Tobacco control and supranational government: EU revision of tobacco directive 'debate'

Tobacco control and its policies are described in this video as an instrument of supranational government: of the United Nations millenium goals and Agenda 21. In both these areas my knowledge is limited but they both seem to be at odds with nationally based democratic politics. The video is UK Column's news broadcast of 25 February 2013, reproduced below, and the discussion is about Vladimir Putin's recent introduction of legislation restricting smoking in Russia, 25.50 minutes in:

 

 

The presenter Mike Robinson sounds almost apologetic about discussing the smoking ban in the context of this programme, which deals with news and current affairs in the context of UK sovereignty (and the sovereignties of other states) being undermined. (I personally found it quite difficult to find the various parts of the piece 'Lifting the veil of secrecy' that were recommended, and did not actually succeed, but will post links if I can get hold of them.)

The revision of the EU tobacco directive came up for debate yesterday (BBC report here). If you have time to see this video (almost 90 minutes) it will give you a fresh view of what is meant by 'debate'. There is more to come but it seems doubtful whether opponents to the directive will manage to make any impact.

 

 



The fact that tobacco control is pushed by authorities at the supra-government level makes opposing it very difficult – it is also a good reason to oppose it, because it claims to over-ride national democratic government and accountability. This is not a simplistic issue (it was not intended to be a long post!) but at the basis it means that people have to negotiate with each other on many issues through the medium of an authority who sets the rules, where they should be able to deal with each other directly. And our governments accept this: because they lack power over policy it reassures them to gain authority over personal interactions and habits.

Local authorities to withdraw investment in tobacco?

Yesterday's Mail on Sunday asked whether councils could damage the tobacco industry by withdrawing their investments in it: 

Shares in tobacco firms could fall if local authorities pull millions of pounds in investment as they take a lead role in NHS anti-smoking campaigns in April.

Whether or not local authorities in England and Wales unite in pulling their investments from tobacco it would seem that the pressure to disinvest will increase enormously after responsibility for anti-smoking campaigns is handed to local authorities this year.

 

While I think councils should be aware of the ethics of different companies (armaments companies would be near the top of my list of damaging investments), censorious remarks from Martin Dockrell of Action on Smoking and Health (see here) don't meet this requirement. This is top-down government at its best: central government sets policy and requires councils to implement it. It's not local government being responsive to local wants and needs, unless you consider that central government unfailingly respects local needs.

Meanwhile central government's tobacco investment portfolios will no doubt continue unmolested. Actually there is very little mention of them in the press, which seems very focused on local authority tobacco investments. Is this because there is no tobacco investment by central government, or because they are very good at keeping it quiet?

The tobacco control community seems to be trying incrementally to undermine the value of tobacco investments and also the idea that local authorities are required to obtain the maximum return. In this press release from FairPensions, which campaigns for ethical pensions investments, a spokesperson says:

'It's simply not true that the law requires pension funds to ignore their members' ethical views. It's time to move on from this tired old myth: savers who care about where their money is being invested have the right to expect a considered response to their concerns.'

She offers no evidence to refute the idea that pensions funds do have to get the best return. But even if she is right, other industries are just as destructive as tobacco in their environmental impact and employment practices. Tobacco is being singled out just because an orchestrated campaign is on hand to do just that, not because tobacco is more damaging than cluster bombs or any other hazard you might like to think of.

Advocating the withdrawal of millions in tobacco investment is exactly the kind of tactic that the UK doesn't need. But we can expect tobacco control to push for it because their livelihoods depend on attempting to strangle tobacco companies at whatever cost to the community at large.

Arguing with Simon Chapman!

To persuade fellow tweeters that making packs look identical speeds up transaction times, Simon Chapman first pointed at the study referred to here:

The study in question is Carter O, Mills B, Phan T, Bremner J. Measuring the effect of cigarette plain packaging on transaction times and selection errors in a simulation experiment, Tobacco Control, 21, 572–577, 2012.doi:10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2011-050087.

I expressed doubts that removing the branding would make cigarettes easier to identify, but he had none of it, posting the video below to prove how quick it is to pick out a plain pack from behind a screen:
This of course is not proof of anything, it is a video of a single transaction, without any consideration of how sales environments vary.

Professor Chapman has so much faith in this study that it resolves all the plain packaging dilemmas for him (to my mind serving times are nowhere near the crux about why this is a bad idea). To him this is a 'non-issue'. I asked him why he was bringing the issue up, when the study was over a year old.

After a few minutes I managed to find the response from Dick Puddlecote to the study: BMJ's official attempt to 'prove' that plain packaging makes shop service quicker. But I couldn't share it with Simon since he had blocked my response with the following comment:

Simon Chapman‏@SimonChapman6

@Belinda64 Study was done in Nov/Dec 2012. I talk about it because of the oceans of nonsense that BigTobacco & its goons (like you?) spout.

