ASH Scotland and the tobacco control lobby talk nonsense about profits and health

Two extraordinary statements have arisen this week from the anti-smoking lobby that reflect its bizarre approach to ethics, business and health.

On the issue of regulating e-cigarettes, tobacco control is faced with a dilemma. The controlling interest in the field is tobacco's competitor, namely the smoking cessation market (and I use the word 'market' deliberately). E-cigarettes muddy the water, as they are a clear alternative to smoking, but they're made by those rascals the Chinese (!), and so cannot be trusted as a legitimate alternative to smoking. It may be that the existence of these products will force the more honest among tobacco control advocates – those who actually recognise that smokers have a legitimate range of options if they want to quit – to admit that some of their more extreme allies might have an agenda other than helping people to stop smoking. 

It looks as if Sheila Duffy has quite a long way to go before she can bring herself to applaud the existence of e-cigarettes as an alternative to smoking: 

 Ms Duffy said: "Quitting tobacco is the single best thing a smoker can do to improve their health. We do not support banning e-cigarettes as they could help many smokers to move to a less risky product. However e-cigarettes are produced by commercial companies, with a profit motive." [Emphasis added]

Ms Duffy has of course observed that smoking cessation medication, much of it laced with nicotine, is also made by commercial companies. In fact these companies are major pharmaceutical companies, some with eye-watering turnover. 'Health' is one of those goodies that we buy all the time: the demand is enormous globally, and the question is whether drug companies can keep their mind on the job of improving health and off the balance sheet. Pharmaceutical companies co-sponsor the UK's annual smoking cessation conference (one might as well call it a trade fair), and Chris Snowdon spotted that the main sponsors all have a slots on the conference programme (click on the figures in this link to enlarge). In fact Ms Duffy knows quite well that smoking cessation products are [also]produced by commercial companies with a profit motive. She knows quite well that she's talking nonsense. Doesn't she?

The Scottish government awaits the conclusions of UK regulators before deciding what action they should take on regulating e-cigarettes, so Ms Duffy can afford to sit on the fence for a little longer. 

But there was an even worse clanger in a letter from various tobacco control personalities to the Guardian on the subject of plain packaging, which claimed: 'Tobacco, unlike other causes of disease, has a global and powerful industry promoting its interests' [emphasis added]. We-e-e-ll, as Sheila Duffy observed 'mosquitoes don’t have PR agencies and expensive promotions budgets', which means that it's not really worth fighting malaria because it's no fun unless you can blame a company for the fact that people get ill. 

But can't we all blame companies for people getting ill. Bhopal? Who makes asbestos? What about illegal levels of pollutants in the air? It is completely absurd to claim that tobacco companies the only corporate entities that give people health problems. I return to a passage from George Monbiot's Captive State (2002):

As big business infiltrates the research agenda, ever wider zones of public enquiry are placed off limits. In 1999, the government published a White Paper on public health called Saving Lives: Our Healthier Nation. The only atmospheric pollution named in the report is radon. It also happens to be one of the only pollutants in Britain which does not result from the activities of large corporations: it is naturally occurring. The report warns us about the dangers of cancer resulting from 'exposure to radon gas in certain homes or excessive sunlight', but nuclear power stations are not mentioned, and nor are any other chemicals, even though the paper concedes that 'Pollutants in the atmosphere may cause cancer if inhaled or swallowed'. The language in which this warning is given is interesting: it creates the impression that breathing or ingesting pollution is something we can avoid. The paper informs us that the government hosted 'the largest ever Ministerial conference on environment and health in 1999. It fails to tell us that the links between cancer and industrial pollution were dropped from the agenda soon after the meeting began. [link added] 

Monbiot is clear that somehow environmental issues came off the agenda in 1999, suggesting not that tobacco is the most powerful company that causes ill health but that it is the least powerful, because it couldn't get its product taken off the danger list. He points out that while universities are happy to boast that they won't take money from tobacco, they are also happy to take money off any other powerful investor, in effect offering up their research facilities to the highest bidder. There are many reasons that tobacco has such a bad press (the power of the medical establishment and the perceived uselessness of tobacco are two of them), but the fact that tobacco has been pushed off the debating table (denormalised) is not really good news for the public. For years, we have been asking who is going to be denormalised next.

Both Sheila Duffy and the health lobbyists who signed the letter to the Guardian are misguided in their judgements. Shortcuts taken by competing companies on a global scale do injure people and make them ill, It's a fact, and pretending that only tobacco or e-cigarettes benefit from an absence of regulations is either quite dishonest or deplorably ignorant.

