Tobacco "is not a consumer product" says anti-smoking campaigner
Thursday, December 10, 2015 at 18:28 Further to my previous post, I was on my own for all bar one of the interviews this morning.
The exception was BBC Radio Scotland which put me head to head with Linda Bauld of Stirling University.
The most surprising thing about Linda's contribution was not her insistence – against the evidence – that plain packaging is working (ie reducing smoking rates) in Australia, or her endorsement of the Chantler Review, it was her declaration that tobacco "is not a consumer product".
I checked with the Office for National Statistics and the latest figures for the Consumer Prices Index quite clearly includes alcohol and, wait for it, tobacco.
Other items include food and non-alcoholic beverages, clothing and footwear, furniture and household goods, and so on.
Sorry, Linda, I'm with the government on this one.
Then again, if tobacco and indeed alcohol aren't consumer products, what on earth are they?
It also begs the question that if Linda doesn't classify cigarettes as a consumer product, what about e-cigarettes (which she is very keen on promoting as a smoking cessation aid)?
They're both nicotine delivery systems. Why should one be a consumer product and not the other?
Sounds to me like the next step in the denormalisation of smoking. Deny tobacco is a consumer product and remove it from convenience stores.
Anyway, you can listen to the full Radio Scotland interview here.
Update: Linda has responded in the Comments (below). I'll have to listen to the clip again to see if I've misrepresented her but I haven't got time now because I'm going out for dinner. (I need a drink!)
In the meantime listen to the interview and judge for yourselves.
Reader Comments (7)
Hi Simon, always a pleasure to discuss the issues and thanks for tweeting the link to this page. I said tobacco was not a consumer product like shampoo or soap - that was the point I was conveying. It's quite a different consumer product in terms of the harms it causes. However, we have viable alternatives now in e-cigarettes - although the media and some researchers seem to be repeatedly misrepresenting these products. Linda
Be honest Linda. your goal is to criminalise people who smoke - a legal product btw - because you hate tobacco companies and the only to get at them is to beat up the little consumers who, frankly, wish you'd just butt out of their business.
I know your job and salary depends on this but honestly, there are far more worthwhile and honourable causes you could join to fund your lifestyle. How about saving real kids from real poison? I'm sure if you ask the kids in Syria they know EXACTLY what the difference is.
#ShameOnYou #LeaveUsAlone
I have use tobacco about 20 times more than shampoo over the decades and I have come to no harm from either products. They can both sting the eyes at first but this highly survivable.
Its a strange sort of harmful product that you can use for decades
and not actually come to any harm whatsoever.
A social engineer paid to alienate millions of law abiding citizens by churning out amateurish and ill-formed codswallop such as this - swallowed hook, line and sinker by the fools at Westminister.
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/216319/dh_124959.pdf
I use tobacco,,a consumer product. I do not use any government health quango because of its quackery. I resent being told how to live by politicians and quangos who are nothing more than small minded dictators with zero business sense. Government cannot regain my trust.
Yes, David, that report says it all. Codswallop indeed. In fact I'd go further, and call it blatant lies.
Ms Bauld obviously didn't read the hugely expensive and painstakingly comprehensive study on SHS, commissioned by the WHO itself by Boffetta et al
http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/90/19/1440.full.pdf
which was unable to find any statistically significant link between SHS and health problems. And which the WHO, let it be noted, on realising that the results weren't what they wanted, buried without a trace.
And to claim that the smoking bans had a positive impact on the hospitality industry when 15,000 pubs have closed since the legislation was enacted - a fourfold increase in closures on the years prior to the bans - I'm stunned by the sheer hubris of the woman. She is either very, very stupid, or she lies through her teeth. I favour the latter, since she;s obviously not so stupid that she doesn't know how to make a fat living on the back of vindictive persecution of people who have no recourse to any legal defense.
Oh, and by the way, Ms Bauld, I've been smoking for 55 years, and I am fit, healthy and look (I'm told) ten years younger than my age. I haven't been to a doctor for so long (for other than purely physical problems - ie a hernia) I can't remember the last time I went. So you will perhaps forgive me for viewing your statements about the 'perils of smoking' somewhat askance. My experience and my observations over a lifetime bear no relation to the hyperbolic scaremongering that is your stock in trade.
"This"meaning tobacco "is not a consumer product" is exactly what she said. Probably their next round of persecution will be to deny the very existence of tobacco consumers.
We have Linda Bauld to thank for the smoking ban review. The fact that more than seven thousands businesses closed their doors at that time, that bingo halls shut up shop across the country and that more than 100,000 people lost their jobs as a direct result of it. Millions saw the fate of their social lives sealed by Bauld's smoking ban review that claimed that "there had been no visible signs of damage to businesses" which is a lie, in my opinion. Perhaps if Bauld had bothered to report back on those millions staying in, with many of those being elderly living in social isolation and the severe loss of trade reported back from the pub industry which happened before the credit crunch, then we would have pubs and clubs that accommodated everyone rather than smokers being treated like lepers not being welcome anywhere the current position. I feel that smokers should be given the same rights in terms of places in which to socialise as non smokers.
I am disgusted that there has not been a fair and impartial smoking ban review and that instead, the likes of Bauld gave it their seal of approval knowingly wrecking so many businesses and ruining so many peoples social lives.