On the European continent: rebellion and reversal

In Brussels, demonstrators from the retail sector protest the European Tobacco Products Directive.

In Ukraine, a reversal. The smoking ban is to be restricted to state and municipal institutions.

In Scotland, cover-up.

Sainsbury bid to avoid health levy by not selling tobacco?

Sainsbury's has stopped selling tobacco in some of its Scottish stores in a bid to avoid a 'health levy', to be applied to stores that sell tobacco and alcohol. I don't see how this gets them out of paying the levy if they continue to sell alcohol.

Can anyone help?

Stoptober and its fallacies

The UK has an abundance of wealth to spend on silly stunts like this one.



Dame Sally Davies (CMO) urges us to realise that apart from the financial cost to the country, the cost to individuals is the real issue that people should be thinking about. She tells us that 1,260 people a day are admitted to hospital with smoking-related diseases, It is tiresome to point out what has been said many times: that smoking-related diseases are not necessarily caused by smoking. Consider this graph from the World Health Organisation (h/tip Fredrik Eich at Alternative Analysis). Given the low rate of lung cancer deaths in Mexico compared with Scotland, it would seem that there many factors at play other than smoking.


(Legend reads: blue, approximate population in hundreds ages 70–74; orange, deaths from lung cancer ages 70–74.)

In explaining any respiratory problems resulting from air pollution, the burning of fossil fuels merits consideration, especially in the light of reports that UK levels of such emissions have broken European guidelines for years. Only Dame Sally Davies knows why smoking is such a focus of attention, rather than extraordinary levels of emissions, and why the medical establishment repeatedly refers to smoking as a 'preventable cause' of cancer, when considered on a population-wide basis it is not preventable (certainly not more than most other causes of cancer), nor is it necessarily an exceptionally significant cause of cancer or other 'smoking-related' diseases. Do the funders of studies on tobacco allow researchers to conclude that fossil fuel emissions are a factor in respiratory and heart health?

Of smoking bans and beds

This morning on BBC Scotland, Kaye Adams put forward the discussion proposed in Tasmania to ban smoking completely to anyone born in the twenty-first century. It's clearly not part of her working life to be having to confirm people's ages by ID on an ongoing basis from 2018 on. The idea of having to ID people of 50 and 60 years old in a few decades hasn't occurred to Kaye, but she has a touching faith that 'out of sight is out of mind', and that people who are under 13 today simply won't grow up in the expectation that people will smoke. This is in spite of the tendency, which anti-smokers accept, that people generally start smoking before the age of legal purchase.

Kaye found herself in a minority as most callers to the programme opposed it.

More stories of interest: one, the recent research on bed-blocking in Scottish hospitals. It is hard to open a Scottish newspaper these days without finding some evidence of funding problems in the health service. Admittedly the near-one million pounds going to ASH Scotland on an annual basis would not go far in funding children's wards, for example. But the general theme is that non-urgent spending on issues that have been created by specific budgets displaces urgent funding needed for practical purposes on the ground.

On the subject of beds, this story popped up today from Tanzania: namely a report of tobacco company donations of hospital beds. In 'enlightened' Western Europe, this would never be allowed. One would hope that tobacco companies would not gain undue influence in Tanzanian society following such donations as the anti-smoking communities have here, even though  anti-smoking communities don't donate many hospital beds! (Perhaps they would claim that their efforts are freeing up hospital beds, but such a claim would be hard to prove.)

Finally in the Lebanon a BBC report gives a divided picture of the public reception of smoking bans, which opens by putting the smoking ban issue in some perspective:

So far this summer, the country has dealt with gunbattles in Beirut, warring Sunni and Alawite neighbourhoods in Tripoli, waves of kidnappings, an increase in bank robberies, untold numbers of tyres burned by angry residents blocking roads, and up to 12-hour rolling blackouts linked to an employee strike at the state-owned electricity company. 

Yet on Monday, the authorities turned their attention to banning smoking inside restaurants, cafes, pubs and nightclubs.

It finishes by describing a demonstration:

Along with the Syndicate of Owners of Restaurants, Cafes, Nightclubs and Pastries, they were demanding amendments to the law to allow smoking in some establishments.

Considering the day-to-day inconveniences experienced in this community, the syndicate might have good cause to fear uneven and unfair implementation of the ban.

This piece even describes the anti-smoker interviewed in the piece as 'griping'. Well done Matt Nash for some balanced reporting.

Scots urged to ban smoking in cars

Apparently Welsh parents are being given a period of grace to see whether a public education programme will change people's behaviour. The British Lung Foundation wants Scotland to follow the example of Wales.

Since there is (we are told) no safe level of secondary smoke, a delay in implementing the most severe restrictions is somewhat strange. The emphasis is on children after all. Not legislating immediately is endangering millions of children's respiratory systems forever, isn't it?

A delay suggests that the government recognises the sensitivity of legislating activities in private space. Many people who feel the government is pushing its luck defining pubs and restaurants as public spaces would be pushing their luck by extending rulings into a private car.

This could be a recognition that banning smoking in cars would be more a political gesture than an effective measure to protect respiratory health. There are unquestionably threats to children's respiratory health in this country, but it is very doubtful whether banning smoking in cars would be more than tinkering at the edges.

