Ireland’s leading anti-smoking warrior suffers another election defeat
Sunday, December 1, 2019 at 8:55 James Reilly, the former health minister who once declared “war” on the tobacco industry and masterminded the introduction of plain packaging in Ireland, has suffered another humiliating election defeat.
Standing for Fine Gael in a by-election in Dublin Fingal (formerly Dublin North), a seat he held from 2007 to 2016, Reilly came fourth behind Labour, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party whose candidate Joe O’Brien won the seat and was elected to the Dáil.
Minister for health from 2011-2014, Reilly made headlines in 2013 when he described the tobacco industry as “evil”, introduced graphic health warnings on cigarette packs and said he intended to introduce unbranded cigarette packets.
Warming to his theme he later declared, “We are in a war while lives are being lost,” adding, “Standardised packaging is the next logical step in combating this public health epidemic."
His Wikipedia entry, which has an entire section devoted to ‘Smoking’, has some more information I had forgotten:
During the Irish Presidency of the European Union, Reilly prioritised the Tobacco Products Directive. He secured the agreement of the European Council within just six months. Health Commissioner Tonio Borg praised his ability in securing this agreement.
When the Tobacco Directive's future became doubtful because of tobacco industry lobbying in the European Parliament, Reilly arranged for letters supporting the directive to be sent to MEPs from himself, the Taoiseach, 16 European health ministers and the World Health Organisation.
In 2014, however, following a government reshuffle, Reilly was moved - some would say demoted - to minister for children and youth affairs, although he retained responsibility for public health and anti-smoking policy.
While this allowed him to introduce plain packaging, his political career took a further hit when he lost his Dáil seat in the 2016 general election. Ironically, he was no longer a member of the government or the Dáil when the policy was enacted in May 2017.
Instead, thanks to the patronage of Taoiseach Leo Varadkar who nominated him for the Seanad, he became Senator James Reilly and continued his war on tobacco by advocating a ban on smoking in all outdoor dining areas.
Now vaping is in his sights too. Two months ago he called for a ban on flavoured e-cigarettes in Ireland.
But back to Fingal. In March it was reported that:
A local organisation called Empower has teamed up with the Irish Cancer Society, the Department of Health and HSE to make Fingal 'tobacco free'.
The Minister of State for Health Promotion, Catherine Byrne, last week launched 'Tobacco Free Fingal', an initiative to assist communities in Fingal in implementing and maintaining a 'facility tobacco-free policy.'
The initiative will see all Fingal community facilities, homes, parks and beaches becoming smoke-free.
In theory James Reilly should have been a perfect fit for the constituency. The electorate thought otherwise. Perhaps ‘Tobacco Free Fingal’ should be put out to grass as well.
Update: More bad news for Reilly. Although he has already been selected as a candidate in the 2018 election, some of his colleagues may be having second thoughts. According to the Sunday Times (Ireland edition):
Senior Fine Gael sources indicated that Senator James Reilly, a former deputy leader and health minister, will also be replaced on the general election ticket in Dublin Fingal after scoring less than 15% in his by-election contest.
Oh dear.
Reilly meanwhile is reported to have blamed his latest defeat on both the low turnout and some controversial anti-immigrant statements by another defeated Fine Gael candidate, Wexford’s Verona Murphy.
Either explanation might hold some weight if it wasn’t for the fact that he lost in 2016 as well. What was his excuse then?
Reader Comments (3)
It sounds like he doesn't need to be elected to push his prejudicial hate campaign against smokers when he can be put into a powerful senate position without an election.
People are so sick of this obsessive healthism as elections are showing. All nannies and smoker haters fare badly but they have managed to enshrine their hatred in law before getting booted out by the vast majority of people who think smoking is much healthier than fascism or bullying.
Ideally this is a sign that the electorate is getting tired of extreme social control and perhaps is even beginning to see through tobacco control's rampant lies. Tobacco control is based on a foundation of hate and lies. It's good top see someone that actively persecutes his fellow citizens finally being excluded from public office.
The trouble with all these swivel-eyed anti-smoking zealots is that they are a “type” – they always, and without exception, come with a lot of other, equally controlling and bullying attitudes towards anyone that they feel superior to, not just smokers. All the time the battle for a smoking ban was going on, the vast majority of these nasty attitudes lay dormant, concealed by the endless anti-smoking rhetoric which demanded the majority of their time and energy. But now that the smoking ban is in, all those other horrible little controlling impulses are starting to show themselves, too. After all, the ban was the main thing – all these other anti-smoking initiatives are in truth small by comparison and there are now other, bigger fish to fry – drinking, fast foods, environmentalism, vaping – which now offer much more potential satisfaction for those of a bullying mindset, because the target groups are so much larger (or, in the case of vapers, small but growing rather than diminishing). Why keep on harrassing a relatively small (and today often largely invisible) group of people when there are much larger numbers of people doing other things of which you disapprove, far more often and far more openly, who need to be made to toe the line? “Your” line, that is.
The problem with this is that you run the risk of alienating far more people than you did before, when you were only concentrating on a few stubborn smokers. Perhaps the likes of Reilly think that, having achieved such “success” with relatively no backlash from smokers (or tolerant non-smokers) the same will simply happen with all the other things that people do that he doesn’t approve of – that vapers will be shamed into putting aside their e-cigarettes, that drinkers will quietly stop going down the pub, and that fast-food lovers will dutifully start buying fresh veg on a daily basis and cooking for themselves at home. But there’s a hurdle with all these new target groups that wasn’t there at the start of the anti-smoking craze, and that’s precedent. Before anti-smoking cropped up, no democratic government in the world was arrogant enough to believe that they had the right – or that the people would allow them – to interfere in individuals’ private habits or private lives. Then they dipped their collective toes in the water in respect of smoking and were amazed at how easy it was to brainwash people into doing just what they were told. Now they think they can do the same with anything that they dislike. But – as these election results very clearly show – many people have noticed what’s happened to smokers, and it’s happened recently enough for many people to see the same patterns emerging in respect of their own chosen “vices” or pleasures.
It’s good that people are indicating this through their behaviour in the ballot box, but it would be even better if they were brave enough to be more strident and vocal about their reasons for not voting for this vile little man, because that might just give a few other politicians pause for thought as to how wise it is, for their own political careers, to keep their seat on the anti-smoking (and thus the anti-everything else) bandwagon. The people, it seems, are starting to wake up ...