 

Well, no hard feelings, Simon! I have never been in correspondence with this man before but within a few exchanges of tweets he calls me a stupid person or a thug, and terminates the connection. More to the point, he hasn't persuaded me that he has a case using that study (incidentally he is also wrong about the date: the BMJ published the study in September 2011).          

EDIT: please see comment below 12 February from second Anonymous commenter: my mistake, seems I was the one got the studies back to front.                       

They decide that you will not smoke!

How odd a heading is this?

Health campaigners say smoke-free generation a matter of political will

Political will? The future of smokers is the business of the political class, not of the smokers. Apparently the will of the smoker – of any age – is irrelevant. According to this mindset, once a smoker you are helpless, and you have no will. Most people want to quit, says the political class, and there lies their justication for pouring health budget money away with very little result.

Sheila Duffy and her cohorts in the health (sic) industry have written to the Scotsman in support of their ambitions. The Commonwealth games must be smokefree. Let's think about cars, and let's be second in the race to plain packaging. (Don't let's fall behind Northern Ireland or Wales.) Can we license tobacco products? We need to help every smoker who wants to quit.

Who are these people? There is nothing wrong in a little health education, but this ratcheting up of proposed legislation is quite ridiculous. Coercion is no substitute for health education.

Wanting to wipe out an industry is not compatible with achievable public health goals. It suggests an obsession with tobacco that is a convenient smokescreen for other environmental health hazards – allowing the authorities to blame people for their own ill health – as well as being an obvious cash cow for pharmaceutical nicotine replacement products.

Smokers have their own political will!

On the European continent: rebellion and reversal

In Brussels, demonstrators from the retail sector protest the European Tobacco Products Directive.

In Ukraine, a reversal. The smoking ban is to be restricted to state and municipal institutions.

In Scotland, cover-up.

The plight of tobacco growers: ASH Scotland misses point of reader's letter

On Wednesday the Herald published a letter drawing attention to the importance of tobacco growing in parts of the world. It reminded readers that while it is worthy to have health goals, the degree to which certain economies depend on tobacco makes the prospect of a non-smoking future troublesome. (In fact, no one wants to be entirely dependent on a single product, and as we hear below it is unlikely that the tobacco industry is likely to shrink any time soon.) The author of this letter, Alex Flett, clearly criticises the anti-smoking agenda of ASH and other bodies in this light:

Are organisations such as Action on Smoking Health, local authorities, the Scottish Government and others going to replace lost dollar income to those countries that desperately need it and help them find other ways to earn hard currency?

Essentially he is asking whether a drive to eradicate smoking is really ethical.

You would think the reply by Sheila Duffy, published the following day, related to a completely different letter. She does not even address the question, 'How ethical is ethical?' in relation to her anti-smoking policies, indeed she opens her own letter, 'Alex Flett is right to raise concerns over the impact of growing tobacco in developing countries'. But this is not what he does.

Sheila Duffy does it however, but not in the most convincing terms:

The tobacco industry argues that it brings economic benefits to tobacco-growing countries. In fact the majority of profits go to the companies, while, as the World Health Organisation points out, tobacco farmers often become trapped in a cycle of poverty and debt. Farmers are forced by tobacco companies to enter into contracts to buy seeds, fertilizer and technical advice and sell their product at a set fee lower than the cost of production.

     

The tobacco crop's labour-intensive nature means it requires large amounts of pesticides and fertilizers, which farmers must buy in advance at great cost. Should crops fail the farmers themselves are liable to cover these costs. This doesn't even take into account the level of damage these chemicals cause when they end up in the soil, waterways, and the food chain. Child labour is also common, with poor families dependent on their children working on tobacco farms from an early age.

This is highly selective activity on the part of the WHO, and highly selective reporting by Sheila Duffy. When I googled 'farmers forced to buy seed at high prices', I got a page of entries about Monsanto and genetically modified agriculture. No doubt this does occur in some tobacco plantations, but pretending that it is unique to the tobacco companies, or that farmers will be safe from it by embarking on some other crop, is extremely irresponsible. (In fact when the antis were talking some time ago about how tobacco companies exploited children, I went to the website of
the International Labour Organization. Not only was there no mention of tobacco but the video on the first page shows a tobacco plantation that is shown as a model enterprise because of the education it offers children whose parents work there.)

Ms Duffy concludes her letter, still without making any reference to the issues raised by Mr Flett. She does however point out beans and maize are less labour-intensive than tobacco – a point no context as she clearly has little knowledge of agriculture.

