Last week I intended to write a post that began, 'Have you noticed how quiet ASH has been of late?'
I refer, of course, to the London-based operation. You couldn't keep ASH Scotland quiet if you bound and gagged all 27 members of staff and left them on a remote Hebridean island without electricity (or a boat).
In England, however, there has barely been a peep out of our old sparring partners. They haven't issued a press release since November and their website hasn't been updated for what seems like ages. (To be fair, they're not alone in this. Forest is currently developing a new site, hence the lack of activity on our old one.)
Last year it was noticeable too that other tobacco control groups were doing more and more of what I like to call ASH's "dirty work".
Anyway, several theories are doing the rounds, including the preposterous suggestion that Deborah Arnott & Co are too busy drafting the new tobacco control paper for the Department of Health.
I couldn't possibly comment.
On Thursday, however, something stirred. According to Campaign (ASH blames ad spend freeze for failures to quit smoking), ASH seem to believe that the number of people who quit smoking is linked directly to the amount of public money spent on anti-smoking advertisements.
The advertising industry will no doubt endorse this view because it wants the money, but it's not shared by everyone. Chris Snowdon, for example, has this to say: How thick do ASH think we are? he asks.