World No Tobacco Day: ASH poll invisible except in Scotland
Saturday, May 31, 2014 at 15:20 Today is World No Tobacco Day, believe it or not.
Despite a major promotional push tobacco control lobbyists in the UK have failed to generate any significant interest in the event or its theme (raising taxes on tobacco).
For example, a poll of 12,000 adults commissioned by ASH to test public opinion on raising the price of cigarettes has been ignored, so far as I can tell, by every national newspaper and broadcaster.
Only in Scotland has it received any coverage. Several newspapers mentioned it and BBC News (Scotland) published this report, Poll suggests half of Scots support steep tobacco price rises.
It includes a quote from Forest but only after I sent the BBC this email this morning:
Your report of an ASH poll released to coincide with World No Smoking Day fails to include a single opposing comment, although we sent you our response yesterday afternoon.
Can you please respond to this email as soon as possible and explain why you have effectively copied an ASH press release and made no attempt to include a balancing comment?
I followed this up with a phone call to the national news desk and they transferred me to the news desk in Scotland.
To be fair they updated the report within minutes but I really shouldn't have to chase the BBC to point out the one-sided nature of the original story.
Sadly, as regular readers know, it's something Forest has to do quite often.
PS. On Wednesday the Northern Echo published this report, North-East public 'distrustful' of tobacco industry.
Again, it's based on an ASH/YouGov poll, possibly the same one that asked questions about raising taxes.
I've not seen any other reports about this aspect of the poll. In fact, I've not even seen the poll.
I've looked for it, without success, on the ASH, ASH Scotland and YouGov websites.
Why the secrecy?
Update: After much searching I have found an article about World No Tobacco Day in the national press. Surprise, surprise, it's in the Guardian.
See: World No Tobacco Day: could UK cities ever be completely smoke free?
Reader Comments (4)
I used to work in an industry that to an extent relied on questionnaires to measure the safety and efficacy of retail products. It is very hard to design questions that do not lead the respondent and therefore comply with good clinical practice. I have absolutely no confidence in any survey carried out by pressure groups or on their behalf by companies such as YouGov.
Personally, as a non-smoker I am more tolerant of passive smoke than I am of the poisonous prohibitionist effluent that emanates from the public health industry.
The move to make councils responsible for continuing to produce pointless socially divisive nonsense is bound to yield a new crop of people who want to ban something because they are being paid to "make a difference".
We need to stop paying these people, whether they are in universities or in local authorities. The money can be used to greater effect on almost anything else. The only people who seem incapable of grasping this concept the Lib:LabCon political elite and the academic establishment. Neither are held in very high esteem by many at present but that seems not to worry them.
Well written post by Chris Oakley , clearly very intelligent.
It's been on Euronews all day.
The trouble is, chris, that there are local authority councillors who are out and out zealots. I suspect that some of them have stood as councillors as representatives of tobacco control rather than as representatives of a political party or of their voters. It only takes two or three of them to keep shouting, "For the Children!" and everyone else backs off. There are at least two that I definitely know of on our council. One is councillor for my own ward and is also chairman of the 'health and wellbeing committee'. He campaigns as a tory but acts as a despot on all things tobacco. The other is a so-called labour person, but is just like the other guy.
I wonder how many votes a representative of 'The Tobacco Control Party' would garnish?