This "moral" crusade against the "many and awful sins" of Big Tobacco
Friday, February 15, 2013 at 19:30
Simon Clark

My pre-recorded interview for BBC Scotland at the RTE studios in Dublin last week resulted in a 12-second soundbite.

The report, broadcast on Politics on Sunday Scotland ahead of the publication of the Scottish Government's new tobacco control strategy later this month, also featured an equally brief comment from ASH Scotland CEO Sheila Duffy.

It was followed by a live interview with Professor Gerard Hastings, founder/director of the Institute for Social Marketing, Centre for Tobacco Control Research, at Stirling University.

Hastings was also the lead investigator for Plain Tobacco Packaging: A Systematic Review, an allegedly "independent scientific review" published by the Department of Health as part of the consultation on standardised packaging.

'Independent' clearly doesn't mean 'impartial' or 'open-minded' because here's what Hastings had to say on Politics on Sunday (or should that be Sinday?!):

"What does strike me listening to that report is that this is a very good news story for Scotland ...

What we do need to focus though on is young people. Bear in mind that adults do not take up smoking, so when Forest talk about adults enjoying their smoking it gives the lie to the fact that, first of all, most adults regret ever starting, but mostly that this is a paediatric phenomenon.

Questioned about the next steps – gruesome health warnings, for example – he responded:

"We already have some gruesome pictures on [the pack] but, yes, the pack should increasingly be seen not as a marketing tool of the industry, and remember this is about a multinational industry that is exploiting young people.

"It kills one in two of its loyalist [sic] customers so this is a pariah industry and Scotland should be rightly angry about it exploiting young people."

Invited to comment on the 15-fold increase in spending on tobacco control since devolution, Hastings referred to the cost of incapacity benefit and implied that much of this was due to smoking-related illness.

"[Smoking] is causing an enormous fiscal drain on our country. We need to do something about it."

"But my argument would not be fiscal. It is moral. It is simply wrong that children are pulled in to an industry that addicts and then kills.

We would not allow it in any other part of our lives so we should not allow it here.

Citing the link between smoking and deprivation, he concluded:

"It is a very, very regressive industry, one of its many and awful sins."

The six-minute report starts at 1:18:00 but it's only available for another 24 hours.

Article originally appeared on Simon Clark (http://taking-liberties.squarespace.com/).
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