hilt (ain't that the truth - DP). We can also expect that the anti-vaping regs will get tighter over time, as the pain of lost cigarette sales, lost tobacco tax revenue and lost pharmaceutical sales really begins to hurt. 

Unless, of course, legal challenges to the TPD (Article 20) are successful - in which case everything goes on hold for a while.

This is very true, and it is worth remembering that a key campaign promise of the Conservatives was to rein in some of the excesses of the EU by way of renegotiating terms prior to an in/out referendum in 2017. As such, I'd say that a priority for every e-cig user in the UK who lives in a Tory constituency would be to write to your MP - as in, now - and ask them to have Article 20 kicked into the long grass. The Tories are embarking on this renegotiation with a view to persuading the country to vote in favour of staying in the EU, so make it absolutely clear to them that if the de facto ban on e-cigs goes ahead unhindered, you will be voting OUT in the referendum. If you're unsure how to contact your MP locally, use this website to do it.

Speaking more generally about the election, I was invited to a London election night party where, early on, the talk centred around exactly what kind of socialism and spending other people's money the UK would vote for on the day. But then this flashed up on the big screen TVs to audible gasps of surprise.

Of course, we now know this to have been a cautious estimate and that the Tories took 15 more seats and, with them, a clear majority. Since then, a façade seems to have been broken down.

Politically-correct left-leaning social media had created an aura of inevitability whereby public opinion was on a one-way course to 'progressive' utopia. Everyone was agreed that big business was bad, anyone with a few quid had to be punished, and longevity was the entire point of living. In a yes/no quiz of 5 health spokesman on the Daily Politics, all five were boasting about how they were the best party for nudging/shoving/bullying the public - even the UKIP candidate said he was in favour of a ban on smoking in parks!

On Thursday, to the hilarious disbelief of the left, the British public voted against all of it. The Conservatives have been given a mandate to be truly conservative.

Simon Clark wrote on the eve of the election that ...

In terms of tobacco control and other product regulations the only difference between the Conservatives and Labour is the speed with which the parties regulate. The Tories take a little longer but the direction of travel is the same.

But a week, as they say, is a long time in politics and I'm not sure that holds true considering the events of the past few days. Eric Pickles was widely praised for his declaration that sock puppets would no longer be tolerated, and post-election it appears that Oliver Letwin is on the case more fully.

Oliver Letwin, the Tories' policy chief, has spent the campaign in Whitehall drawing up proposals to merge quangos and slash Government regulation. These are likely to form a key part of the spending review.

Now, I happen to know that Letwin has been made acutely aware of how many headaches his party had had to suffer from its funding the likes of ASH and Alcohol Concern, for example, to attack the government and demand illiberal legislation. In a regime of austerity, it is the simplest decision to turn off the tap and relieve those pressures, especially since the decision of the election jury which effectively rejected lefty top-down finger-wagging tosspottery.

Politics is cyclical and can take a while to about-turn, but the message that was sent on May 7th is that this country isn't that happy with mealy-mouthed righteousness after all. UKIP tore more strips from northern Labour heartlands than they harmed the Tory vote in the South; wherever Labour raised its anti-fizzy drinks, anti-alcohol, pro-tobacco levy heads, they were handed a big fat 'meh'. Wherever the illiberal LibDems posted a candidate, they were ruthlessly humilated. They'll have to go away and think long and hard about what that 'liberal' bit means.

Clegg said Liberalism had lost. Unfortunate confusion of Lib-Dems with liberalism. Maybe real liberalism can now be reconstituted

— Frank Furedi (@Furedibyte) May 8, 2015

The past decade has been one of intolerant and ugly dictating of others' choices by a hideous clique of self-absorbed and self-deluded bien pensants. As they publicly soul search on Twitter and cry about how they thought they had the country in the palm of their hand before the quiet electorate cruelly stole control away from them (to which the only response is, of course, to throw a tantrum and deface memorials), it should be clear to the new government that they can re-discover the concept of the public being allowed to make their own choices. to be tolerant of what the public choose and to just leave us alone for at least a few years.

Freedom is, after all, quite popular.

Link Tank 09/05

While progressives sob ...

"The real story of the 2015 General Election: the reduction of Labour to a middle-class machine"

First bespoke vaping bar opens in the West End

Following the election, porn is under attack

Election candidates who believe we should vote on every issue

Beijing bans barbecues

Plain packaging an abject failure in Australia, NZ should drop the idea

The civil war's effect on American beer

Burger King launches delivery service in the UK

Why beer guts are hotter than 6-packs (pic)

Astronomers baffled by microwave oven

The Grandaddy of all birds

E-Cigs And The Election

Granted I haven't been on the radar much this past week or so but I haven't seen much guidance by the usual vaping advocates - that's if there has been any - as to who e-cig users should be thinking of voting for tomorrow. So here are a few nuggets of info gathered from the archives here.

