Morning Call, BBC Radio Scotland covers e-cigarette banning, Monday 20 January

It's Monday morning, 9.30 GMT. Gerard Hastings just now saying that e-cigarettes is encouraging people to 'self-medicate on nicotine'. (What is use of nicotine patches if not self-medication on nicotine?) Go here for a discussion for the next hour.

Post-discussion
The official contributors to the programme, Sheila Duffy of ASH Scotland and former Health Minister Andy Kerr, attempted to give e-cigarettes a qualified thumbs-up but seemed hung-up on the idea of renormalising smoking, and, bewilderingly, encouraging nicotine addiction. The bright part was the callers. Caller after caller pointed out that banning e-cigarette use was counter-intuitive to efforts to discourage smoking, and many had been able to give up smoking since they started using e-cigarettes. Some of them were conversant with recent research, and able to compare favourably the numbers of children allegedly using e-cigarettes with those experimenting with smoking.

Two callers at the end who opposed e-cigarette use were particularly unconvincing: one of them pointed out that nicotine was a stimulant and nicotine in e-cigarettes keeps smokers addicted, and the other reported that having given up smoking forty years ago she tried e-cigarettes and enjoyed them. Hence they really should be banned as they are clearly a gateway back into smoking!

The confused kind of consensus to emerge out of all this was that e-cigarettes should be regulated rather than banned. Even I agree with regulation to the extent that (for example) there could be limits on nicotine concentrations for the general user. But there was also talk (by Andy Kerr) of regulating the appearance so that there is a less clear resemblance between the e-cigarette and smoking. Age restrictions might also be beneficial – one could have a minimum age of 16 for purchasing e-cigarettes, which would give e-cig users two years' advantage in terms of legal purchase. By the time they reached 18 they might find the cost advantages outweighed the attractions of experimenting with smoking (unless they were already smoking black market cigarettes of course).

Well done everybody who called the programme. Most of you put the case clearly and rejected the proposition of banning e-cigarettes decisively on the basis that they are an effective and safer alternative to smoking.

Public authorities in Scotland ban e-cigarettes in public buildings

This escalation of banning e-cigarettes does look odd, doesn't it? They are even banned in some outdoor areas around public buildings.

The fear seems to be as expressed by a Glasgow health board spokesperson: 

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said: “The use of e-cigarettes in NHS grounds perpetuates the idea smoking is acceptable in public areas.”

But this approach seems very unscientific. E-cigarette use is not smoking. People are using e-cigarettes instead of smoking, either on a selective basis or completely. After being told more times than most of us have had hot dinners that there is nothing better for your health than stopping smoking, the device people are turning to in their thousands is now facing significant restrictions, and EU legislation still hovers over them.

The only thing that needs to be done is regulation. Tobacco is regulated, and all consumer products require some regulatory oversight to protect consumers. There is no call whatever for a ban.

Health authorities who ban e-cigarettes because they make users look like smokers should take a good hard look at themselves. Having derided tobacco companies for the alleged health records of smoking for over 30 years, it seems perverse to ban the use of a product that can eliminate the most hazardous elements of smoking, namely the absorption of tar and smoke. If smokers can use this product at less than the cost of smoking, they may not return to smoking.

Anti-smokers have little to be complacent about. Illicit tobacco is becoming more plentiful on our streets, and can remove any price advantage that the less harmful product has.

Scottish public authorities need to get a grip on themselves. They provide a valuable service but they are not (or should not be) empowered to pronounce what recreational products the public should find 'acceptable'; or to assert ownership of 'public areas'.

Are these tobacco stooges reporting from Moscow?

Were this a report from Western Europe, accusations would fly. According to this report, Moscovites have endured sweeping anti-tobacco measures, including the closure and actual demolition of properly registered small shops, and a general prohibition on smaller shops selling alcohol or tobacco. Kiosk owners have protested at the measures, which have been brought in far more quickly than the drip, drip process adopted here, with tobacco sponsorship, sales restrictions, a display ban and a smoking ban coming in all together.

As everywhere, big business wins out as smaller enterprises feel the brunt of these measures:

The laws also go against the agenda of supporting and protecting entrepreneurs recently announced by the government, which has appointed a federal ombudsman for the preservation of businessmen’s rights.

Neither the Moscow Department for the Protection of Businessmen nor Opora Rossii, an organization aimed at uniting and supporting small and medium-sized businesses, agreed to comment on the issue.

But what's this?

Tobacco companies agree with the store owners.

Shouldn't that be the other way around? Doesn't the tobacco industry always lead the agenda with the shops meekly following in its wake?

Source

No ... for whatever reason, this report is telling it like it is. The shops are at the coal face, with anti-tobacco and anti-alcohol measures directly affecting their enterprises, without evidence that any tangible health benefits will result. Well done, Moscow News.

Cancer Research urges Durham University to give back tobacco company money

Further to this story, Cancer Research UK has advised Durham University to return the donation that it received from British American Tobacco.

From the point of view of CRUK, it seems that tobacco company money, uniquely among the gifts from over 2,000 donors to the Durham University scholarship fund, is likely to have been given solely and cynically to promote the sales of tobacco in Afghanistan. All other donors are of course completely above board, without any ulterior motive, no corporate responsibility brownie points or prospective markets in Afghanistan (the beneficiaries of the fund are Afghan women scholars). Among all the people who have donated money, only the tobacco donation demonstrates the true evil of capitalism, where every apparently generous act is ultimately a selfish one, and all the other donors are innocent philanthropists.

Cancer Research UK funds studies on cancer. I wouldn't claim that its tobacco research forms a significant share of all the research it funds, but Cancer Research UK indicates that applicants for research grants in tobacco must follow a research agenda that favours tobacco restrictions. This seems to me back to front: announcing the policy prescriptions of the research before research has been done. In order to get the research money you have to accept a certain conclusion before even starting. You will get money for twisting the data to fit CRUK's ideas about tobacco policy, but not for mounting an effective challenge to it. For example, such a challenge could point out that if policies are too restrictive, criminals will get a foothold on the market with unregulated tobacco, which is potentially more dangerous to human health than regulated tobacco.

This is why I would quarrel with Cancer Research UK's claim that 'tobacco cash is bad for your moral health'. Cancer Research UK has no brief to lecture people about their morals. I don't consider their conditions for tobacco research grants particularly ethical.