Licence to let people smoke in Greek hospitality venues

Under pressure from over 400 penalty notices and who knows how many more breaches of the law since last September, Greece will shortly announce the introduction of smoking licences, bringing an end to an experiment in smoking bans that the authorities really thought would work this time round.

I said earlier that I don't really think licences are a solution. I still don't think they are, but if I'm honest if the opportunity arose to apply such a thing in Scotland tomorrow I'd go for it. Anything to prove that smoking facilities have market value, which many anti-smokers have awkwardly tried to deny from day one. Anything to reverse this deplorable situation that gives smokers and their friends nowhere to light up anywhere in the country, in spite of their contribution to the health budget and council taxes.

Better that smoking indoors isn't seen as a right that one has to purchase from the council. It's a natural right, or a God-given right, or a common law right, depending on your point of view. Tobacco is legal, and anyone can say that they don't want it on their premises – there is no reason to be heavy handed. However much money they spend trying to persuade us that smoking damages the body beyond repair within minutes (more than anything else?), the inherent injustice of the smoking ban remains: it's a weapon to denormalise smoking, and, by association, smokers.

Trouble in Spain, and they don't like the smoking ban either

There appears to be rebellion in Spain against the smoking ban. Faced with austerity measures for the sake of stabilising international markets, the authorities there couldn't let the public take solace in a smoke and a drink, but the austerity measures had to include a ban on public smoking too. There are reports that some licensees will not enforce the law.

The unhappiness shows itself in a fight over smoking, resulting in a hotelier needing stitches. I remember hearing about a bar tender in Leith who was hit by a glass in the early days of the ban in Scotland: reported here. Such incidents have been rare in Scotland, at least not widely reported. A landlord in Bolton was rewarded by a broken leg for enforcing the smoking ban. Bar staff should not have been used to police a ban against their customers that must have been soul-destroying for thousands of people on both sides of the bar.

Feelings about watching Spain go through what we've already been through are inexpressible ... their ban is worse because it applies to certain outdoor areas.

The Dutch example could help them. What can the rest of us do?

Four degrees of separation

Obesity gains ground in the fight for funding in the United States. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is now spending over ten times as much on obesity as on anti-smoking.

We learn two things:

The rationale for designated smoking areas was based on the stated premise that secondhand smoke is medically dangerous to nearby people who might inhale the fumes.

There is no question that secondhand smoke can be unpleasant; few nonsmokers want to sit in a cloud of tobacco dust or have tobacco smell on their clothing or hair. But is it dangerous to your health? A study of 35,561 spouses of smokers followed for 38 years published in the British Medical Journal in 2003 showed that second-hand smoke is an irritant, but does not cause life-threatening disease. Actually, "secondhand eating" may be more dangerous.

With it so far. But it continues:

When people with whom we are closely associated gain weight, such as a spouse, sibling, neighbor or friend, we are also at an increased risk of gaining weight. For example, if your friend becomes obese, you have a 177 percent increased risk of becoming obese. If your friend's brother becomes obese, your risk is still increased. The increased risk goes out to four degrees of separation.

Okay. But what happens if they lose weight? And why is your friend putting on weight if you're not putting on weight?

As usual with such absurdly focussed studies, this leaves more questions than answers.

Secondary smoke has allegedly left one thousand a year dead in Scotland and seventy-nine thousand in Europe, without us knowing with any certainty who any of these people are. It is nice that Dennis Gottfried points out that smoke is actually only an irritant, even if only to convey the idea that obesity is a more urgent problem than smoking these days.

If this is any indication of the quality of 'obesity-related science', it looks even more akin to witchcraft and/or guesswork than the 'science' of secondary smoke.

Their Freedom, His Choice

How long before we get such an opportunity in Scotland? Deputy Prime Minster Nick Clegg has invited public views on unnecessary laws, restrictions on civil liberties and regulations that hamper business. You can read all the recommendations from the public here. Use the search box or tag clouds to find any subject of interest to you.

Don't forget to watch Nick Clegg's video recorded on 9 July saying that 'of course' the smoking ban was one area of policy that would not be changed. Public annoyance at this announcement can be found among the more recent recommendations and comments, some people declaring that the exercise is a sham.

See threads Repeal and Change the Smoking Ban, Lift smoking ban in pubs and clubs at management's discretion, and today [18 July] Personal Message for Nick Clegg.

Action on Smoking and Health, in a press release from the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, expresses annoyance at the level of opposition to the ban:

Pro-health campaign ASH has accused the tobacco industry of orchestrating pro-smoking comments on a website launched by deputy prime minister Nick Clegg in a move to get ‘unnecessary’ laws and regulations scrapped.

This has led to another thread on Your Freedom, Time to Review the Libel Laws, in which posters insist that they are not influenced by loyalty to the tobacco industry.

It is encouraging that comments are threads on this topic are growing, in spite of Nick Clegg's intention to pour cold water on the issue. Further efforts are being made to alert MPs to the Early Day Motion 406, an attempt to address the smoking ban (see previous post below).

Please join in and find other ways to alert your MP and local press that you want change!