Download here. You can study at your leisure abstracts of the presentations at this summer's smoking cessation trade fair – most of them, that is, except the one for the presentation by public health minister Anne Milton, which was not available at the time of going to press (see p. 50).
The subject areas are harm reduction; prisons, probation and mental health; payment by results; campaigns; tactics of the tobacco industry.
In the middle of the brochure there is (as one might expect) a helpful section called 'Information from our sponsors', starting with a full page of 'information' about Champix, followed by 'information' about other kinds of smoking cessation medications (can double your chance to quit), followed by 'information' about a helpful organisation called the National Centre for Smoking Cessation and Training, which does pretty much what it says on the tin. Out there in the real world we could call this 'information' advertising, indicating the clear possibility of a commercial interest in the success of the conference, but we wouldn't want anyone to think that the pharmaceutical interests in question had anything to gain from government-endorsed smoking cessation campaigns, surely? (shhh, don't tell the World Health Organisation!)
Showing posts with label 2011 UK National Smoking Cessation Conference. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2011 UK National Smoking Cessation Conference. Show all posts
Thursday, 30 June 2011
Sunday, 19 June 2011
Public health minister Anne Milton presents at Smoking Cessation Conference
Public Health Minister Anne Milton recently presented Action on Smoking on Health with an award from the World Health Organisation at a recent meeting of the All-party Parliamentary Group on Smoking and Health.
This last week she is listed as presenting at the UK National Smoking Cessation Conference, in a piece entitled The future for tobacco control and smoking cessation in England: Our vision for the next 5 years. It's one of the few presentation that doesn't get its own summary page on the website, so we'll have to wait until all the presentations are made available in several weeks before finding out what she said.
So much for advice from the top to anti-smoking activists not to cosy up to drugs companies.
This last week she is listed as presenting at the UK National Smoking Cessation Conference, in a piece entitled The future for tobacco control and smoking cessation in England: Our vision for the next 5 years. It's one of the few presentation that doesn't get its own summary page on the website, so we'll have to wait until all the presentations are made available in several weeks before finding out what she said.
So much for advice from the top to anti-smoking activists not to cosy up to drugs companies.
Tuesday, 14 June 2011
ASH Scotland displays anti-smoking alliance building skills to London conference
Today was the second day of the 2011 UK Scottish Smoking Cessation Conference. Scottish readers will be proud to learn that the day kicked off with a workshop on successful tobacco control alliances, led by David Robertson, Alliances Manager and STCA Coordinator, ASH Scotland.
Building such alliances form a large part of ASH Scotland's work. The latest Local Tobacco Alliances project report describes work done over the last five years (this round of funding finishes this year). The alliances appear to include different professional and voluntary groups (predominantly in social services, health, environmental services). The report is full of the usual self-congratulatory waffle, but a more detailed idea of what the alliances do can be found here – a huge array of smoking cessation advice delivered to people of all ages and every conceivable setting.
I wish I could feel proud of such teamwork But – as the project documentation shows – this is top-down government starting with the World Health Organisation. It's about employing civil society to pursue a global goal, almost independently of the Scottish Government (that is, they pay a substantial whack of ASH Scotland's income) – and where's the accountability in that?
Building such alliances form a large part of ASH Scotland's work. The latest Local Tobacco Alliances project report describes work done over the last five years (this round of funding finishes this year). The alliances appear to include different professional and voluntary groups (predominantly in social services, health, environmental services). The report is full of the usual self-congratulatory waffle, but a more detailed idea of what the alliances do can be found here – a huge array of smoking cessation advice delivered to people of all ages and every conceivable setting.
I wish I could feel proud of such teamwork But – as the project documentation shows – this is top-down government starting with the World Health Organisation. It's about employing civil society to pursue a global goal, almost independently of the Scottish Government (that is, they pay a substantial whack of ASH Scotland's income) – and where's the accountability in that?