The only party to specifically mention e-cigs in their manifesto for this election has been the Lib Dems. 

"Carefully monitor the growing evidence base around electronic cigarettes, which appear to be a route by which many people are quitting tobacco, and ensure restrictions on marketing and use are proportionate and evidence-based. For example, we support restrictions on advertising which risks promoting tobacco or targets under 18s, such as those introduced in 2014, but would rule out a statutory ban on ‘vaping’ in public places."

All very touchy-feely, except when you remember that their party stepped aside and allowed Article 20 of the TPD to pass unhindered. Apparently, their political geniuses think that it is somehow workable despite it effectively banning every single device currently on the market in its current form.

It's all very well their promising to "carefully monitor" e-cigs, but when the EU's abomination is ratified in 2016, there will be nothing to bloody advertise, and nothing to 'vape in public places'. 

As for Labour, the experience of vapers who tried to engage with their MEPs during the TPD negotiations cannot be emphasised enough. Firstly, the huge level of voter engagement was dismissed by Labour as merely astroturfing, that's if the MEP concerned could even be bothered to reply. Personally, my reply from my local Labour MEP was to say that they despised smoking and were 100% behind the TPD ... yes, they didn't even understand what was being asked of them! 

The TPD, of course, was led through Brussels by Labour's Linda McAvan, who has links to pharma and who seemed mostly upset that e-cig companies were earning "huge profits". She also believes all of the misinformation about e-cigs being a gateway to smoking, and I fully expect her equally ignorant party colleagues will be of the same opinion, especially since the main detractors in 'public health' are rancid anti-business socialists like McKee, Scally, Capewell etc on whose every mendacious word the Labour party tend to hang. 

I would also expect Labour politicians to believe every word that the doctors union, the BMA, say on the subject. And since the BMA has been caught lying openly on the BBC about e-cigs, that'll be the way they go on the matter. You can also almost guarantee - with a deficit to tackle - that e-cigs will be taxed to the hilt by Labour, as has already been suggested by their fellow lefties in other countries. 

Lastly, if you want to see how a Labour politician would handle e-cigarettes once granted office and the levers of legislation, you only have to peer over the border to Wales where there is one already in power. Over there, Labour's Mark Drakeford has been furiously trying to demonise e-cigs and using every piece of anti-vaping propaganda he can lay his hands on in doing so. 

If there's one piece of advice every UK vaper should take to the polls tomorrow, it should be that Labour are not to be trusted and that a vote for them is almost certainly a vote for the end of vaping in this country.

On a more optimistic note, the Conservatives promise to be far less condemnatory about e-cigs should they come to power. It was to his credit, for example, that - unlike the LibDems - Conservative MEP Martin Callanan was scathing about the TPD when it was passed back in 2013. 

“This is a perverse decision that risks sending more people back to real, more harmful, cigarettes.

“Refillable e-cigarettes would almost certainly be banned, and only the weakest products will be generally available. As many smokers begin on stronger e-cigs and gradually reduce their dosage, making stronger e-cigs harder to come across will encourage smokers to stay on tobacco.  

“E-cigarettes have helped people give up tobacco. They are not completely safe and they may need regulation but they are a great deal safer than cigarettes and this agreement will make them harder for smokers to obtain."

Now that's someone who truly understands what an appalling piece of legislation the EU's TPD is for e-cigs. Callanan is no longer an MEP but is still active in politics and was recently spotted at the launch of the APPG on E-cigarettes in Westminster. It is also very much worth noting that the APPG is chaired by Conservative Mark Pawsey and populated mostly by Tory MPs as far as I can see. In Wales, too, the main antidote to Mark Drakeford's hogwash on e-cigs has consistently come from Conservative AM Darren Millar. 

The last variable is UKIP, who we can't judge on their Westminster efforts except to say that their complement of two delivered by voting against plain packaging recently. On that evidence, we can expect the party to be supportive of e-cigs just as they are in the EU despite messing up their TPD voting somewhat. 

UKIP was involved in the funniest smear story of all time when the Guardian threw mud about their receiving a donation from Totally Wicked ... despite admitting that the party was opposed to regulations against e-cigs and always has been, and Nigel Farage has been seen out and about on the campaign trail this year puffing away on his second generation e-cig. Indeed, he was forthright in his support in this clip from a couple of years ago.

This is alongside issuing unequivocal statements on the stupidity of restricting vaping.