Dave Goerlitz interviews in eleven episodes

I saw these yesterday for the first time. Dave Goerlitz is the former Winston Man. Here he talks to Chris Snowdon (2009) about how an opportunity to discourage smoking became a money-obsessed prohibition campaign, starting with the Master Settlement Agreement.

1/11 on joining tobacco control


2/11 on the corruption of tobacco control
3/11 where did the money go?
4/11 on smoking bans
5/11 on junk science
6/11 on prohibition
7/11 on personalities
8/11 on being asked to lie
9/11 at an anti-smoking event
10/11 coming full circle
11/11 final thoughts

ASH's tobacco company stooge list is an own goal

That crazy list again: Chris Snowdon, who was named personally as a closet friend of tobacco, unwraps some of this.

The main mistake that ASH makes is that those on this huge list ... (h/tip Simon Clark)

Adam Smith Institute
Alcan Packaging
Alliance against IP Theft
American Chamber of Commerce to the European Union
Anti-Counterfeiting Group
Association of Convenience Stores
Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers
Business Action to Stop Counterfeiting and Piracy (BASCAP)
British Brands Group
British Chamber of Commerce in Belgium
British Retail Consortium
Cato Institute
Confederation of British Industry
Confederation of European Community Cigarette Manufacturers
Deloitte
Democracy Institute
European Cigar Manufacturers’ Association
European Communities Trademark Association
European Policy Centre
European Policy Forum
European Rolling Papers Association
European Roundtable of Industrialists
European Risk Forum
European Smoking Tobacco Association
European Smokeless Tobacco Council
European Travel Retail Council
Federation of Small Businesses
FORCES
FOREST
Fraser Institute
Freedom to Choose (F2C)
Global Intellectual Property Centre
Independent Retail News
Institute of Economic Affairs
Interbrand
International Chamber of Commerce
International Trademark Association
ISBA (Incorporated Society of British Advertisers)
Leicester Asian Business Association (LABA)
Liberal Vision
London Economics
Markenverband
National Association of Cigarette Machine Operators
National Federation of Retail Newsagents
Nude Brand Consulting
Privacy International
Progressive Vision
Responsible Retailers
Rural Shops Alliance
Save Our Pubs and Clubs
Scottish Grocers Federation
Sinclair Collis
Trans-Atlantic Business Dialogue
Transatlantic Public Affairs
The Free Society
TICAP (The International Coalition Against Prohibition)
Tobacco Industry Platform
Tobacco Manufacturers Association (TMA)
Tobacco Retailers Alliance (TRA)
Tobacco Workers Alliance
Union ales Fabricants (Unifab)
Unite

.. all have their own interests to look after. If this means following the same line as tobacco, it does not make them tobacco company stooges. The plain fact is that a wide range of actors in society will find themselves in opposition to the interests of the narrow, purist tobacco control dogma.  The wider ASH casts its net to condemn people who oppose its demands, the less reasonable it will seem to the ordinary person in the street.

Incidentally I did learn something interesting from the ASH tobacco company stooge list:

British American Tobacco’s public relations in the UK are handled by Weber Shandwick, which also counts the Japanese Whaling Association and the Chinese Government as clients.

Did Weber Shandwick lose this contract then? Shame. But the Scottish Government still uses them anyway.

Sandford on the back foot

Well worth a listen – very entertaining.



I especially enjoyed Amanda Sandford's claim, quickly rebutted by Chris Snowdon, that tobacco is unique and there was no suggestion that the idea of plain packaging would be applied to any other product. See final bullet point here – this consultation is current. In the twinkling of an eye Amanda Sandford proceeds from 'absolutely no evidence of a domino effect: tobacco is unique and there is no question of this policy being extended', to 'just because it's on the table doesn't mean it will become law'.

The discussion panel chews over the so-called 'independent academic review'. I'm asking my MP to raise this with the Department of Health.

Pell's front-cover-of-the BBC premature birth speculation

h/tip Chris Snowdon, Pell now claims a 10 per cent drop in premature births since the smoking ban was implemented in Scotland.

There is no evidence for this (Chris takes apart the figures). Considering that as I write the BBC has given it a home page splash there is surprisingly little in the article to justify all the fuss,

But while their work suggests a link, it is not proof that one thing necessarily causes another. As with all retrospective studies like this, it is impossible to rule out entirely all other factors that might have influenced the finding. 

However, Dr Daniel Mackay and colleagues from the University of Glasgow say their findings "add to the growing evidence of the wide-ranging health benefits of smoke-free legislation" and "lend support" to the adoption of such legislation in countries where it does not currently exist.

Not only do the figures give a nil result, but the reporter acknowledges that even if there had been a result it might not have been explained by the smoking ban. (But the figures show that there was no significant result to corroborate the stated finding.) The report nevertheless reports the researchers claiming this non-result is evidence of a health benefit that should encourage the spread of smoke-free policies. And of course we get this:

[The British Heart Foundation] says the focus should now shift to the effect of smoking in the home and confined spaces, such as cars, especially where children are present.