This brief interview puts some issues in context: President of the International Tobacco Growers Association is interviewed by the BBC. He puts the points:

1. that the world tobacco market is growing;
2. that the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control has created an uneven playing field since only the signatory countries are bound by it. In the case of tobacco, many major players in the tobacco industry, such as the US, will benefit from any tightening of FCTC provisions, since these big players are not bound by them.
3. that the World Health Organisation continually freezes tobacco farmers out of opportunities to consult about converting from tobacco to alternative crops.

Tobacco Control editor won't share panel with tobacco industry

Ruth Malone, editor of Tobacco Control, writes an open letter to the FDA declining an invitation to discuss tobacco industry research on a panel including delegates from the tobacco industry.

The FDA is a body I know very little about. The little I know suggests that it falls under the undue influence of the very powerful. However I take issue with some of Malone's reasoning.

First, involving the tobacco companies as “stakeholders” on a panel with the public health community in this way suggests that all parties share a common or at least congruent goal.

Is it? Is that the basis on which talks took place in Northern Ireland? I would have thought the opposite was the case. There is a common agenda, one that recognises tobacco industry research as something worth talking about, but it wouldn't be worth talking about if everyone had the same view of it.

Second, any such discussion among “stakeholders” would require a minimal level of mutual understanding about the nature and purpose of science.

This is also an absolute requirement. Tobacco is legal according to specific guidelines, and it is vital that the parties reach a common understanding on this issue.

While the companies may have an interest in reducing the numbers who die prematurely from using their products (so that they will live to purchase more of them), they have never indicated any willingness to pull from the market the products that kill half their longtime users and continue to be sold. Absent such willingness, the practical goals of public health and the tobacco industry are in direct conflict. No “dialogue” will change that.

Unless the tobacco companies commit harikari, consigning to the black market a product used by billions worldwide, on which countless people depend for their livelihoods, there can be no common ground. Is this outlook – the fantasy that a recreational product will simply cease to exist – really consistent with sound public health goals?

As the Kessler decision found, the tobacco industry engaged in a conspiracy to cover up and distort the evidence of their products’ harmfulness, and they have a long track record of egregious manipulation of science.

No industry associated with health ever behaves like that!

From Malone's third point:

As we demonstrated in our papers examining Philip Morris’s support for FDA regulation of tobacco products [1]and its development of Project Sunrise, which sought to create and exploit divisions within tobacco control, [2]engagement with public health organizations allows tobacco companies to position themselves as reasonable and responsible, and position those who refuse to engage as extremists.

My issue with Tobacco Control is their obsession with tobacco as a public health issue in spite of ample evidence of other potential environmental hazards created by other powerful industries. Public health should identify environmental health hazards and seek to minimise them, but its current approach is judgemental and self-righteous. It is scarcely believeable that no one working for tobacco companies has any concern about the health consequences of their product, any more than it is believeable that everyone who works for GlaxoSmithKlein is a crook. Public health needs to do away with its self-righteous attitude and simply attempt to influence matters in such a way as to limit harm. Refusing to engage with industry because it causes harm is a bizarre approach. (Does any other industry than tobacco get singled out in this way?)

Ruth's Malone's summary shows up how far I disagree with her argument:

Fourth, tobacco industry denormalization is a key part of successful tobacco control efforts. Convening a meeting of this sort undermines those critically important efforts by creating a forum for re-legitimation through association with respected public health agencies and leaders. Lending the FDA imprimatur to a public meeting featuring tobacco company speakers suggests that something has indeed changed and the industry is no longer harming people through its promotion of deadly products.

On the contrary, engaging with the tobacco companies is only necessary because the product is recognized as a hazard to health. Where did this cosy attitude come from, that government is a matter of engaging only with those whose goals are alike?

The FDA may be required to interact with the industry for the purposes of discussing proposed regulation of tobacco products and what tobacco companies must do to comply. The FDA is not, however, required to “facilitate” dialogue as though it were acting as a neutral mediator between two parties with equally valid but divergent interests. In positioning itself as some sort of neutral party, FDA is unwittingly acting as an agent for the tobacco industry’s public relations initiatives and undermining a strong tobacco control strategy.

This would naturally work against her goal of denormalization. As far as she is concerned, the tobacco companies are required to turn up at the FDA offices just to be told what orders to follow. Anything else is giving the tobacco companies ideas above their station.

Tobacco is a huge market and the best that public health can hope for is that the companies' corporate reponsibility is strong and checks are in place to ensure that standards are reached and maintained. Public health also needs to recognise that although its contribution is important it does not trump everyone else's, and does not entitle it to tell the FDA how to engage with stakeholders (although it is entitled to an opinion, of course).

Those who refer to engage are extremists? As if!!