Cancer Research supports plain packaging on your High Street

Cancer Research UK's campaign against plain packs continues here (this is from yesterday). The usual warnings – that colours mislead customers into the belief that some brands are safer than others – and the story of a mother's death from lung cancer prompting her daughter to stop smoking.

I enjoyed this piece, from Smoking Scot. An interesting view of Cancer Research's place on the High Street:

They love recessions because landlords have few choices and will sign up to predatory long term deals when they can't rent to the productive sector. The hidden value of 44,500 volunteers is worth tens of millions of Pounds to CRUK and the whole lot's tax free. Little wonder they couldn't care less if every pub, greasy spoon or betting shop in the country closed - far less competition and lots of opportunities for them to open another retail "presence" in another High Street.

And even better:

Thankfully it's no longer necessary to go into a great long explanation about CRUK. All I need do is refer them to Tobacco Tactics (9), and point out that it's partly through their corporate donations that CRUK can help finance a site that slanders ordinary citizens, attempts to bully politicians and does its level best to ruin the careers of professionals who disagree with their view of the world. [link in original]

We may be met with a brick wall when it comes to most politicians, however very few corporations want to be associated with something as base as Tobacco Tactics. Once they see it for what it is, (and I highlight their "disclaimer") they quickly grasp how embarrassing it might be for their Chairman to have to answer searching questions at the next shareholders meeting! [link added]

Didn't need to go that far with one Tesco not a million miles from Edinburgh. Now their customers have a choice of charity cans and their alternate is excellent; the RNLI. The direct approach works, especially when the manager smokes!

One thing this has taught me is smokers need to get on to this charity bandwagon. It would be awesome if F2C, TCT or TICAP could set up a charity wing and start handing out donation cans. I've checked in on several small newsagents in my area that sell cigarettes and none accept cans from CRUK. To an owner, they've all indicated a willingness to accept a can from any outfit intent on fighting this monstrosity. [links added]

The reference to Tobacco Tactics is particularly interesting. The site includes a directory of opponents to tobacco control (split into categories such as libertarians, bloggers, politicians, etc.). Cancer Research has provided donations to this effort.

I find intriguing the idea that powerful charities might find it lucrative to lobby on legislation that will endanger small unfashionable shops, and small shops would support resistance to this juggernaut.

The fight goes on.

Welcome to Tobacco Control Tactics: the debate is not over

Source

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.