Repeat after me: Glas-goals are working

Glasgow's Evening Times applauds Glas-goals, the city's smoking cessation project (a joint initiative of the local NHS health trust and the Evening Times) for its success in driving down smoking rates. Published two days ago, it declares that smoking rates and lung cancer rates are both down (it should have only seven paragraphs in it but at present it has fourteen: someone in the editorial department failed to notice that it has been replicated). An accompanying news report says that the Glas-goals campaign achieved double its expected quit rate.

I don't want to knock anyone's sincere efforts to give up smoking if that is what they want to do. But in the light of previous reports on smoking cessation, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the twelve thousand-plus smokers who have succeeded in quitting their habit are counted as quitters after just four weeks, because that is the common measure. The real test is after the quit programme is over and life has resumed its normal rhythm.

It is clear from the graph to the right of this blog that smoking rates in Scotland have not changed appreciably in the last 12 years. What is less well known is that against this largely unvarying decline in the smoking rate, expenditure on tobacco control as a whole has rocketed from £1.45 million in 1999 to £21.8 million in 2011, according to figures obtained from the Scottish Government in a Freedom of Information request (they even added up the totals for us!) At a bare minimum we can be sure that money distributed through health boards specifically for smoking cessation increased from £1 million in 1999 to £11.08 million in 2011. We also know that lottery money has been spent on tobacco control (the Refresh project) and that Cancer Research UK has funded tobacco control studies in Scotland. So the fifteen-fold increase in government expenditure on tobacco control, supplemented by other funding, has barely made a dint in the smoking rate.

Impressive, no?

P.S. I look forward to observing whether this additional exposure will prompt somebody from the Evening Times to read this story again and realise that they have printed it twice.

Freedom of Information is a tool of aggression, says President of the Royal Society

Ten weeks after the furore caused by freedom of information requests by Philip Morris, The Independent, through the voice of Sir Paul Nurse (President of the Royal Society), attacks the use of Freedom of Information as a so-called 'tool of aggression'.

Philip Morris caused consternation by requesting details about research concerning childhood smoking undertaken at Stirling University. The Scottish Information Commissioner demanded that Stirling University should issue a substantive response – as far as I know, this is still pending (but you can hear an interview with the Information Commissioner (and with Gerard Hastings of Stirling University, including a statement from Philip Morris) at the link here).

I'm not familiar with the disruption that such FOI requests can produce. But like many readers, I find it hard to see why publicly funded research should not be put at the disposal of the public. Given that tobacco companies are systematically excluded from any public health discussions involving smoking, there is some justice in allowing them to see the fruits of publicly funded research involving their own product. I don't believe that tobacco companies should dictate public health policy, but nor should they be barred from making any contributions.

Since I don't respect the exclusion of tobacco companies from public health debates, it is unsurprising that I should feel that Stirling University should comply with the FOI request. But there is also the practical point of limiting Freedom of Information. Where would you draw the lines? How would you guarantee that the people who are granted access to the information they seek are not actually related by their third cousin's marriage to someone on the Philip Morris's board of directors?

The point of principles such as Freedom of Information is to provide transparency, and limiting it destroys the concept. There is no point in enshrining a point of principle around sharing information with people that you would happily share the information with if the principle were not in place. Like the principle of habeus corpus, it must apply to anyone if it is to have any meaning at all. There's no point in agreeing not to imprison people without charge 'unless they're terrorists').

Stirling University ran a poll on Facebook which led to a lively discussion. They won the poll, and then withdrew the page because they lost most of the points in the discussion (why remove it otherwise?) I wrote to the University to ask them where the page was: answer here.

Where did our Facebook page go? The answer!

The question: 

Dear Professor Hastings

I was disappointed to see that the Facebook page discussing Philip Morris's FOI request to your University has been withdrawn.

It is very rare to get any discussion on tobacco control with key figures in the movement such as yourself and Simon Chapman. I would hope to see the page restored, and that similar opportunities will occur in the future.

The answer (after an automatic email announcing that Professor Hastings was on study leave):

Dear Belinda,

Thanks for your comments. We agree that the site provided a valuable opportunity for people to express their opinions and discuss this matter. The page was designed as a poll to provide a quick snapshot of public opinion. And in two weeks served that purpose very well indeed. 412 people voted: 352 were 'Against' handing over the data. 51 were 'For' and 9 maybes.

Our intention is to re-launch with a mandate for longer term engagement and discussion about this important issue.

Will keep you posted.

Best wishes,

Mark

Did they actually read the comments? Or just look at the poll?

Networking: tobacco control, social marketing and real friendship on Facebook

From Dick Puddlecote and CAGE Canada, reporting the disappearance of Stirling University's Freedom of Information Request page yesterday.

As if to demonstrate further the Ivory Towers mentality of tobacco control comes this letter from tobacco control advocates Simon Chapman and Becky Freeman, down under ... leading to this Facebook group. You get in only if you have the right attitude and probably the right friends.

Social marketing in, commercial marketing out ... fair enough to a point, but what's with all the secrecy? For the record, ' We don’t welcome anyone with tobacco industry ties and those who are regularly offensive.' I don't have any ties to the tobacco industry, but I won't waste their time by applying.

