Unless You're Rich, The Coalition Doesn't Give A Shit

In case you were unsure as to whether government hates the less well off, or if they're just bluffing, this might help you to make up your mind.

The coalition this week came out with a ""full, frank and unvarnished" assessment of the coalition's pledges". Included in the crime and policing part was this.

We have published a cross-government alcohol strategy and launched a consultation on the merits of key policies, including a 45p minimum unit price for alcohol and a range of measures to reduce burdens on business.

Yes, they are still desperately trying to pretend minimum pricing is a public order issue despite over 90% of those calling for it being full-time professional public health finger-waggers with an eye on how to finance their next new car.

Firstly, minimum alcohol pricing was not in either of the Conservative or Lib Dem manifestos. Secondly, I can't remember, can you, it being a 'pledge' in the coalition agreement.

So how this can be seen as some sort of coalition triumph is baffling.

It's not an achievement, it is just more conclusive proof that the cabinet increasingly ignores societal happiness in favour of vested interest lobbyists and chasing those areas which contain people who are more likely to vote.

The poor have long since lost interest in politics simply because they are ignored wholesale. Minimum alcohol pricing is designed exclusively to punish the poor and proves that any talk of 'progressive' government is a pathetic sham.

This 'success' succinctly says that if you're not well off, none of the three main parties could give a flying fuck what you think. And they're boasting about it.

Link Tank 12/01

Something to read over a bowl of your stockpiled Sugar Puffs.

Is Andy Burnham's ban on Frosties Labour's monkey tennis moment?

Yes, money does buy happiness

David Cameron may have inadvertently set up an accidental EU exit

Snus saga: An unfortunate illustration of the EU tobacco products directive fiasco

How being overweight is good for you - and why you mustn't say so in public

A muslim Indian community reacts to the recent rape case by banning girls from singing, dancing and mobile phones

A scramble for franchises as fast food booms in Pakistan

It took a while, but North Wales finally get a joke in a 'tiger sex' soundtrack

94 year old escapes from Munich hospital to have a beer

The moon-howling, tarantula and scorpion-eating badass cannibal mouse of Mexico

An Inconvenient Truth

In March, I commented on a BBC Radio 4 episode of You and Yours featuring a lunatic called Joy Townsend. She is from the London School of Health and Tropical Medicine and was on the editorial board of ASH's report, Beyond Smoking Kills.

I entitled the article "Forget everything you thought you knew about economics, human nature" because Joy came out with one of the most absurd pieces of anti-smoking fantasy I've ever heard.

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

Joyless: 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.

You could up the tax on cigarettes to £100 per pack, according to Joy, and it would have no effect on smuggling whatsoever. Smokers would simply give up. End of story.

I do wonder what she would make of this population level ecological study, then. No, not some computer-generated pile of steaming bullshit so trusted by the tobacco control industry, I'm talking about what has been peer-reviewed as something called real life in New York.

The Tax Foundation said that 60.9% of cigarettes sold in New York State are smuggled in from other states. 

This makes New York the biggest importer of black market cigarettes, along with the state's highest tax rate of $4.35 per pack. That's compared to Missouri, the state with the lowest rate, of 17 cents per pack. 

In New York City the tax rate is even higher, adding another $1.50 per pack to the state rate. It's not uncommon for smokers to pay $12 for a pack. 

The report said that tobacco smuggling and the tax rate have risen practically in tandem since 2006. The New York State tax on cigarettes has risen 190% since that time, as the rate of smuggling increased 170%.

There comes a point at which we must seriously begin to question the mental health of many in tobacco control. They are either deranged, or compulsive liars in need of urgent help.

Yet government listen to them. Go figure.

The Date Of Guilty Knowledge Is Past For E-Cigs

It's not often you see common sense being exhibited on the usually pro-EU EurActive website, so relish this like you would your personal celebrity heart throb in a bath of chocolate. It's an object lesson in how to turn entrenched anti-smoking rhetoric back on the accusers.

The EU’s new tobacco policy statement, ostensibly designed to promote public health, will have the opposite effect: Far from reducing the toll of “tobacco,” millions will be condemned to ongoing addiction to smoking, half of whom will die as a direct result.

