Petulant ASH accuses Government of “loss of nerve”

The New Zealand Parliament last night passed legislation that will ban the sale of cigarettes to anyone born on or after January 1, 2009.

You do the maths but it means that in 2033, for example, someone aged 25 will be allowed to buy cigarettes but their 24-year-old friend will be denied that choice, legally at least. And so on.

Other measures, reports the Guardian, include ‘dramatically reducing the legal amount of nicotine in tobacco products and forcing them to be sold only through specialty tobacco stores, rather than corner stores and supermarkets’.

As a result the number of stores that are allowed to sell cigarettes is expected to fall from 6,000 to just 600 nationwide.

The aim is for New Zealand to be ‘smoke free’ (fewer than 5% of the population smoking) by 2025. The current rate is 8%.

Conversely, according to the Mirror:

Health Secretary Steve Barclay is to stub out a plan to make the country tobacco free by 2030 - ending hopes of saving an extra 500,000 lives (sic).

Specifically:

Whitehall sources say he is abandoning the scheme to raise the legal age for buying tobacco one year every year until no-one was able to buy cigarettes at all.

It means the tobacco sale age will stay at 18 which anti-smoking campaigners say is a missed opportunity to cut smoking in young people by a third.

I'm not sure I fully believe this story. My guess is that someone in tobacco control placed it to put pressure on government and I'm pretty I know who.

First, the suggestion that Barclay is ‘abandoning’ the policy is nonsense because no-one in government ever proposed or adopted it in the first place.

It was recommended by Dr Javed Khan whose infamous review of tobacco control policies was commissioned by former health secretary Sajid Javid and published in June but at no point did Javid or Thérèse Coffey or Steve Barclay (Javid’s successors) endorse the idea.

It was merely being considered, along with Khan’s other “crackpot” ideas.

Second, while I was fairly sure that Khan’s recommendation to raise the age of sale by one year every year (an idea he clearly took from New Zealand) was unlikely to be adopted by the present Government, which has far more pressing issues to address, I’m less confident that raising the age of sale of tobacco from 18 to 21 is off the table, as the Mirror suggests.

Experience has taught me never to be complacent so as far as I’m concerned that battle has still to be fought.

Nevertheless ASH reacted with the petulance we have come to expect when their lobbying doesn’t pay immediate dividends. Quoted by the Mirror:

Deborah Arnott of Action on Smoking and Health said, “Any government worth its salt wouldn’t drop the Smokefree 2030 target.

“This is a failure of imagination and loss of nerve by a government clearly on its last legs.”

Referring perhaps to my recent post about the hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money ASH has received from government in recent years, erstwhile blogger Dick Puddlecote tweeted:

Rather rude of ASH, don't you think? Maybe the government should cut its funding.

He’s absolutely right but this is not the first time ASH has thrown its toys out of the pram when things don't go their way but long-term it seems to make very little difference when they make subsequent bids for public money.

For example, in May 2020:

[ASH] accused the government of taking an unreasonably long time to make a decision over the release of £350,000 in funding it was asked to apply for by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) for a “quit smoking for coronavirus” campaign.

Writing about it at the time I commented:

At least we have confirmation that ASH is behind the Quit For Covid campaign and, what a surprise, they’ve got the begging bowl out, demanding more taxpayers’ money to keep this sad little initiative afloat.

Typically for ASH, they’re also having a tantrum because the Government hasn’t coughed up the money quickly enough. What an odd way to go about their business. The petulance and sense of entitlement is astounding.

For all the current government’s many failings my fear is that things will be even worse under a Labour government for whom the nanny state is an article of faith that requires no justification.

So when Deborah Arnott talks disparagingly of “a failure of imagination and loss of nerve by a government clearly on its last legs” you can see she is already looking to the future - which probably means a Labour government.

See: Tory Steve Barclay to stub out plan to make Britain tobacco free by 2030 (Mirror)

Update: ASH Scotland are ‘super excited’ about New Zealand …

Update: Discussed the NZ issue with Iain Dale on LBC this evening.

Comments

[Pat Nurse]

A failure of imagination?? That's rich coming from an organisation that has no ideas of its own but simply follows whatever any other country does clearly because it is devoid of imagination.

New Zealand will not allow the situation of closely age related consumers to smoke in future. No doubt a few years into this, it will be made illegal for everyone to smoke so the bullying government can create "a level playing field." Bit by bit is how this has always been done.

Criminalising consumers is hardly brave, imaginative or just. It is simply bullying by a powerful body that has spent decades stigmatising people to strip them of the same rights afforded to other consumers and groups of people.

They talk about a genetic propensity to smoke but unlike other indentifiable groups of people who are protected in law precisely because they have a genetic propensity to be the way they are, smokers are seen as targets.

Meanwhile, I hear the hypocrites at ASH have shares in tobacco companies. Can anyone please explain to me why this does not exclude them from having sole control over smoking policy when other vested interest groups, according to the FCTC, including consumers, are banned from having any say in the war launched against them in the name of politics and ideology which uses health as a front?