Stirling University takes down Facebook page on Philip Morris issue

Please correct me if I'm wrong but it looks as if this highly entertaining page – Stirling University Freedom of Information Request – has gone. Has been spirited off the face of Facebook. The link takes me to my home page, as if the Stirling University page had never existed.

Surely that was a bit drastic. They were ahead on the vote (last time I looked), most voters expressing support for the University's position. Must have been the arguments that scunnered them! from Bill Gibson, Dave Atherton, Iro Cyr, Cage Canada and others.

Background links here.

Canadian radio broadcast starring Gerard Hastings and the Information Commissioner

Via Bishop Hill comes this link to an interview with Gerard Hastings from Stirling University, defending his case against Philip Morris, and Scottish Information Commissioner, Kevin Dunion.

Edit: A permanent link to the interview is available here:

Professor Hastings makes the point that the studies in question are paid for, not publicly, but by 'a cancer charity', a somewhat cunning disguise for Cancer Research UK. One only needs to read CRUK's research preferences to understand that Philip Morris has clear grounds to assume that Cancer Research is prejudiced against its corporate interests. Professor Hastings may correct in thinking that charity-funded research should not have to comply with Freedom of Information requests – but charities that fund research should not announce their intentions to influence government policy prejudicially against the interests of specific industries. If Government chooses to outsource research to the third sector or universities it shouldn't expect to escape accountability.

After listening to Professor Hastings, listening to the Information Commissioner brings one down to earth. He is clear that the University has not understood the implications of FOI, because of Hastings' insistence that assuring his subjects of confidentiality would automatically exempt him from complying with the requirements of the law. He reiterated that he had ordered the University to provide a substantive response to the FOI request – not necessarily to provide the information requested, but otherwise to give adequate reasons for not supplying it.

Any result will be subject to appeal and could take several months.

Further comment on Stirling University and the FOI

In support of the University complying with the FOI request from Philip Morris we have this.

The second comment sets out the problem clearly:

The purpose of FOI's is enable policy making and the information and decisions leading to it, to become fully transparent. Anybody refusing to comply evidently has something they'd rather the rest of us tax paying mugs didn't see.

For Stirling read the rest of tobacco control.

A rather less reverential piece on Stirling University from Leg-Iron can be found here. I have to confess that I went to Stirling University in the 1980s and completed my degree several years later with Open University – sadly a close ally with Stirling University in Tobacco Control. My memories of Stirling University are hazy at best.

Background posts #1, #2, #3.

Stirling University 0, Philip Morris 1

Today the Independent newspaper reveals that Philip Morris has made a FOI request of Stirling University's Institute of Social Marketing involving data for research on the smoking habits of young people. 

In fact it is old news: the request has already been approved by the Scottish Information Commissioner in a decision dated June 2011 that criticised the University's conduct in the affair.

The tone of the Independent on this whole issue is almost hysterical. No less than three articles by science editor Steve Connor appear in today's edition:

Exclusive: Smoked out: tobacco giant's war on science

(a loaded way to describe a Freedom of Information request); 

Echoes of climate change battles are no accident

(in which tobacco and climate change are treated as identical issues); and

Hair-splitting, brazen denials and six decades of dirty tricks.

Good that you can rely on the press to be even-handed, especially when it calls itself the Independent? I have no objection to dirty tricks being reported, but the report implies that because tobacco companies have been caught in the past being less than economical with the truth their opponents in tobacco control studies have always been and will always be beyond reproach. 

As well as these three pieces we have another by Jean King at Cancer Research (which contributed to funding for the study at issue) : 'This industry should be kept away from young people.' Tobacco is just one thing that many people agree is not a product for young people's consumption. Is this a reason for a major newspaper not to ensure that both sides are properly interviewed in a report about a dispute?

The leader ('The uses and abuses of freedom') is at least slightly measured, and concludes:

Scientific research, which has a value in its own right, but potentially also a commercial and social value, could be seen as the university's exclusive property. If the university and the research, however, have taxpayer funding, should the findings not be more widely available? In the end, the Information Commissioner might have to weigh the arguments – and that might be no bad thing.

This brings us back to the fact that the decision appears to have been made already. I would have expected the writer of a leader to know this: have there been further developments since then? The University was given until 15 August to comply, and it isn't clear what has happened since then. 


Significantly, the studies are funded by the public, and their findings are expected to (at the very least) inform public policy. Gerard Hastings' pleas that the children interviewed during these studies did not expect their data to fall into the hands of tobacco companies suggest that he hasn't fully appreciated what public funding implies. As somebody comments under the article, he should not have given assurances to subjects that would run counter to his obligations under FOI.


Significantly BMJ editor Richard Smith has also agreed that Philip Morris should see the data collected at Stirling. I agree that Philip Morris should have access too, not least because the Institute of Social Marketing and Cancer Research UK are behind the studies. Their agenda is specifically anti-tobacco, and it is hard to imagine that their research can be other than policy-led. This gives Philip Morris a legitimate interest.


Edit: The Scotsman quotes the office of the Scottish Information Commissioner: 

In a statement, the office of Scotland's Information Commissioner, Kevin Dunion, said: "The commissioner has not ordered the university to release the information. He has found that the request was not vexatious, and ordered the university to make a substantive response to Philip Morris International. 

"A substantive response could include release of the information in part or whole, or a refusal to release information with an explanation of why, under the provisions of the FOI Act, the university believes this to be the correct course of action.