Revealed through Freedom of Information: the hypocrisy of ASH

More evidence of the depths to which tobacco control will sink.

As I wrote on Monday, the All Party Parliamentary Group on Smoking and Health (chaired by Stephen Williams MP and run by ASH) distributed a newsletter last month that accused Forest of petition "rigging" and "cheating" during the consultation on standardised packaging.

The allegation was in relation to one complaint by one individual at the Department of Health. We took the complaint very seriously, investigated it thoroughly, and replied to the DH on August 30.

We found that a person employed by Tribe Marketing, the agency we used to help with our campaign, had signed the Hands Off Our Packs petition on behalf of two friends "who had agreed to have their names recorded".

This was against the strict instructions given to employees by Tribe. Consequently we invited the DH to discount these two names from the 235,000 or so that were submitted to the consultation by Forest/Hands Off Our Packs.

Now, thanks to the miracle of FOI, Angela Harbutt has revealed some information that demonstrates the hypocrisy of tobacco control and ASH in particular.

On 23 July a Research Fellow at the UK Centre for Tobacco Control Studies (UKCTCS) circulated an email that began:

Hi All,

Many of you may be aware that there is a public consultation open for people to express their views to the Government about plain (or standardised) packaging of cigarettes ...

John Britton has submitted a statement to government on behalf of the UKCTCS supporting plain packaging. At the end of the consultation period, the government will be taking into account all the views expressed, but also will count the number of people that have signed petitions for and against ...

Basically, we need as many people as possible who are for plain packaging to sign petitions and submit their views to government, and this is where you come in. If you feel so inclined, a number of charities have petitions on their website that you can sign to show support ...

You can only vote once on each petition but I would seriously doubt that there will be cross checking between charity petitions so it may be worth signing all of them to get your money’s worth. You can also submit your thoughts to government directly and there is a website to guide you through that. Here are the links.

Now that's what I call petition rigging and cheating!!

Even ASH realised the significance of this email because CEO Deborah Arnott, who must have been on the mailing list, responded immediately:

Thank you for encouraging people to respond to the consultation but I would be very grateful if you would make it clear that people should only be responding to the consultation once.

She added:

"... it is not helpful for people to be encouraged to make [multiple responses] ... and certainly not something ASH or our Smokefree Action Coalition partners would countenance".

That's all well and good apart from two rather important points.

One, the aforementioned John Britton is a director of UKCTCS and a trustee of ASH. While there is no suggestion that Britton approved the call for multiple responses, correspondence indicates that he did see the email before it went out. Unfortunately he "didn't notice" the offending paragraph.

Two, knowing that their own side had been involved in a brazen attempt to cheat, you would expect ASH to think twice before accusing the opposition of the same offence.

Instead, last month, the APPG on Smoking and Health (run by ASH) did exactly that.

How hypocritical is that?!

Full story here: FOI reveals arrogance of ASH.