Smoking

Hats-off to Dick Puddlecote and Chris Snowdon for being quick to notice the latest absurdity being considered by the Commons health select committee: plain packaging for alcohol. Yes, really. The committee is holding a consultation on the government’s “alcohol strategy” (and how depressing it is to contemplate the very existence of such a thing) as part of which they are soliciting views on a number of control-measures. These include: Raising the legal drinking age; and Plain packaging and marketing bans. Come now, you may say, this is only a “listening exercise” conducted by a committee of backbench MPs. To which I reply: come off it, are you still that naive?

Today’s Independent has an interesting demonstration of the insidious influence of lobbying. This is how it’s done, people: The independence of a Government adviser on red tape appointed by David Cameron has been called into question as details emerge of a possible covert attempt by the tobacco industry to undermine the proposed introduction of plain cigarette packets with no branding or company logos. Anti-smoking campaigners have voiced concerns that Mark Littlewood, the director of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), has been appointed as an “independent adviser” to the Government’s Red Tape Challenge, which they believe might allow him to influence policy on plain cigarette packets. The horror of it!

Let us hope they are. A wailing letter to the editors of the Lancet, signed by Stanton Glantz and other anti-tobacco fanatics, complains that the Dutch government “is all but closing down its tobacco control operations”. One can only hope this is the case and wish that other governments might follow suit. Apparently: It would be a matter of no little shame to a country that prides itself on a compassionate and inclusive ethos if its government were to abandon smokers to their fate. Every death that ensued would not just be the responsibility of the tobacco industry, which continues to promote its lethal product, but also of every politician

As always, I commend Chris Snowdon’s blog, Velvet Glove, Iron Fist to you as among the very best places for common sense on tobacco issues. His latest post offers a pleasing, if sadly pointless, demolition of a North Carolina study claiming that a ban on smoking in bars caused a 21% fall in the number of heart attacks in the Tar Heel state. Poppycock but the sort of tripe that’s accepted by press and politicians alike. As Chris explains: Even if we assume that secondhand smoke does cause heart attacks, smoking bans have so little effect on so few non-smokers (and have no effect at all on the smokers, unless

Well, whaddyaknow, turns out that a rise in obesity is one of the costs of government-sponsored attempts to make smoking tobacco less appealing. Swings and roundabouts. Acording to Chris Snowdon, a study* published in this week’s British Medical Journal reports that non-smoking women are twice as likely to be obese as smokers and three times as likely to be seriously lardy. True, obesity is not quite as dangerous as smoking but that’s a matter of perspective. If you look at the matter from the Treasury then obesity may well be the greater problem. Since the pressure on health costs can only increase in years to come (that’s one consequence of

Yesterday I suggested that the War on Smoking should be considered one theatre in the War on Drugs. Silly me for forgetting that it’s actually a subset of the War on Terror. Here’s ASH’s Cecilia Farren talking on the Today programme about some recent modest amendments to Holland’s smoking laws: “It’s a very backward step. For me, on the side of keeping smokefree law is public opinion, public health, workers health, equality of access. There’s just so many reasons and on the other side it’s just long campaigning by the tobacco industry, frightening businesses. It’s an absolute terror campaign and I think you’ve got to have backbone to stand up

There’s good and bad news this month. The disappointing news is that the latest surveys suggest only one in five American high schoolers smokes tobacco even occasionally. The good news is that one in five smokes marijuana from time to time. According to this year’s official figures: For 12th-graders, declines in cigarette use accompanied by recent increases in marijuana use have put marijuana ahead of cigarette smoking by some measures. In 2010, 21.4 percent of high school seniors used marijuana in the past 30 days, while 19.2 percent smoked cigarettes. This is good news? Yes it is. For one thing it shows that teenage stoners have a better grasp of

