The BBC's burning desire to promote tobacco control
Thursday, May 29, 2014 at 7:05 I'm on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire at 7.20.
That's followed by BBC Cumbria at 8.10 and BBC Humberside at 10.20. Freedom Association spokesman Jack Hart will be discussing the same issue on BBC Tees.
We're responding to a story that has been generated by the BBC itself ahead of Burning Issue: The Seduction of Smoking, a two-part documentary presented by Peter Taylor. The first part is broadcast on BBC2 tonight.
Here are some notes that were circulated to local radio producers yesterday:
Burning Desire. First of a two part documentary by Peter Taylor looks at the issues of smoking.
One of the country's leading experts on the impact of smoking, Dr John Britton, Director of the UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies and Chair of the Royal College of Physicians' Tobacco Advisory Group, says the price of a pack of cigarettes needs to rise to £20 in order to reduce the continuing toll on public health.
His exact comments - that will play in the BBC2 documentary and will be in BBC news output tomorrow morning – are this:
Peter Taylor: How much would like to see a packet of say 20 cost?
John Britton: Three times what you pay now. Talking to smokers, many will say if you make a packet £20, they will stop smoking.
The interesting thing is this. The theme of World No Tobacco Day 2014, organised by the World Health Organisation, is raising taxes on tobacco.
How fortuitous that a BBC documentary, broadcast two days before the event, should feature a leading tobacco control campaigner calling for the price of cigarettes to be raised to £20 a pack.
Better still, the BBC is actively hawking John Britton's comment around its network of radio stations.
Here’s the full press release about Burning Desire: The Seduction of Smoking:
Cigarettes are the most lethal consumer product on the planet. Yet the burning desire for tobacco is as strong as ever. And it's not just smokers. It's government exchequers too, with tobacco revenue bringing in almost twice the cost to the NHS of treating smoking-related diseases.
In Burning Desire: The Seduction Of Smoking, award-winning journalist Peter Taylor investigates how, despite all the health warnings and decades of increasing government regulations, thousands of young people around the world are seduced by smoking every day. He examines how powerful cigarette companies manipulate smokers, and is given rare access to the world's second-biggest tobacco company.
Every year, more than five million customers of the tobacco industry die - in the UK alone, 100,000 people die from the world's biggest cause of preventable death.
Peter travels to Australia to look at the industry's last-ditch battle to prevent plain packaging in which glossy images are replaced with gruesome health warnings. And now, other countries are poised to follow suit, including England and Wales, after fierce lobbying and two controversial U-turns.
For an industry under constant attack, the tobacco industry is in remarkable health. With eye-watering profits of more than £30 billion, producing six trillion cigarettes a year, the industry would appear to be winning.
Peter Taylor has spent 40 years investigating how, in the past, the industry has dissembled and lied - which makes it all the more remarkable he was given rare access to the second-largest tobacco company in the world, British American Tobacco. He talks to their executives and learns how BAT, now openly recognising that smoking kills, has set itself a new core strategy of 'harm reduction', developing a range of less harmful alternatives to conventional cigarettes.
In this two-part series, Peter - honoured with a Royal Television Society Lifetime Achievement Award for his outstanding contribution to journalism earlier this year - returns to an industry he last exposed 30 years ago. In his seminal documentaries in the 1970s and early 1980s he revealed the denials, duplicity and dirty tricks of an industry that refused to acknowledge the truth about tobacco. Now, Peter sets out to find how much the tobacco industry has changed and if there is any likelihood of the burning desire ever being extinguished.
Chris Snowdon has already commented on Peter Taylor's enthusiastic endorsement of the Chantler Review on plain packaging. See Two hours of plain pack promotion on the BBC.
On Monday he added this post, Policy based broadcasting.
It will be interesting to see if our fears about balance and impartiality prove correct. I may have to wear my Media Monitoring Unit hat one more time!
Update: Peter Taylor has written an article for BBC News online - Can the tobacco industry shed its 'toxic brand'?.
Meanwhile the Today programme has tweeted:
Can the tobacco industry shed its 'toxic brand'? Dr John Britton & British American Tobacco’s Kingsley Wheaton debate at 7.50am #r4today
Reader Comments (3)
This is an example of how Smokerphobia harms others. I won't be watching the propaganda on BBC.
Tobacco companies lied back then but the Big Tobacco Control Industry has lied since and lies through it's teeth now every single day - and we are expected to pay for the promotion of these lies for a licence fee to a State-Run broadcaster.
As for the £20 a packet racket, it's all aimed at ensuring bigots likes Debs and horrible Ailsa Rutter can keep their well paid jobs. Smokers are sick of funding their mortgages and annual holidays.
It's also aimed to force legit adult consumers to the criminal underground black market in readiness for their criminalisation.
After all, the only way to replace the huge amount of lost tax from quitters is to impose huge criminal penalties on those who refuse to quit.
For now, most of us will continue buying abroad but the EU is steadily raising prices across the board in line with the UK to make it meaningless for consumers to try and get a better deal. I've noticed the price rise each baccy trip I make.
Ultimately there really is only way to get these horrible vile and nasty bigots out of our lives - #WeSmokeWeVote
I note that all of this coverage seems to involve public health talking amongst themselves. Radio 5 this lunchtime featured Robert West and some denormalistion extremist from Wales arguing about e-cigs,. It's all about them isn't it. The radio show host was actually lost for words at one point.
How did this programme manage to change from a discussion on the growth of e-cigarettes to one on the the use of tobacco in 3rd world countries? It was so 'off-track' and the narrator was a pompous non-smoker, who was more than annoying to all and sundry. I was looking forward to an honest discussion on 'people power' .... which has driven then growth of e-cigarettes. The government is a disgrace, and their only motivation is financial. THE PEOPLE have brought about the e-cig revolution... and in the end... if 'they' get their way and tax it 'because they care' via 'regulation', just remember.... you can make your own... :-) Go Vape... give up tobacco... !!!