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.