EU seeks again to harmonise policy on tobacco

EC Commissioner John Dalli announced yesterday his desire for plain packaging and for tobacco to be made to look unappealing. He refers again to the revision of the tobacco products directive, upon which there was an EU public consultation last year, showing most citizens to be opposed to Europe-wide regulation on tobacco. The section on Consumer Information (section 6) included discussion of plain packaging. In the section recording responses of government representatives, it read:

While most Member States were in favour of all proposed policy options for improving consumer information, plain packaging proved to be the most controversial. Almost half of respondents supported the introduction of plain packaging alongside the other recommended changes, but several indicated that the solutions to these problems should be more carefully analysed. 

The other categories of respondent are NGOs, industry and citizens. Let us hope those 50 per cent of government representatives who oppose the plain packaging dig in their heels when it comes time to revise the tobacco products directive as John Dalli intends to do by the end of this year:

Besides attractiveness, there are two other key issues that I consider essential for the revision of the Tobacco Products Directive. First, I am reflecting on possible ways of regulating access to tobacco in a more stringent manner to limit the exposure of minors to tobacco products. Second, I am considering how to address new types of nicotine products on the market, such as electronic cigarettes. This is the general framework in which I plan to propose a revision of the Tobacco Products Directive by the end of this year.

It is not clear that he intends to take into account the results of last year's consultation. In fact he tells us that 'consultations are ongoing', although he does not specify who has been consulted since the report was published:

Over the past ten years or so, the EU has consistently shown strong leadership in global tobacco control. We should be proud of our achievements in the international arena, and seek to build on them. The revision of the Tobacco Products Directive needs to demonstrate the EU's continuing momentum to keep up this level of leadership and to take it further. I know that many Member States are keen to live up to their commitments under the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. However, Member States cannot make progress in areas such as labelling and ingredients without further harmonisation at EU level.

Leadership in tobacco control takes priority over democratic accountability.

Europe launches 'Ex-smokers are unstoppable', 3 year campaign

(and in case you think that is grotesque, try this)

The three-year anti-smoking campaign involves an interactive programme called iCoach, an application designed to encourage smokers to keep on trying to stop smoking. EU officers will be encouraged to lead by example and register with iCoach before it is let loose on the public. It has been published in all the European languages (you can see why the campaign is expected to cost 16 million euros).

As well as putting pressure on officers to sign up to this hideously expensive campaign in order to set an example to lesser mortals who don't work for it, EU Health Commissioner John Dalli also looks forward to extending legislation restricting the use of smokeless tobacco products. So not only will they resort to bullying EU employees, they will also seek to ban e-cigarettes and similar products and push for further restrictions on the marketing and selling of tobacco.

The more I read the less I understand how the smoking cessation racket has been sold on the public. Courtesy of Rick S's comment yesterday, have a look at this on the views of Robert West from 2007. Robert West is a professional anti-tobacco activist, as the article makes clear. Interviewed at the very start of the English smoking ban, he says this:

The experience of the smoking ban in Ireland and elsewhere suggests that the ban itself will have limited impact on the government target of 21 per cent smoking prevalence by 2010. Around 25 per cent of people in England admit to smoking cigarettes. To cut this figure by one per cent, every single smoker in the country would have to try to stop, and at least half of them would have to use effective treatments to help them do it.

“The government is looking for a miracle, basically. But the point is not whether we will reach arbitrary targets but the fact that for every one per cent of smokers we see about 3,000 unnecessary deaths per year. Everything we can do to bring down the figure means a lot of suffering prevented.”

Even a professional anti-smoker believes that the success rate in smoking cessation is very low. People like West truly believe that only by all smokers attempting to stop smoking at the same time can a drop of 1 per cent in the smoking rate be achieved, and that this will somehow save 3,000 lives a year. The last sentence seems to be mere window dressing. If that's what it takes to bring smoking rates down, they clearly can't be coming down very much, and all the efforts going into smoking cessation programmes are doing little besides boosting pharmaceutical takings, and propping up the careers of professional anti-smoking activists like Robert West.