Radio Four to discuss smoking ban
Monday, July 2, 2012 at 14:45 I shall be on Radio Four from midday to 12.45pm tomorrow.
Call You and Yours will be discussing the fifth anniversary of the smoking ban and guests include me and Professor Linda Bauld of the University of Stirling and the UK Centre for Tobacco Control Studies.
I guess I'd better re-read Linda's insightful review The Impact of Smokefree Legislation in England (March 2011) which has been given a fresh burst of publicity by both the BBC and the Guardian.
I shall also re-read Imperial Tobacco's well written response, The Bauld Truth (June 2011). I will also remind myself of Chris Snowdon's comments on Bauld's work. Then I shall read Is the smoking ban a major cause of the decline of the pub in Britain and Ireland? (C R Consulting, 2010). Finally I shall draw my own conclusions and hope that listeners do the same.
Update: According to the Call You and Yours website the programme will ask:
What impact has the smoking ban had on you or your work since it was introduced? Did you give up smoking altogether or reduce your smoking in public places? Did you initially oppose the ban and have you changed your mind since then? Do you see this law as just another way for the government interfering in your right to smoke? Or do you think the government should go further and ban smoking altogether in public places - maybe even in the home?
You can contribute by calling 03700 100 444 (a call will cost you the same as to an 01 or an 02 number) or you can e-mail via the Radio 4 website, or you can text to 84844. Or you can tweet @BBCRadio4 using the hashtag
Update: Following the resignation of Bob Diamond at Barclays Bank, You and Yours has changed topic. Linda Bauld and I have been stood down. That's show business!
Simon Clark
Researchers at Loughborough and Exeter universities are currently running a study looking at the effects of the smoking ban on smokers.
Smokers are invited to click on this link and complete the study then pass it on to anyone you know who smokes.
Reader Comments (18)
The big asking points of the programme are biased even before it begins!
The programme will ask the following:
1. What impact has the smoking ban had on you or your work since it was introduced?
2. Did you give up smoking altogether or reduce your smoking in public places?
3. Did you initially oppose the ban and have you changed your mind since then?
4. Do you see this law as just another way for the government interfering in your right to smoke?
5. Or do you think the government should go further and ban smoking altogether in public places - maybe even in the home?"
Alternatives based upon these question could, and I think, should be asking the following:
1. What impact has the smoking ban had on you or your lifestyle since it was introduced?
2. When you were forced to give up smoking altogether in public places, did it make you want to stop smoking completely?
3. Did you initially agree with the ban and have you changed your mind since then?
4. Do you see this law as just another way of the government interfering in your right to live your life as you see fit - as a free man?
5. Or do you think the government should review the smoking ban now and allow separate, well ventilated smoking rooms in pubs, clubs, restaurants and other places of entertainment - maybe even bringing in a law to ban discrimination against smokers?
I just did the survey. I fear it is has been designed to allow researchers to target those who feel very strongly about their right to choose and marginalise them further.
Hi Simon,
Should be interesting, Her review was rubbish.
We spotted something over at F2C - the latest CIU AGM report. You may already be aware of it (though don't mention it above).
Seems they might disagree with her analysis.
John Tobin, Vice President:
'So-called independent reports had been submitted to the Government to the effect that there was no evidence of overall financial damage being done to industry as a result of the smoking ban. “What a load of rubbish,” he exclaimed. Less than two years into the ban, local authorities had been instructed to consider claims for reductions in business rates directly attributable to the ban. Bissett Kenning & Newiss represented about 700 clubs making a claim. Ninety-five per cent were successful and the average rebate was 10 per cent of rates to continue on a year-by-year basis. There is your firm evidence of real and substantial damage caused by the smoking ban’.
http://www.freedom2choose.info/news_viewer.php?id=1365
(Links to a pdf of the conference report)
Good luck for tomorrow.
Give her Hell
These days I don't bother disputing the risks of passive smoking as a tool of argument because I think most people can see that the risks are somewhere between very small and non-existant. I think people that are in favour of the smoking ban like it because it has a positive effect from their point of view, in that it forces smokers to subsidise smoke-free pubs and restaurants because smokers have no alternative places to go to (except home).
I prefer to use an argument that could negatively affect their lives, specifically the closing of pubs and restaurants during weekends and evenings.
There is a reported 25% increased risk of heart disease from passive smoking and a reported 40% increased risk of heart disease and shift work. Both these risks can be eliminated by making all pubs and restaurants smokefree and closing all of them during the evenings and weekends.
This way restaurant staff could enjoy normal weekday working hours in a smoke-free environment.
Is it your position that passive smoking is safer than shift work and so there is no reason to ban either?
Or is it your position that shift work is more dangerous than passive smoking and so both should be banned?
The argument
is met with
This is the only argument I find that seems to work for me.
I would speculate that a lot of people would look back at all those smoke-free restaurants that they went to before the smoking ban and think it a very good deal compared
to having them all closed in the evenings and weekends.
It will be yet another boring phone in of pseudo justification for the nastiest piece of petty legislation any modern British government has ever introduced. It didn't stop me smoking but it, sure as hell, stopped me voting for any of those oiks who implemented it. The worst effect is in engendering disrepect for the law of the land. Give two fingers to one and you might start giving two fingers to them all. I may listen but as soon as someone mentions 'stinking clothes' or 'secondhand smoke' I shall switch on the tennis.
And that, with all the Murray hype, is enough to drive anyone to his fag packet.
