Scottish Wholesalers Association launches robust campaign against plain packaging

Wednesday 2 May saw the launch of this new campaign against plain packaging from the Scottish Wholesalers Association. Read more on the campaign page here (with a link to the Department of Health consultation based in Westminster but involving health departments from the devolved parliaments).

You can register your opposition to plain packaging here. Please spread the link!

Nova Scotia Judge: Tobacco display ban violates tobacco merchant's rights

Legislators north and south of the Scottish border should take note of this ruling. Bob Gee has won the first stage of his case against the provincial government. This is great news but much hangs on the next stage of this case, which will take place on 6 October, when the provincial government will argue the case for the legislation.

The newly elected UK government is also set to review the tobacco display legislation. In Scotland, regulations on the detail of the legislation are still to be approved following a consultation that ended on 20 July. It is unlikely that the Scottish Government would willingly consider a review of this legislation, since only the handful of Scottish Conservative MSPs in the Parliament opposed it. However, Imperial Tobacco has challenged the competence of the Scottish Government to pass the legislation, and the result of this case is expected in the next few weeks.

The consultation responses on the latest consultation (display regulations) on the Scottish legislation have now been published.

More about hospitals

Good news from NHS Grampian – a delay in its decision to implement its no- smoking policy for six months pending further consultations.

The threat of withholding treatment from smokers who breached NHS Grampian policy did not stop the Patients' Council spokeswoman from saying that she could 'not understand the delay'.

Another board member's view that 'the integrity of the board is at stake' if they fail to come up with an enforceable policy reflects the board's position that only a narrowly defined and very dogmatic interpretation of 'health promotion' will satisfy.

Freedom to Choose (Scotland) takes the view that the integrity of the board will take a leap if it listens to the problems detailed in the consultation executive summary (2009) – including the clear possibility that a doctrinaire anti-smoking policy will deter people from treatment – and abandons its dogmatic approach. In these economically-straitened times the prospect of spending up to £80K (Daily Mail, 3 August, p. 25) on destroying smoking shelters for no clear gain, only to have more people wandering off the site in their pyjamas, seems quite bizarre.

YET ANOTHER HOSPITAL STORY BROKE TODAY – Ninewells Hospital, Dundee, was reported in The Scotsman to have called in the environmental officers to 'fine people up to £50 for flouting its smoking policy'.

Of course, the environmental officers can apply fines for smoking only in enclosed or partially enclosed places. A phone call to Tayside Health Board quickly clarified that the enforcement officers had been called in to enforce the law – not the policy of no smoking in the grounds, which is not law.

For convenience I have added the link for Smoking, Health and Social Care Act (Scotland) 2005 to the side bar of the blog for easy reference.

And one more point:

the sign on the left must mean that prohibitions on smoking are banned, mustn't it ...?