If, as the tobacco control industry repeatedly tells us, one in every two smokers perish because of combustible tobacco, they should surely be desperate to get them off of the habit by any means possible, no?

The World Health Organization predicts that if current trends continue, the likely toll of “tobacco” will amount to one billion lives cut short worldwide. 

By tobacco, however, anyone with knowledge of the spectrum of tobacco-related disease knows it’s the inhalation of cigarette smoke hundreds of thousands of times over decades that would be responsible if that catastrophic prediction comes to pass - the relative harm of non-combustible tobacco and nicotine-delivery products is in the order of one percent that of smoking.

So just think of the huge number of lives which could be saved by snus and e-cigs. For every two who replace smoking with one of the alternatives the EU is outlawing, a death could be avoided. Hey, these are tobacco control stats I'm quoting here. And we know, don't we, that the tobacco control industry are very keen on 'saving lives'.

Don't we?

While some parts of it may have a beneficial impact on smoking rates, albeit minor, the net effect will be, paradoxically but inevitably, damaging to Europeans’ health. The directive proposes to continue (indeed strengthen) the prior ban on Swedish smokeless tobacco, known as snus. 

Worse, restrictions and regulations dealing with the relatively new devices known as e-cigarettes will effectively ban them.

Well, no we don't 'know' that at all any more. Because, as the EU tobacco products directive - and its urgent cheerleading by global tobacco control industry trouser-fillers - proves beyond doubt, it has never, ever, been about health.

So why would any official directive aimed at improving health advocate banning, in effect, effective and relatively harmless nicotine-delivery methods that help smokers quit, while allowing the most harmful consumer product - cigarettes - to keep on killing?

Hmm, could it be that the entire anti-smoking crusade has never been about health?

Continuing the ban on smokeless tobacco in the EU is antithetical to public health for many reasons. Adding what amounts to a ban on e-cigarettes will tie the hands of millions of EU smokers desperate to quit, and force a like amount of successful quitters back on to lethal addictive cigarettes.

Half of whom, according to tobacco controllers, will die because of anti-smoking intransigence. They've said it themselves ... hundreds of times.

Relaxing, not tightening, strictures against harm-reduction products should be implemented in the EU, and as soon as possible, as thousands die needlessly each day from inhaling smoke.

And the families of the 'one in every two' who are denied harm reductive alternatives, due to pharma and tobacco control industry influence and corruption, should sue the EU and myopic tobacco control industrialists until they bleed. They need only to refer to thousands of state-funded tobacco control studies over the decades to gather their evidence. 

Needless to say, stating the stark staringly obvious is always going to spook an industry which has lived on falsities and dogmatic half-truth for decades. So the comments are hilarious as the prime (in fact, only) tobacco control tactic of playing the man not the ball is employed in earnest.

I've said before, haven't I, that e-cigs have immense potential for showing the vast majority of professional anti-smokers up as the evil, degenerate, corrupt, and damaging troughers that they are. But the EU have upped the ante with their absurd ban on snus and e-cigs.

With new evidence coming in all the time, tables could well be turned. It's more than arguable that the "date of guilty knowledge" - a concept ASH, for example, are very well aware of  - for the blinkered tobacco control industry is now past. Tobacco controllers, don't say you weren't warned, eh?

ADDENDUM: I drafted the above yesterday evening, before tuning in to VapourTrailsTV for a Q&A with former ASH Director Clive Bates. So, as it was fresh in my mind, I posted a question to his opinion on the possibility that tobacco controllers might have passed this "date of guilty knowledge" whereby they should be aware that policies which demonise or marginalise e-cigs will negligently cause harm.

He thinks I may have a point. You can see his reply by scrolling to 32:45 below (or just watch the whole thing, of course).

To object to the EU's irresponsible stance on e-cigs, see Bates's excellent article on the best way to do so because "this directive matters to you".