Monday, 13 June 2011
Dutch cut back on smoking cessation
I have learned over the last few years to become very cautious on the issue of universal health benefits – getting all medication free at point of need. Being congenitally hypothyroid I got everything I needed (for that condition) free even before the Scottish Government made everything free. The point is that I believe everyone should have the right to life-saving drugs – the problem is that when the state provides health care, it also decides what is essential, what you need. That is why it can criminalise somebody for treating themselves with cannabis for multiple sclerosis yet think nothing of prescribing Champix, or ritalin for kids, or countless other pharmaceutical remedies that someone else has decided society 'needs' so much that it should get it without the individual paying for it. The beneficiaries of this arrangement are easily identified and less easily satisfied with their stupendous market share in medicines.
In the Dutch case, they are definitely doing what they should be doing in Scotland, and axing subsidised smoking cessation. Anyone who wants to give up smoking needs a lot of will power.Many people can do it without drugs if they want to do it at all. This is not denying anyone treatment for leprosy, malaria, AIDS, tuberculosis, or any other life-threatening condition. It's withdrawal of health budget money from behavioural change, which is acknowledged by practitioners not to be effective.
The United Kingdom National Smoking Cessation Conference started today, with 603 delegates learning all the tricks of the trade. For example, they plan to teach 'disadvantaged carers' (single parents?) how to exercise TA (temporary abstinence) using NRT (nicotine replacement therapy) so as not to hurt their kids – anti-smokers' peculiar idea of harm reduction (take a pharmaceutically prepared substitute). I have my own feelings about these campaigns to stop people smoking at home. But that aside, the money spent on smoking cessation would be better spent on almost any other aid, not only for disadvantaged carers of children but also of carers of people with dementia, many of whom who are likely to be elderly themselves instead of all these resources invested in stopping people from smoking.
I don't know how far the Dutch cuts go, but insofar as they stop supporting this appalling market in NRT and related medications, I'm with them.
In the Dutch case, they are definitely doing what they should be doing in Scotland, and axing subsidised smoking cessation. Anyone who wants to give up smoking needs a lot of will power.Many people can do it without drugs if they want to do it at all. This is not denying anyone treatment for leprosy, malaria, AIDS, tuberculosis, or any other life-threatening condition. It's withdrawal of health budget money from behavioural change, which is acknowledged by practitioners not to be effective.
The United Kingdom National Smoking Cessation Conference started today, with 603 delegates learning all the tricks of the trade. For example, they plan to teach 'disadvantaged carers' (single parents?) how to exercise TA (temporary abstinence) using NRT (nicotine replacement therapy) so as not to hurt their kids – anti-smokers' peculiar idea of harm reduction (take a pharmaceutically prepared substitute). I have my own feelings about these campaigns to stop people smoking at home. But that aside, the money spent on smoking cessation would be better spent on almost any other aid, not only for disadvantaged carers of children but also of carers of people with dementia, many of whom who are likely to be elderly themselves instead of all these resources invested in stopping people from smoking.
I don't know how far the Dutch cuts go, but insofar as they stop supporting this appalling market in NRT and related medications, I'm with them.
Tuesday, 29 March 2011
Introducing the NHS Centre for Smoking Cessation and Training. Your smoking cessation career starts here!
It's almost Pythonesque, the numbers of people who are being trained specifically to stop others from smoking with (or without) the use of drugs.
As mentioned at the beginning of the year the UK National Smoking Cessation Conference takes place in June, this year in London. I described in then as a trade conference, but it is even more serious than that. It's a training agency, aiming to train and give certification to people who want to develop competence in their role of smoking cessation advisers/practitioners.
Behind the UKNSCC however looms another organisation, National Centre for Smoking Cessation Training (NCSCT), created from a winning bid by a consortium led by University College London to provide an accreditation system for smoking cessation advisers. (Is this what Tony Blair meant all those years ago by 'Education, Education, Education'?)
The organisation does have an 'ethical policy', which shows its main players have 'interests which might have a bearing on the independence of their judgement in relation to their work for the NCSCT': namely that they have received hospitality from Pfizer (manufacturer of Champix), or the Department of Health.
