My advice to ASH? Put a sock in it or change the record

A week after the Government ignored their pleas for a huge spike in spending to meet the ‘Smoke-free 2030’ target, anti-smoking campaigners are back demanding more funding.

An open letter in the British Medical Journal today claims that ‘Meagre spending on tobacco control is costing the economy billions’:

Achieving a Smokefree 2030 would do much to reduce pressure on our NHS and social care systems, significantly increase disposable incomes for many of the poorest in society and deliver the economic growth our country so desperately needs.

If the government is ‘unwilling or unable’ to pay for additional tobacco control measures from the public purse, they want the tobacco industry to cough up via a “polluter pays” levy.

Coordinated, no doubt, by Action on Smoking and Health, the letter is signed by all the usual suspects including Nick Hopkinson, chairman of ASH; Kevin Fenton, president of the Faculty of Public Health; Charmaine Griffiths, chief executive, British Heart Foundation; Ian Walker, executive director, Cancer Research UK; Linda Bauld, director, SPECTRUM public health research consortium; and Sarah Woolnough, chief executive, Asthma+Lung UK.

The list of signatories also includes Pat Cullen, chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing whose members recently rejected the Government’s latest pay offer and will continue with their hugely damaging series of strikes. Welcome aboard, Pat!

Sadly, the letter failed to attract much interest among national news editors, with only the online Independent publishing the Press Association's report.

(It's had a bit more traction on local newspaper websites but overall there has been very little coverage.)

I wonder, perhaps, if journalists are beginning to tire of their special pleading for more dosh. Here's Forest's response, as quoted by the PA:

Simon Clark, director of the smokers’ lobby group Forest, said: “With smoking rates at their lowest recorded levels, funding anti-smoking initiatives during a cost-of-living crisis is not justifiable, nor is it a good use of taxpayers’ money.

“A so-called polluter pays levy would undoubtedly be passed on to the consumer, punishing smokers for their habit, and forcing many more to buy their tobacco from the unregulated black market, with a subsequent loss of revenue for government.”

Calls for a levy have also been around for years, so it's hardly a news story.

I remember the then Chancellor, George Osborne, rejecting the idea in, I think, 2015. Gratifyingly, he used the very same argument that Forest was using and continues to use today - that the cost would be passed on to the consumer.

However the idea of a levy goes back even further, to at least 2012.

Today hardly a month goes by without calls for a levy (I can't remember the last time ASH's Deborah Arnott gave an interview without mentioning it) and still the Treasury won't budge.

Given the number of chancellors we've had since Osborne left office you'd have thought ASH would have got the message by now, but apparently not.

Meanwhile, responding to the claim that tobacco control is under-funded, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Social Care said:

“We are committed to achieving our ambition of a smoke-free 2030 and are backing this with significant funding.

“Last week we announced up to £58 million over the next two years as part of new plans to cut smoking rates and tackle youth vaping.

“This is on top of £68 million from the public health grant which was given to local stop smoking services last year, with a further £35 million committed to the NHS so that all smokers admitted to hospital are offered NHS-funded tobacco treatment services.

Truth is, when the likes of ASH say the Government's tobacco control plans are 'nowhere near enough', it should be taken with a pinch of salt because nothing short of prohibition will ever be enough for these so-called health charities.

Remember when all they wanted was more smoke-free areas in restaurants? Well, look where we are today and they're still not happy!

So my advice to ASH? Put a sock in it, or change the record, because this is getting boring. And I'm not alone in thinking that!