Well, fancy this research appearing just as another anti-smoking offensive appears to be under way.

Dutch under fire for lax tobacco controls

As often this story is told effectively by Chris Snowdon, but the background is as follows. In brief, the Dutch rolled back their smoking ban about a year ago. Shortly afterwards Wiel Maessen of Forces International, a Dutch citizen who had been active in organising opposition to the ban, was approached by Stanton Glantz for an interview, as he was seeking to understand how the ban in the Netherlands had come to be overturned. The interview between these two was recorded.

The ban was reversed for bars with no employees, relying on the argument that the ban was about protecting workers. The fight has not ceased for overturning bans everywhere in the Netherlands. But there is a counter-attack from the international forces of tobacco control. This Dutch pro-tobacco control researcher's blog output over the last year has been four pieces lamenting the renegade tendencies of the Dutch in tobacco control. For not only has the Dutch government partially overturned the smoking ban – it has also cut the funding for the Dutch anti-smoking campaign organisation STIVORO.

The antis' retaliation to this insubordination: here from Stanton Glantz on the lifting of the smoking ban (or the 'failure of policy' on tobacco) and here from an army of professional tobacco control advocates on the cessation of funding to STIVORO and similar measures (or on why the Dutch government is 'abandoning smokers to their fate') – also reported here.

Stanton Glantz's efforts to connect action taken by publicans in the Netherlands to the tobacco industry fail because there is simply no evidence to connect them. Chris Snowdon explains. The other study, promising Dutch smokers an early death because of the direction of Dutch tobacco policy, is hardly more convincing.

They really messed it up, didn't they?

Today another outburst from the Department of Health will be felt in Scotland, when a Department of Health campaign to ban smoking in cars is carried into Scotland, thanks to the Scottish branch of the BMA.

The claim is that exposure to passive smoking is 23 (or 27) times greater in cars than in 'a smoky bar'. Given a choice between protecting children in cars and adults in bars, in the face of those figures, I would argue that the authorities made the wrong choice. As they never fail to point out, children have far less choice about entering cars than adults have about being anywhere. So why wait four (or five) years after banning smoking in bars before telling us that exposure in cars is over 20 times more dangerous?

That's apart from the crazy idea that you can draw any meaningful comparison between 'a smoky car' and 'a smoky bar'. On the unscientific nature of the comparison, Chris Snowdon has more.

Note radio interviews this morning: Patsy Nurse on BBC Radio Lincoln at 7.30 and 8.10 a.m., Dave Atherton on BBC Radio WM, 9.30 a.m. and Chris Snowdon on BBC Sussex (radio?) at 9.40 a.m.

Also Dave Atherton on BBC Radio Stoke, 10.20 a.m.

Consultation report shows opposition to Europe-wide tobacco restrictions

After two weeks away from blogging, I'm just getting used to the idea again. This story has been covered by prominent bloggers opposed to tobacco control including Simon Clark, Chris Snowdon and Frank Davis but it bears repeating.

It's an important story as the consultation report shows the scale of the general public's opposition to the proposals made by the EC in the consultation (they made up nearly 97 per cent of the respondents, most of the remainder being government and industry responses). The general idea of revising the directive was to increase restrictions and to bring them within the scope of European legislation, leaving member states with less or no authority in the area of tobacco control.  Removing a vital area of policy from the scope of member states' national governments does not figure as a concern in the consultation report, but this issue was important in motivating me to respond to the consultation as it may have been to many others.

Now that they know that many European citizens are against them (as well as some non-governmental organisations, which include smokers' rights groups as well as the likes of ASH Scotland), one wonders what they will do with their Directive. Don't let them convince you that the public wanted Europe-wide restrictions on tobacco.

It doesn't.

Drinks industry bites back

Says the Scotsman: Drinks giant Diageo has cut its ties with Scotland's most prominent alcohol awareness charity over controversial moves by the campaigning group to link the impact of alcohol to that of smoking.

The quarrel started here, when it emerged that alcohol trade groups were to be excluded from the Scottish Tobacco and Alcohol Policy Summit, to be held in Edinburgh on Tuesday.

Being linked with tobacco upsets these drink magnates. This is because they have failed to recognise that the business of 'public health' is not an argument about health but about political control. Even if it were true that there are absolutely no health benefits to smoking under any circumstances, this is irrelevant. The issue is that a publicly funded lobbying group, ASH Scotland, can present a case for leaving others in the community out of the policy discussion. Diageo has been content with this as long as they were invited to participate, but a new boy has moved on to the block in the shape of ASH Scotland. Diageo is outraged at being excluded from the activities of an organisation that it has recently supported generously, but is not quite ready to realise that degrees of damage to health really isn't the issue. 