Here is their quarterly report for April to June 2010, which includes the news that 'On the 27th May 2010 the NCSCT was officially informed that it is now an ISO 9001 certified organisation (certificate number: FS 559421)'. Well, that's also reassuring. As is the long list of links.
Transatlantic allies offer full accreditation for smoking cessation-related activities across the pond (supported by Pfizer). Isn't it nice that we'll soon have as many words for smoking cessation as the eskimos have for snow?
Book here for the conference in London. You'll probably get a refund from your employer, and maybe something for accommodation (it's only London after all!)
As mentioned at the beginning of the year the UK National Smoking Cessation Conference takes place in June, this year in London. I described in then as a trade conference, but it is even more serious than that. It's a training agency, aiming to train and give certification to people who want to develop competence in their role of smoking cessation advisers/practitioners.
Behind the UKNSCC however looms another organisation, National Centre for Smoking Cessation Training (NCSCT), created from a winning bid by a consortium led by University College London to provide an accreditation system for smoking cessation advisers. (Is this what Tony Blair meant all those years ago by 'Education, Education, Education'?)
The organisation does have an 'ethical policy', which shows its main players have 'interests which might have a bearing on the independence of their judgement in relation to their work for the NCSCT': namely that they have received hospitality from Pfizer (manufacturer of Champix), or the Department of Health.
Here is their quarterly report for April to June 2010, which includes the news that 'On the 27th May 2010 the NCSCT was officially informed that it is now an ISO 9001 certified organisation (certificate number: FS 559421)'. Well, that's also reassuring. As is the long list of links.
Transatlantic allies offer full accreditation for smoking cessation-related activities across the pond (supported by Pfizer). Isn't it nice that we'll soon have as many words for smoking cessation as the eskimos have for snow?
Book here for the conference in London. You'll probably get a refund from your employer, and maybe something for accommodation (it's only London after all!)
Friday, 11 March 2011
Electioneering starts but public increasingly interested in anti-smoking money trail
The Scottish general elections will take place this May. Scottish Liberal Democrats chose the occasion of No Smoking day to address the nation. How can they fail to win enormous numbers of seats with a message like this? All available resources must be used to help people stop smoking? Is this really a national priority? It's nice to know that Mr Finnie took his role on the Health & Sport Committee so much to heart though.
In another neck of the political woods Big Brother Watch discusses 'The vested interests of the anti-smoking lobby', and speculates about the money trail that sustains the likes of Action on Smoking and Health and ASH Scotland. There is no doubt that there is an enormous conflation of interest between those who campaign to restrict smoking and those who stand to benefit from the sales of nicotine cessation medicines. Look no further than this website: those giving the presentations, the delegates, the sponsors (and check the archive pages from last year), all have a career interest in anti-smoking. We were outside the hotel in Glasgow as the delegates emerged last year, over 600, mostly publicly paid anti-smoking careerists, sporting a memento jute UKNSCC bag for their briefing papers and notes, and travelling from all four corners of the UK.
The money spent on this exercise is formidable, and let us remember that some of those who receive this public money think nothing of excluding ordinary members of the public like Mr Gilligan from public health policy discussions, simply because their path in life took them into a sales role instead of public health. It's a case of some being more equal than others.
The money trail does need to be more widely understood. At the bottom is a battle between drug companies and the general public. Drug companies seek a monopoly position and they compete against tobacco for the same customers. The state and the World Health Organisation help them out, even though their track record is compromised. Why is the state taking sides with pharmaceuticals against their own people, and why is the World Health Organisation doing exactly the same thing?
Why is everyone saying that the bastards running the tobacco companies are beyond comparison rent seeking and careless of public health, when disregard for public health goes with the territory of many big companies – and small ones – in all walks of life.
In the words of detective novelist Ian Rankin: 'We spend most of our time chasing something called "the underworld", but it's the overworld we should really be keeping an eye on.'
