ASH and the boy who cried wolf
Monday, May 4, 2020 at 9:12 According to a YouGov poll, commissioned by ASH, ‘more than 300,000 UK smokers may have quit owing to Covid-19 fears.’
At least, that’s how the Guardian headlined the story. The ITV News report didn’t even bother with that small qualification:
More than 300,000 Britons have [my emphasis] quit smoking during the coronavirus crisis as evidence mounts that the habit leaves them more vulnerable to Covid-19, a survey suggests.
A further 550,000 Britons have tried to quit, while 2.4 million have cut down, according to the joint study by the UK arm of YouGov’s international Covid-19 tracker in conjunction with anti-smoking group Action on Smoking and Health (ASH).
Based on a single poll, these are remarkably confident statements.
The survey, of 1,004 people, suggested 2% of smokers had now quit due to Covid-19 concerns.
In addition, 8% of smokers said they were trying to quit, 36% said they had cut down, and 27% said they were now more likely to quit.
A quarter of ex-smokers said they were now less likely to resume smoking, although 4% say the pandemic had made them more likely to relapse.
The sample size - 1,004 people - interests me. It’s possible that YouGov polled 1,004 smokers and former smokers but the reports don’t say that.
I know a little bit about polling and I know it’s expensive to target a statistically significant number of adults who smoke.
To achieve a target of 1,000 smokers in the UK, for example, most pollsters would have to poll almost 7,000 members of the general public.
My guess is that YouGov polled 1,004 members of the general public (smokers, ex-smokers and non-smokers) of whom approximately 15 per cent would have been smokers at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, reflecting the national figure.
To be generous, let’s say 20 per cent of the YouGov sample were smokers. That would mean that YouGov polled only 200 smokers.
I may be wrong which is why I have asked YouGov for the data on which the poll is based:
In particular I would be grateful if you could confirm how many smokers and how many former smokers were identified in the sample of 1,004 people surveyed.
Meanwhile it’s worth noting that ASH is still claiming that ‘evidence mounts’ that smoking leaves smokers ‘more vulnerable to Covid-19’.
As readers know, there is plenty of conflicting evidence on the issue and it is currently impossible to draw definitive conclusions either way.
Indeed, as I wrote on Friday, the most recent academic review - echoing other reports - found the current data ‘inconclusive’.
Untroubled by this inconvenient truth, ASH has chosen to double down with relentless propaganda, a tactic once described - by its own CEO - as a “confidence trick”.
They must think that the more they repeat something the more it will be believed.
It’s not a bad tactic. After all, it’s worked for them before - the repeated insistence, for example, that passive smoking is a significant threat to other people’s health.
Like the boy who cried wolf, the risk is that, eventually, people will stop listening because ASH will have shot whatever credibility they have left.
Covid-19 is going to be a game changer for many ‘experts’ and organisations - the World Health Organisation, Public Health England and many more.
Lobby groups, especially those that shout the loudest, are also going to come under intense scrutiny when this is all over.
Some will enhance their reputation, others will be seen for what they are - naked opportunists and scaremongering propagandists.
I wonder which side of the line ASH will fall.
Update: The Market Research Society writes, 'If data tables have not been published ask for a copy.'
I emailed YouGov at 8:39 yesterday (Monday) to ask for a copy. 24 hours later, no response.
Reader Comments (3)
Smokers do not believe a word ASH says but smokerphobics like the puritans at The Guardian hang on to every word these middle class messiahs preach.
Government must stop funding this hate group using charity status as a front and start putting that money into NHS direct patient care to benefit everyone and not just a handful of nasty, dishonest, political activists.
Why should the public be expected to raise funds for the NHS which is not a charity but paid from from our taxes which the likes of ASH and its lifestyle stooges in public health plunder to push their own lifestyle politics.
This enforced theft of NHS cash must stop, specially when used to push lies which aim to incite hatred and cause members of our communities to be excluded, shunned and avoided.
Is Priti Patel now working for ASH? I only ask because any evidence that people are smoking less since Covid-19 would seem to have the same basic flaw as Patel crowing how significantly shoplifting has gone down since - er- the shops were shut.
Surely people who have to queue to get into a supermarket and are pressured to stick to "essential purchases" are far less likely to purchase cigarettes, and at the very least highly unlikely to queue simply for that separate till.
Yes, booze consumption seems to have gone up since lockdown, but that can be paid for at the same till as groceries. Going on to buy cigarettes means joining another socially distanced queue at a special till - inconvenient for anyone, and especially impractical if you had to leave your kids in the car because you weren't allowed to bring them in.
ASH's antismoker propaganda is absolutely a 'confidence trick'. Tobacco control manipulated data, suppressed dissent, and encouraged social division to further their ideological goals of suppressing smoking while bolstering thinner own power and profit. Now that their 'data' is being challenged by facts (note they only like evidence-based measures when they further their goals and enhance their power and profit) they seek to suppress evidence that smoking may prevent COVID-19 infection.