Andrew Stuttaford says Alexei Kudrin is Finance Minister of the year but, surely, that understates matters? Russia’s finance minister has told people to smoke and drink more, explaining that higher consumption would help lift tax revenues for spending on social services. Speaking as the Russian government announces plan to raise duty on alcohol and cigarettes, Alexei Kudrin said that by smoking a pack, “you are giving more to help solve social problems such as boosting demographics, developing other social services and upholding birth rates”. “People should understand: Those who drink, those who smoke are doing more to help the state,” he told the Interfax news agency. Then again, given their

Oh my, what a credulous press corps we have. Selectively credulous that is. Put it this way: if a report compiled by a Philip Morris board member suggested smoking was good for you it wouldn’t be taken terribly seriously. But let an ASH board member – in this case Dr Anna Gilmore – put together a report that says the smoking ban in England & Wales “caused” a “dramatic” fall in heart attacks and the newspapers will be happy to be spoon-fed their reporting. Now, you may say that the existence of the report is itself news. Perhaps so. But, again, the provenance of the report matters too and should

These days, when one looks back at the stratospheric rates of income tax levied in the 1970s it’s commonplace to sympathise with those who sought to avoid such punitive taxation. If you were subject to such rates then you’d do your best to limit your exposure to them wouldn’t you? Of course you would. Something similar may now be said about the levels of tax imposed upon alcohol and tobacco. More than 75% of the cost of a packet of cigarettes goes to the Treasury. It’s hard to think of many other products punished so severely. And we all know, I think, that tobacco taxes are going to increase regardless

Frankly, one would be disappointed if this sort of caper weren’t being run in Donegal: A 72-year-old Donegal man who denied running an illegal public bar in his shed, has been acquitted of two charges brought against him by the County Council under planning regulations. Patsy Brogan said the bar, which has become known as The Bog Hotel near Frosses, is for private use, and while he welcomes callers, he insists he does not charge for drink. At Donegal District Court today Judge Kevin Kilraine said there was no evidence anybody was being charged money at the bar. He said the shed had been converted to look like a bar

It’s more than a year since I first scoffed at the notion that “third-hand smoke” was going to kill us all. And now I see that this nonsense is back. Over to you, Chris Snowdon: The respondents were not told that the idea of “tobacco toxins” being harmful at ultra-low levels was no more than a “possibility” (in the words of the final study), nor that the researchers themselves referred to thirdhand smoke only as a “concept”. If they had been told that the researchers believed that smokers spread disease “through contaminated dust and surfaces, including the frame of an infant’s bed and a smoker’s finger” it is fair to

I have many more enthusiasms than convictions (in any sense of the word) but I am certain about some things and enthusiastically so. Cricket and tobacco, for instance. They’re as natural a fit as ham and eggs. If the government really wants to clamp down upon smoking they should probably consider banning cricket – for in no other sport does Lady Nicotine provide such a useful, nay vital, service. There are the cigarettes you smoke when you’re waiting to bat and the wicket looks a little lively and the other mobs’ fast bowler has a vindictive look about him and you’re just hoping that he’ll have exhausted his allotted overs

I don’t know why the Conservatives released their NHS manifesto yesterday. Can they really want people to read it? Do they think that’s a good idea? I’m not sure it is, you know. Granted, there’s the promise of a free health pony to every sick kid in the country and plenty of nice-sounding stuff about decentralisation and patients’ rights and accountability and all the rest of it. But there’s also, as I suppose might be expected, an awful lot of “we will” and very little “this is how we will” accomplish all these goals. For instance: “We will give people access to a doctor or nurse when the local family

Many thanks to Christopher Snowden for alerting me to this little piece by Euan Ferguson in the Observer today. It begins with this photograph: Photo: Nikola Solic/Reuters As Euan says, only one small detail gives this photo any glamour at all: A whirl of tutus in a Zagreb cafe-bar during a break in ballet rehearsals: poise, and skin, and fabulous discs of swan-white tuile, and yet what are our eyes drawn towards? Exactly. A little paper tube, being happily smoked. The smell will be of black Balkan tobacco, yes; but it is also the smell of rebellion and the first successful example of people-power since the idea of smoking bans