The Times Digs Deeper

In a rare outbreak of objective press coverage, The Times has picked up on the dodgy bill of health given to the plain packaging consultation impact assessment as reported here back in June last year. The regulatory policy committee (RPC) weren't altogether happy with it, you see.

It's mostly behind a paywall, sadly, but Times journo Alex Ralph has again been beavering away.

The impact assessment was given an “amber” rating by an independent committee last year, meaning that it needed more work. The Regulatory Policy Committee, a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, found that the assessment was fit for purpose but requested that it “provide more analysis to support the claim that the proposal will have an overall neutral effect on business”.

That is contained in the Scribd file I posted in June, but this bit is news to me.

In a separate report last March, the committee also raised specific concerns about the flaws in the department’s assessments on proposed tobacco regulations. It said that they “tended to provide a full analysis of benefits but failed to estimate the full economic costs to producers and retailers”.

Now, forgive me if I'm wrong, but hasn't such an approach been the stock in trade of tobacco control for decades now? Indeed, it is now a mirrored tactic employed by anti-alcohol, anti-food, and anti just about anything else you might care to mention.

Go to extremes, talk up every best case scenario while ignoring resultant consequences is the norm. It's an approach best exhibited by an appallingly-compromised wonk from Policy Exchange two years ago.

It's encouraging to see that the RPC recognise this fact, though.

We now must only guess which official whitewashed piece of 'evidence' the RPC might have been alluding to with plain packaging. Because, you see, there are so many bastardisations within this consultation that it's hard to pin it down.

Could the RPC's concerns be about the carefully selected judges of impacts to trade should plain packs be introduced, who just happen to be those who are promoting the policy and are paid to do so?

The tract admits that there's no way they will be impartial, and that many will have a personal stake in seeing one side of the argument prevail over the other. However, the civil service doesn't seem to envisage any problem with this.

Or could they be a bit spooked by the fact that other governmental departments have been purposely excluded from giving their input?

You see, the Department of Health were mighty pissed off in 2009 that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (DBIS) had the temerity to raise concerns about the damage the display ban would have on retail shops. They were forced to water down the proposals as a result, and that just won't do. 

So, this time, they have excluded the DBIS entirely to ensure that no-one can raise a silly objection like, you know, 58,000 small businesses - which are overwhelmingly against the idea for good reason - being shafted on the whim of the lucratively tax-funded tobacco control industry.

Or perhaps they are uncomfortable with the revelation that the entire raft of 'evidence' for the proposal in the first place has been written by the same people who dreamed up the daft idea.

So, thus far, we have a proposal which wasn't in any manifesto; government shovelling artic-loads of money towards lobbying itself; an evidence review which includes tobacco control referencing their own (already paid for) fantasies; and a set of expert opinions to be taken from the same people who imagined, demanded, got paid for advancing, and submitted biased 'evidence' for, plain packaging of tobacco.

Your guess is as good as mine.

If you, like me, would prefer to see these questions answered publicly before the Department of Health gives us its decision on the matter of plain packaging, you'll be sadly disappointed. The finalised impact assessment, as I understand it, is only released after the decision has already been made.

How very convenient.

Lipsmackin' Thirstquenchin' Acetastin' Kidkillin' Pepsi

I've seen, heard and read some ridiculous hysterics from the public health industry over the years - the US state council leader who compared smoking in a neighbouring flat to putting your arm through the wall and pointing a gun at a child's head is a particular favourite* - but I think this trumps them all.

The New York Times' resident food scaremonger, Mark Bittman, has pushed the boundaries of even his own world-class level of absurd hyperbole while discussing celebrities advertising fizzy drinks. Disgust over the Sandy Hook school shooting seems to have been too good an opportunity for Bittman to resist.

Beyoncé Knowles would presumably refuse to take part in an ad campaign that showed her carrying a semiautomatic rifle. But she’s eager, evidently, to have the Pepsi logo painted on her lips and have a limited-edition Pepsi can bearing her likeness.

Because drinking a Pepsi is as lethal as being shot in the face by a Bushmaster .223, obviously. I'm surprised the comparison has never occurred to you before, aren't we lucky that there are people like Bittman around to remind us? It's well past time for a Scarface remake with Al Pacino announcing "say hello to my little friend" as he throws a couple of two litre Dr Peppers at the front door.