In another neck of the political woods Big Brother Watch discusses 'The vested interests of the anti-smoking lobby', and speculates about the money trail that sustains the likes of Action on Smoking and Health and ASH Scotland. There is no doubt that there is an enormous conflation of interest between those who campaign to restrict smoking and those who stand to benefit from the sales of nicotine cessation medicines. Look no further than this website: those giving the presentations, the delegates, the sponsors (and check the archive pages from last year), all have a career interest in anti-smoking. We were outside the hotel in Glasgow as the delegates emerged last year, over 600, mostly publicly paid anti-smoking careerists, sporting a memento jute UKNSCC bag for their briefing papers and notes, and travelling from all four corners of the UK.
The money spent on this exercise is formidable, and let us remember that some of those who receive this public money think nothing of excluding ordinary members of the public like Mr Gilligan from public health policy discussions, simply because their path in life took them into a sales role instead of public health. It's a case of some being more equal than others.
The money trail does need to be more widely understood. At the bottom is a battle between drug companies and the general public. Drug companies seek a monopoly position and they compete against tobacco for the same customers. The state and the World Health Organisation help them out, even though their track record is compromised. Why is the state taking sides with pharmaceuticals against their own people, and why is the World Health Organisation doing exactly the same thing?
Why is everyone saying that the bastards running the tobacco companies are beyond comparison rent seeking and careless of public health, when disregard for public health goes with the territory of many big companies – and small ones – in all walks of life.
In the words of detective novelist Ian Rankin: 'We spend most of our time chasing something called "the underworld", but it's the overworld we should really be keeping an eye on.'
Saturday, 1 January 2011
UK National Smoking Cessation Conference 2011
The dates and venue have been announced for this year's major annual trade conference in the calendar of the anti-smoking industry. It'll be held in London on Monday 13 and Tuesday 14 June, at the Novotel London West Hotel.
Further details will be released closer to the date, but expect a line-up of seasoned tobacco control advocates from throughout the UK, sponsorship from major pharmaceutical companies and the manufacturers of breath-testing equipment, and hundreds of publicly funded delegates assembled to learn how to push medicinal nicotine (they'll all walk out of the conference with folders and hessian bags emblazoned with the UKNSCC logo).
These are guesses based on last year's conference. A few of us waved banners outside the Radisson Hotel, Glasgow last June, and it did have an impact: one or two delegates seemed genuinely astonished that anyone would want to protest against their conference.
You'll get an idea about the likely agenda of the conference here. The home page of the UKNSCC site gives a brief preview of the 2011 conference (we can look forward to a nicotine vaccine, for example), mentioning treatments that are 'known to be effective such as nicotine replacement therapy'. See this paper to discover how untrue this is: 'Currently stop smoking services are evaluated on the percentage of 4-week quitters, but around three-quarters relapse after this date,' says Tim Coleman of the UK Centre for Tobacco Control Studies, in a bid to keep smokers on nicotine cessation medication for the longer term.
For the smoking cessation industry, smoking restrictions represent marketing opportunities. Smoking bans already exist in workplaces, but last year's conference reported local projects that discourage parents from smoking at home: this slide presentation features a Glasgow project. Using potential damage to children as a pretext, 'intervention' to make smoking difficult at home will become more popular among enforcing authorities (discussed today at Dick Puddlecote's place).
Pressuring people to use nicotine substitutes rather than expose their children to smoke will become more common: this seems to be what the smoking cessation industry means by 'harm reduction'. Given the lack of any significant evidence linking passive smoking to specific cases of ill health or mortality, I find it hard to believe that exposing children to smoke is usually harmful (and the idea that it can be described as child abuse is absurd). The idea that pharmaceutical companies are helping to create pressure to 'denormalise' smoking in the home is far more likely than the idea that secondary smoke harms kids, in homes where fresh air is reasonably abundant.
So I will be looking out for the agenda of this conference. It won't be the only smoking cessation conference this year, but it involves significant players in the UK anti-smoking industry.
