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.

Florence, the mosquito, and the tobacco industry smear

Ever since the First World Conference of TICAP (The International Coalition Against Prohibition) held in Brussels in 2009 I've wanted to know about Florence Berteletti Kemp – the woman whose complaints to the European Commissioner threatened to disrupt the Conference.

Any Dutch readers will appreciate that this video is really about Edith Schippers, the Health Minister of the Netherlands (or Minister for Tobacco, as her opponents would have it). My Dutch language skills enabled me to enjoy only Ms Berteletti's contribution, as it is in English.



Berteletti starts at 20.30 mins into the video: 'Well, if you're dying of malaria you're hardly going to invite a mosquito to resolve the issue at the policy table.' Anti-smokers have a thing about mosquitos. Sheila Duffy doesn't see the point in fighting them because they don't have expense accounts and are naturally less serious a threat to human health than the tobacco industry.

Florence won't have them at the policy table. I suppose this is because she doesn't believe in engaging with her opponents. Mosquitos however are now acknowledged as the carriers of malaria. If they were any good at talking, perhaps deals could be done at the policy table that might eradicate the malaria problem.

The health problems associated with smoking are a different matter as they are all multi-factorial in nature. Saying on the one hand that tobacco kills x-billion more than road accidents and wars and is best only speculation – rendered more inaccurate by a refusal to engage with the tobacco industry. Nobody is suggesting the tobacco companies write health policy without the participation of public health interests, but excluding them entirely as a matter of policy is equally unwise.

Since I don't know Dutch I missed most of the video, getting only the mosquito and Florence Berteletti's disappointment with the Dutch government for its failure to espouse tobacco control policies (33.25). A Dutch tobacco industry representative is interviewed in the video, but I don't know to what extent he has influenced Schippers. The Dutch licensees' campaign to overturn the smoking ban was not, of course, funded by tobacco companies. The 'fearless anti-tobacco warrior' Stanton Glantz took the trouble to interview Wiel Maessen, campaign organiser (and director of TICAP) in order to understand how the legal challenge to the smoking bans came about. Maessen stated that he had paid a large part of the costs, including all the advertising costs, personally.

Berteletti, in common with the likes of Stanton Glantz, has a mission to associate the interests of smoking ban opponents with the tobacco companies. She has invented a reason not to discuss malaria with mosquitos and extends this to exclude tobacco from the discussion of any health issue, in spite of blaming tobacco for all health issues.

For Berteletti, and anti-smoking policy-makers everywhere, nothing is negotiable.