I wonder how Bittman came to believe that insensitive and wildly exaggerated hyperbole like this is acceptable? I mean, where could he have possibly learned such tricks?

Knowles is renting her image to a product that may one day be ranked with cigarettes as a killer we were too slow to rein in.

I think that may be a clue, don't you?

Of course, this example of 'anything-to-scare' tactics isn't at all new. As I've mentioned before, prohibitionists have always been keen to shamelessly ride the populist wave and piggy-back their prejudices on whatever disaster, moral panic, or ugly mindset is prevalent at any particular time. What's more, The Art of Suppression illustrates that the New York Times have been purveyors of the genre for nearly a century.

Although blacks tended to prefer cocaine to opiates, both drugs were disproportionately used by whites. Wright and his fellow travellers nevertheless focused on alleged acts of rape and violence committed by “cocaine-crazed negroes”. According to Wright, cocaine was the “creator of criminals” which drove “the humbler negroes all over the country to abnormal crimes.” Evidence of these crimes was anecdotal at best and it was patently untrue to claim, as the New York Times did, that cocaine made blacks impervious to bullets, or that “most of the attacks upon white women in the South are the direct result of the cocaine-crazed Negro brain.” These tales were so similar to the contemporary scare about liquor-soaked blacks on the rampage in the Deep South that it is fair to assume that one set of prohibitionists was borrowing from the other.

So you could say that Bittman is a bit of a traditionalist, proudly flying a flag for the long history of insane obsessives building a succession of ever-taller skyscrapers out of health molehills.

It's too much for this particular blogger to bear, though. Goodbye cruel world! I'm off to end it all by blowing my brains out with a Sprite.

* I can't find the link, anyone care to provide it?

"This Directive Matters To You"

Listen, it's a mundane Tuesday. Instead of wasting your free time playing Sugar Crush on Facebook, or whatever, would you prefer to do something today which has potential to benefit almost a billion people Europe-wide?

You would? Great! Then please read a remarkably excellent article from former ASH Director Clive Bates on how to object - most strongly, I'd urge - to the recent, and daft, EU Tobacco Products Directive.

On 19th December 2012, the EU produced a a proposal for new laws controlling tobacco and nicotine products like e-cigarettes.  The proposal includes a justification for the measures with draft legal text and comes with supporting documentation. It covers a wide range of issues, including: labelling and warnings on cigarette packs; branding restrictions; control of flavours and additives; tracking and tracing to prevent smuggling and counterfeiting; and measures that apply to smokeless tobacco products and nicotine-containing products like e-cigarettes. The proposed directive contains measures that make it harder or impossible for smokers to switch from cigarettes to much less dangerous nicotine products – an approach that will cause much more death and disease than it prevents.  If you smoke, use e-cigarettes, or if have friends or relatives that smoke, or if you are concerned about the health damage from smoking, then this directive matters to you.

Helpfully underlined is the bit that would apply to many who pop by this part of the internet.

I strongly encourage you to go and read the whole thing, it gives all the info you need to object to one of the most absurd EU directives - either proposed or enacted - ever to have been imagined on the back of big pharma influence.

One aspect I will add, though, seeing as Bates didn't mention it, is that this directive has also been steamrollered through despite two significant occurrences which should have seen it shelved.

Firstly, it entirely ignored the EU public consultation it purports to follow. That is even after they erased 82,000 responses which they didn't like, but conveniently 'found' others hidden away which they refuse to let anyone see.

"European Commission's health directorate claims to have received a response from governments in other ways to support the ban on snus but refuses to show them."

And if that isn't bad enough, the Commissioner who drafted this directive is currently being investigated in a Maltese court for corruption over bribes he was alleged to have solicited while working on it ... but the EU thought it perfectly sound to go ahead anyway.

So, please take some time out of your evening to visit Clive Bates's article and put your name to a letter, e-mail, or mortar bomb other missive objecting to a thoroughly evil piece of proposed EU regulation.