No laughing matter
Friday, October 19, 2012 at 10:23 Innovative Approaches to Tobacco Control was the title of a conference organised by ASH Wales last week.
It has now been reviewed by GASP ("your one stop shop for smokefree solutions") which has this to say:
Day 2 started with Prof. Linda Bauld who described some of the successes of projects that offered pregnant smokers incentives for quitting. We then turned attention to mental health and smoking with Lisa McNally who made everyone laugh by introducing pompous quotes from members of FOREST and knocking them down expertly. Whatever you do never say to Lisa that mental health service users can’t quit and won’t quit!
Enquiries have revealed that the "pompous quotes" that "made everyone laugh" were taken from the Forest website. They belong to David Hockney, Oscar-winning screenwriter Sir Ronald Harwood and Anthony Worral Thompson.
They read:
"I smoke for my mental health." David Hockney
"Tobacco is not an illegal substance yet the government is persecuting a minority. I think that's a disgrace in a social democracy." Sir Ronald Harwood
"Why should the anti-smoking lobby dictate our lifestyle at the expense of our well-known culture of tolerance?" Antony Worrall Thompson
I am told that Hockney's quote prefaced a discussion concerning the evidence around smoking and the risk of depression.
The quotes by Harwood and Worral Thompson led into a discussion of "how smoking has a unique place within the culture of mental healthcare and that many within it see efforts to help people quit as a form of 'social control' or as an expression of the 'nanny state'".
I'm delighted that the Forest website is being used to stimulate debate within the tobacco control industry. Next time they must invite us to give a full presentation!
PS. I may be wrong, but the review bears the hallmark of my old friend Cecilia Farren. If anyone deserves the epithet "pompous" it's Cecilia. See Named and shamed! (2007).
See also: ASH spokeswoman accuses tobacco industry of "terror campaign" (2010).
Reader Comments (4)
"Whatever you do never say to Lisa that mental health service users can’t quit and won’t quit!"
Sounds sinister because they know they can bully the vulnerable like the mentally ill and force them to quit which is why they use their wealth, power and organisation against the weakest members of our society.
Anyone can quit if they want to but if someone takes pleasure from smoking and feels better for it then that is not the business of smokerphobics from the tobacco control industry who bully people just because they can.
They are fraudsters, liars, bullies, and cheats and there should be a public inquiry like Leveson into the methods they use, the science they corrupt, and the exclusive access they have to lawmakers against the greater good of the public.
Well, I'll be laughing like a drain if the day ever comes when TC activists are exposed for the charlatans that they are.
It might be an idea, though, Simon, to correct Antony's quote (" ..culture of intolerance" ??).
Damn typo. Corrected!
The anti tobacco industry has, for several years, been attempting to show that smoking causes mental health problems rather than alleviate them. A few years ago I took part in a medical investigation as part of a smoker control group. The control group had to be smokers as the population being investigated was schizophrenics, of which 90% smoke. We were all given psychiatric tests and high resolution brain scans. I asked the person in charge why so many schizophrenics smoked. He told me there were two reasons. Firstly, to self medicate - it helps them cope with their condition and, secondly, to alleviate the side effects of the powerful medication they are on.