Welcome to Tobacco Control Tactics: the debate is not over

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The newly launched Tobacco Control Tactics is hot off the press. The press page is here, and the UK press release is reproduced below.

The Debate Is Not Over; The Science Is Not Settled

Adult consumers are fighting back against the actions of and the unfounded allegations made by the Tobacco Control Industry which are ruining lives, damaging health and trashing the economy.

Unfunded and unsupported grassroots members of consumer organisations across the world have cooperated in creating the Tobacco Control Tactics Wiki which challenges the claims and tactics used by the recently unveiled University of Bath’s Tobacco Tactics website.

This informative and objective website for people wanting to know the truth about tobacco has been written and compiled by unpaid volunteers. It includes such things as:

• A list of scientists who have distanced themselves from the outrageous claims of SHS after their retirements and have become sceptical of the methods and practises of the Tobacco Control Industry in pushing an ideological rather than health agenda.

• How the Tobacco Control Industry often masquerades behind the mask of “charities” but is fed by corporate and competing pharmaceutical industries, acts as a front group to push through Government political policy, and could not survive alone due to minuscule public donations and support and their dependence upon highly-paid staff.

• Background as to why the ETS debate is NOT over.

• Examination of the failure of pharmaceutical nicotine cessation using NRT products which have shown success rates lower than 1% in some studies – in contravention to wild success rates claimed by the Industry.

• Demonstration of how the Tobacco Control Industry is out of control and causing more harm than good.

• Exposure of the 10 biggest lies pushed to achieve the aim of tobacco eradication rather than constructive harm reduction, thereby increasing, rather than decreasing, harm and deaths.

• Analysis of how the deliberate Denormalisation/Stigmatisation programme of the Tobacco Control Industry is causing significant harm to many smokers, up to and including encouraging attacks from extremists on smokers who refuse to follow the agenda by quitting their enjoyment of a legitimate product.

In the UK, England, Wales and Northern Ireland are now five years on from the smoking ban, and Scotland has endured it for six years. It was initially imposed supposedly to protect the health of bar workers – even those who smoked. Since then we have moved too far into the territory of interference in informed personal adult choice, individual consumer rights, and family life.

The Tobacco Control Tactics Wiki, formally launched on June 28th, is the product of a combined effort by tobacco consumers and their supporters from many different countries. It exposes the tactics used by the Tobacco Control Industry to further exclude adult tobacco consumers from their communities by encouraging unfounded discrimination intended to hound them out of homes, jobs and decisions that affect their own families. Even something as seemingly superficial as the current push for “plain packaging” is largely driven, in reality, more by a desire to further stigmatize adult tobacco consumers than by the claimed desire to “protect children from smoking” – a claimed result that has no real scientific or rational support behind it.

[ENDS]

Tobacco Control Tactics directly mirrors Tobacco Tactics, a recent example of Tobacco Control's attempt to portray the ordinary public as apologists for the tobacco industry. It has been in production since the beginning of June, and provides a valuable resource for researchers on tobacco control issues.