The issue is: Everyone in the community should demand full participation in any publicly funded policy summit, because in the end we all contribute to the cost of these events, and the people that run them are our servants and not our masters or managers.

Chris Snowdon has more.    

American public health charity calls for moderation in tobacco education

Although the USA largely subscribes to the idea that passive smoking kills, the American Council on Science and Health (like Michael Siegel) criticises more extreme claims made by other public health bodies. It takes the following example (which also typifies the kind of claim often criticised by Michael Siegel), claiming that it risks rendering all tobacco education too incredible to be taken seriously.

The report states, “[T]here is no safe level of exposure to tobacco smoke and that smoke causes damage immediately to the cardiovascular system. Even low levels of tobacco exposure lead to disease and death, including heart attack, stroke, weakened immune system, and asthma attacks.” 

 “Has the Lung Association damaged its credibility in making such a dramatic, unqualified assertion?” asks Dr Elizabeth Whelan of ACSH, not for the first time. This body does not shrink from criticising the Surgeon General's report, which includes similar claims about secondary smoke, and calls for a zero tolerance policy towards tobacco smoke:

Upon reading this statement, ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross is left wondering whether basic toxicology and cancer-causation principles were considered in the drafting of the Surgeon General report. “Whether indirect exposure to tobacco smoke leads to disease is a matter of dose — the amount of smoke it takes to trigger adverse health outcomes such as heart disease or cancer — but the question of dose-response and exposure levels never made it into the report.” 

ACSH stops short of recommending spending much time exposed to tobacco smoke, but their suggestion to observe dose:reponse principles could be well observed by other bodies, especially in the United States, where they take the concept of third hand smoke seriously. University of Berkeley, California, scientists have pretty much dispensed with any such principles in their study of third hand smoke, as tobacco researcher and author Chris Snowdon writes here.

Noting that ASH Scotland has managed to set up an anti-smoking conference offering Learning Outcomes in (for want of a better expression) anti-smoking propaganda, I wonder how long before Scottish National Certificate qualifications are issued in Junk Science for being able to describe the damage to children from third hand smoke? What an outcome that would be for a small country with a proud educational record.

Or perhaps we will start to take science seriously again instead!

CATCH-16, Chris Snowdon again

Chris returns to argue further that smoking causes lung cancer.

CATCH-11: Chris Snowdon returns

On the question whether smoking causes lung cancer.

CATCH-8 and CATCH-9

Chris Snowdon and Rich White add further contributions to debating whether smoking causes lung cancer.

CATCH-4: Chris Snowdon responds to Rich White and Frank Davis

Chris Snowdon returns to continue his case that smoking causes lung cancer.

CATCH-1: Smoking and lung cancer: the case for the prosecution

A full day in advance of its advertised time, here is CATCH-1.

Does smoking cause lung cancer: invitation to online debate (CATCH)

Two bloggers, Frank Davis and Chris Snowdon, will open a debate tomorrow (Sunday 28 November) on this issue: Frank Davis invites you to participate (see this link for an explanation of CATCH).

The suggestion came following a report of Chris Snowdon's participation in The Moral Maze last Wednesday (link included in this post). Chris's 'concession' that smoking causes ill health in smokers came under Frank's fire in his report of the broadcast here, whereupon a debate was suggested (see first comment).

Please have a read of Frank's invitation and share with anyone who might like to contribute! Starts tomorrow night, and lasts as long as it lasts.

Lung cancer studies and confidence intervals

Author Chris Snowdon introduces the latest lung cancer study, in a post that reviews his research of lung cancer studies in the past, and points out that there are far fewer published now than up to five years ago.

I have found the discussion today (comments beneath the blog post) of particular interest, and helpful in explaining such mysteries as relative risks and confidence intervals.  If when testing the probability of lung cancer from SHS exposure, they get a confidence interval between 0.6 and 1.8, it spans a negative value and a positive value ... this surely means that the results could give a negative value. And yet there are people out there (mentioning no names) who want to persuade us that this is a statistically significant result involving people's actual deaths.

I think the participants in the discussion make it clearer!

Edit: A review of the new lung cancer study (Brenner, BMC Cancer, 2010) , supplied by its author in the comments to Chris's post, can be read here. The study considers exposure to passive smoke in non-smokers with lung cancer, and their exposure to paints and solvents, and to smoke-soot and exhaust. The results for passive smoke are not significant, the results for the other contaminants are significant, nearly trebling the risk of lung cancer (and the confidence intervals do not span zero!).