“E-cigarettes have been a lifeline for many people, but this agreement will have the draconian effect of driving more 'vapers' back to full tobacco cigarettes... If the EU was truly interested in people’s health it would be helping to popularise rather than restrict e-cigarettes.” 

I think it might be safe to say, on that evidence, that vapers could vote UKIP with confidence that a stitch-up isn't in the offing.

Apart from that, I suppose it's up to the personal views of your local candidates, though I've not seen any mention in the election coverage so far, so unless one has knocked on your door and it's been raised, that is much of a mystery. If anyone has any personal comments from candidates to add, I'd be most interested.

It's also important to add that just because there is no mention in manifestos of banning e-cigs in public places, for example, or introducing advertising bans or taxation, it doesn't mean that it won't happen if the wrong people get into Westminster. The smoking ban, tobacco display ban, bans on smoking in cars and plain packaging are all examples of laws which are now on the statute book but were never presented to the public as a solid manifesto commitment.

Of course, if you're in Bristol Kingswood or Barnsley East, you've got a dedicated vaping candidate to vote for, so fill your boots.

Sure As Night Follows Day

Oh good, it's all still here.

These pages have been empty for a number of reasons recently. Puddlecote Inc has been dogged by large scale staff sickness, not helped by a further two drivers being called up for jury service in the same week! Your humble host then got smacked out of the park for 6 by a savage flu bug which could have been designed by the Devil himself, all of which was then topped off by a family tragedy over the weekend. There is still some mopping up to do after all that but things will return to normal over time.

In the meantime, there is news out today from Australia about that tobacco black market that was, apparently, just an industry lie during the campaign to install pointless plain packaging.

ILLEGAL tobacco is booming across Australia with a 30 per cent increase in black market trade in the past two years costing taxpayers more than $1.35 billion, a new report has found. 

Illicit tobacco continues to fund international crime syndicates with record tax increases and plain packaging fuelling the demand for cheap counterfeit and contraband cigarettes, according to the report released today.

Considering this is a quite obvious reaction to tax rises and removal of popular branding if you were to talk to any smoker, it shouldn't come as a surprise. But a facet of every tobacco control campaign ever created is to deny the bleeding obvious and pretend it's all just a creation of tobacco industry imaginations. You know, pubs won't close because of smoking bans, there is no shift to black market when you tax tobacco, and smokers will simply carry on buying their fags as normal in plain packs ... except kids who will magically no longer see them, that kind of thing.

Tobacco control sees only policies they want enacted, and require their demands to be backed up by faith in the denial of basic rules of economics and human nature. But then, anti-smokers have never really understood people anyway, and the only numbers they care about are those in their back account.

British American Tobacco Australia (BATA) spokesman Scott McIntyre said people were down-trading from legal brands to the black market “in droves”. 

“Illegal tobacco is mainly smuggled into Australia from overseas and sold at much lower prices than legal cigarettes, avoiding tobacco excise tax obligations,” he said. 

“They’re normally under $10 a pack, have no health warnings and aren't plain pack compliant.”

What's not to like? Smokers have long since worked out that government hates them, so why respect the laws government lays down, eh? Smuggling is seen as a victimless crime and those providing the black market operate in an increasingly friendly environment. In Puddlecoteville, for example, the local community is well served by the milkman - he's going to enjoy an even larger customer base once daft politicians have finished their plan of making all boxes gory and beige.

As Snowdon notes today ...

If it does nothing else - and we can be fairly sure it won't reduce legal sales of cigarettes - plain packaging will bring the size of Britain's non-duty paid tobacco market into sharp focus. Any cigarettes that are not in 'standardised' packaging will, by definition, not have had UK duty paid on them. You will see them wherever you see smokers. This observable fact will come too late to prevent the ridiculous policy being introduced, but the reality of plain packaging will make it impossible to deny the reality of Britain's black market. 

The UK's smokers mostly couldn't give a rat's fart about being loyal to the rules of a government that despises them. In fact, there's a certain joy to be had from buying off the radar and depriving the exchequor of a few bob, I always find.

This is precisely what is happening in Australia.

“Smokers are literally walking into their corner store and asking for the cheapest pack available,” Mr McIntyre said.

And if you want to see what that looks like, here's some undercover filming of it happening down under.

There's no reason to believe Australians are any different to the British, so we can fully expect an increase in the black market in Britain too once plain packs comes in, just as the campaign against the stupid idea predicted. Except with a turbo-charge added to the effect thanks to our proximity to Europe with its freedom of cross border purchases.

So once again politicians fix nothing while the black market creates more profits for gangsters and terrorists, and cheaper smokes become available with no control on sales to kids - and all the while, tobacco companies rightly queue up to sue them for theft. Nice job, idiots.