Simon
Could you ask the Professor what happened in, her and people like her, sad lives that has made them such angry, vindictive, people? Is she and her ilk aware that that much hatred can cause heart disease, stroke and lead to an early death. May I respectfully suggest that they take up smoking, it really helps keep me calm and carry on in spite of attempts by the TCI to drive me up the wall.
Barbara
Good luck tomorrow.
A comment I would try to insert is "Its a bit rich coming from people who say that 'SHS' kills when there is no intrinsic medical or scientific proof ie post mortem evidence, that anyone has ever been killed by 'passive smoking'. Do you have any post-mortem evidence that this is the case?"
Isn't Linda Bauld supposed to write independent reports - how independant can she be when she is a member of the ASH Advisory Council, I think she also works for Smokefree South West, and isn't she a member of the International Women Against Tobacco?
Yep - she's independant alright.
You might want to point out that most people really don't give a damn either way but there are many solutions to the "unpleasant" effects of ETS on Smokerphobics - except that technology in this area of benefit to both smokers and non smokers have been halted in what is a regressive stance and not a 21st Century progressive one.
Exclusion and stigmatisation are regressive policies and take us back decades.
I did the survey too. It seemed aimed in the end, at getting you to sign up for their propaganda pack and some cessation products, inviting you to give your contact details if you would.
Oh and of course, if the old chestnut about FOREST being supported by the tobacco industry gets casually thrown into the conversation, don’t forget that a vague but nonetheless pointed retort along the lines of: “Well, parties on both sides of this divide receive funding from appropriately vested interests, don’t we, Linda?” (Look her straight in they eye and smile whilst you say it – they hate that!) should be enough to bring about a swift change of subject.
The point about funding as far as ASH is concerned is fairly straightforward. ASH have three bites of the tax-payer cherry. One tranche from central government, one from CRUK (tax-payers money) and one from the BHF again (tax-payers money) as well as private funding from big pharma.
Why on earth CRUK and BHF are giving tax-payers money to ASH is anyone's guess.
I would strongly suggest you take the survey. You don't have to comment on the survey at the end you can leave your own comments about the persecution of smokers which is what I did. You can say whatever you want to say. They will have no choice but to read them won't they.
You don't have to accept any offers of any kind.
I have completed the questionnaire and have reached the comment box at the end. Before I do that, let me give some tips.
I attended a course many years ago. Similar questionnaires were completed. These questionnaires led you gradually into contradictory situations. EG. Would you prefer the Local Authority to spend money on parks or on road repairs? Whichever you chose, further questions dragged you into self-contradiction - eg. "Do bad roads cause death on the roads?" "What value do you place on rose bushes?"
The answer is to be absolutely either 'for' or 'against'. In the questionnaire, ignore the middle boxes. Be absolutely positive or negative.
Update
Not your fault Simon I know, but this sort of thing pisses me off, I spend half an hour of my time concocting a decent email and this is what happens.
Never again.
I noticed in the survey they try to get you to recommend yourself or a friend to the NHS cessation bullies.
I wish they had a box there I could have have written "something" in.
Troughers, liars and bigots every one of them.
That questionnaire is so bad if it was written by one of my undergraduate students I would fail them.
There are a whole series of questions about how you feel you are treated by "non-smokers." Well, fine, thanks! Most non-smokers don't give a damn about it. But anti-smokers? Yeah, persecuted, vilified etc. But there is no way of doing this without condemning normal non-smokers. If you say you feel persecuted you are agreeing that denormalisation has worked. If you say non-smokers are fine you are saying there is no persecution or agenda against smokers. Call them anti-smokers, idiots! Most of my friends are non-smokers and they're great. Anti-smokers on the other hand are generally despicable human beings. Can I get my opinion across, please?
Some of the questions are obviously biased e.g. "I feel less deviant when with other smokers" (they say themselves, later in the questionnaire, that they want to prove that being with other smokers makes smoking feel more normal - hmmm, I wonder what control measure they are thinking up next?
Then there are questions like, "How negatively do you feel the smoking ban has impacted you?". The answers are "negatively," "positively", "not at all" etc. How are you supposed to answer that? With "negatively" (ie a double negative?). With "positively" i.e it has impacted on me negatively a lot? Absolutely awful, gobbledegook nonsense. And this was constructed by supposed scientists!!! God give me strength!
Also, absolutely no questions about changes to how often you go out, how your spending patterns have changed etc.
But lots of questions like "I feel as worthy as other people". How do you agree/disagree to that? To agree implies that you have no awareness of a deliberate denormalisation campaign or that it has not affected you (thus undoubtedly, "more must be done!" in their eyes). To disagree proves you are a snivelling worm with no self-esteem, which is obviously why you smoke....
Good ol' junk science. Where would they be without it?
For those who may have missed it, You n' Yours did a 5 Years On featurette today. It consisted of a short telephone interview with one Professor West, a tobacco-control bod. Professor West concluded that the ban was a Very Good Thing, quoting the usual phony-and-they-know-it stats on heart-attack rates.
No representation of counter-opinion was considered necessary. After all, as TC keep reminding us, "all the polls show" their ban is "extremely popular".
Other than with those refuseniks who have lost their livelihoods and social lives of course. Those who weren't asked the question in ASH's special independent opinion poll, commissioned from ASH trustee Peter Kellner's polling business. [The polls conducted by the pub-industry don't count of course as 1/ they gave the wrong result and 2/ they could be written off as "vested interests" [an argument one never hears applied to trade unions]. So these polls are being written out of history.]