Get ready for the Big Splash!

Yesterday was not just Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent.

In Ireland it was also No Smoking Day, or National No Smoking Day as they call it over there.

It was difficult to tell though because media coverage was limited to, at most, a few local newspapers and radio stations.

The only 'national' coverage I saw was via The Journal, an online only source of news but very one-sided on the subject of smoking.

According to The Journal, the 'big' National No Smoking Day initiative was the Health Service Executive's announcement that 'nicotine patches, gum and lozenges are now available for free'.

Watch those smoking rates plunge!

I shouldn't laugh because our own No Smoking Day isn't in much better health. Like its Irish cousin, the UK version has been on life support for years, as I've noted before.

Fortunately the cavalry has arrived because, after years of neglect, No Smoking Day – which once had an annual budget of £600,000 – has been added to ASH's bulging portfolio of interests.

The first notable change appeared two weeks ago when it was announced that:

No Smoking Day is 8th March but for the first time this year there will be a pre-launch period two weeks before NSD.

An 'Activation phase' was to be followed by a ‘Big Splash’ on No Smoking Day.

The new Activation phase – highlighting what campaigners claim is an increased risk of dementia for those who smoke – was launched yesterday with a news release, issued by ASH, that featured comments by the chief executive of Alzheimer’s Research UK, and a neuroscientist and dementia prevention expert based at Imperial College London.

It also featured a quote by ASH CEO Deborah Arnott who, it was confirmed, is 'helping to co-ordinate this year's No Smoking Day'.

I've not seen any media reports prompted by the pre-launch press release but if ASH can breathe new life into an event many of us had written off, good luck to them.

The budget must be tight though because the branding for No Smoking Day is still based on a design template that dates back several years and was borrowed, if I remember, from a local campaign launched in Leeds.

As for the promise of a ‘Big Splash’ on March 8, what can Deborah be planning? Watch this space.

Comments

[Pat Nurse]

Whatever ASH is planning for the "Big Splash" no doubt it will be abusive and designed to humiliate, demonise, bully and incite hatred and fear against people who smoke.

That's The template that this vile organisation has always used. Perhaps this year they will get their useful allies in Big Vape to join them in the campaign to alienate and socially exclude tobacco consumers even more.

People who smoke know very well where to go and how to get help to quit if they want to. They don't need to be bullied into it with public money that could be so much better used to help people struggling with the cost of living crisis.

I'll bet some non smoking family or elderly couple currently sitting without heating or rationing food will be so pleased to see £600,000 of public money funded with their hard earned taxes being given away on a whim to fund the ego and aspirations of a fake charity like ASH - whose pampered staff probably aren't sitting in the cold or going hungry thanks to their parasitic income gained from the backs of those people they just want to bully and coerce using the power of Big Government against the weakest and most vulnerable in society into thinking like they they do.