Further details will be released closer to the date, but expect a line-up of seasoned tobacco control advocates from throughout the UK, sponsorship from major pharmaceutical companies and the manufacturers of breath-testing equipment, and hundreds of publicly funded delegates assembled to learn how to push medicinal nicotine (they'll all walk out of the conference with folders and hessian bags emblazoned with the UKNSCC logo).
These are guesses based on last year's conference. A few of us waved banners outside the Radisson Hotel, Glasgow last June, and it did have an impact: one or two delegates seemed genuinely astonished that anyone would want to protest against their conference.
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| Our placards: the slogan on the right has also been used on demos in the US |
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| Eddie poses with Sheila Duffy: Radisson Hotel, Glasgow |
For the smoking cessation industry, smoking restrictions represent marketing opportunities. Smoking bans already exist in workplaces, but last year's conference reported local projects that discourage parents from smoking at home: this slide presentation features a Glasgow project. Using potential damage to children as a pretext, 'intervention' to make smoking difficult at home will become more popular among enforcing authorities (discussed today at Dick Puddlecote's place).
Pressuring people to use nicotine substitutes rather than expose their children to smoke will become more common: this seems to be what the smoking cessation industry means by 'harm reduction'. Given the lack of any significant evidence linking passive smoking to specific cases of ill health or mortality, I find it hard to believe that exposing children to smoke is usually harmful (and the idea that it can be described as child abuse is absurd). The idea that pharmaceutical companies are helping to create pressure to 'denormalise' smoking in the home is far more likely than the idea that secondary smoke harms kids, in homes where fresh air is reasonably abundant.
So I will be looking out for the agenda of this conference. It won't be the only smoking cessation conference this year, but it involves significant players in the UK anti-smoking industry.
Thursday, 30 December 2010
Sheila's blog recommends quitting for Scotland
ASH Scotland takes up the 'new year quit theme' (although without backing in the form of free nicotine patches from the government, which is being offered by the Department of Health in England), exhorting people to quit smoking in order to save money – for Scotland as well as for the sake of personal financial and health gains.
Sheila Duffy refers to the ASH Scotland report Up in Smoke in support of her plea to stop smoking for Scotland. This report estimates woeful logic and shameless guesses in order to force the figure for smoking-related costs up above the figure for revenue.
Unlike Action on Smoking and Health (UK), Sheila's blog post refers almost positively to alternative smoking cessation treatments and willpower.
Smoking cessation is an industry these days: at least, some people treat it as an industry (and a ruthless one too). Look forward to a major trade conference on smoking cessation drugs and therapies to be held in 2011.
Sheila Duffy refers to the ASH Scotland report Up in Smoke in support of her plea to stop smoking for Scotland. This report estimates woeful logic and shameless guesses in order to force the figure for smoking-related costs up above the figure for revenue.
Unlike Action on Smoking and Health (UK), Sheila's blog post refers almost positively to alternative smoking cessation treatments and willpower.
There is a lot of help and advice out there to support smokers thinking about quitting. Lots of people can quit through willpower alone – and often find it easier than they thought it would be. Many people find alternative therapies help them.Admitting that people can quit smoking through willpower alone is new in anti-smoking circles. ASH Scotland's reference to alternative methods of quitting on its website is almost reasonable:
Complementary therapies like acupuncture, hypnosis or laser therapy, help some people to stop smoking but there is a lack of scientific evidence to support their effectiveness and they can be expensive. If you are interested in using a complementary therapy, find out about the therapy and choose a registered therapist before you commit yourself to a course of treatment.The effect is spoiled by the assertion that NRT and Zyban 'have been tested in scientific trials': even developers of nicotine cessation treatments know this is bunkum. But at least Sheila has acknowledged that some people find that willpower and therapies other than NRT, Zyban and Champix work. Contrast the page on non-NHS therapies on the Action on Smoking and Health website.
Smoking cessation is an industry these days: at least, some people treat it as an industry (and a ruthless one too). Look forward to a major trade conference on smoking cessation drugs and therapies to be held in 2011.
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