‘Libertarian’ Tory MP wants restrictions on smoking outside pubs and cafes

A Conservative MP is calling for new rules on smoking if the Government relaxes the lockdown on pubs and restaurants with outside seating.

Mark Pritchard, MP for The Wrekin, told the Shropshire Star:

“If cafes, restaurants and pubs with outside areas open next week then new rules on smoking in external public areas should be introduced by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

“Outside seating should not be dominated by smokers exposing customers to secondary smoke."

As it happens this is not the first time Pritchard has complained about smoking outside cafes. Last year, in a debate about heated tobacco, he told fellow MPs:

“As a non-smoker, I think there is nothing worse than sitting outside a café in London or Shropshire and having my lungs full of somebody else’s smoke, or indeed trying to walk to Parliament and taking in a street full of smokers’ smoke.”

Could he therefore be using the Covid crisis to further a personal anti-smoking agenda? I think we all know the answer to that.

If restrictions were introduced we also know there is a strong possibility they will never been lifted.

But wait, what’s this? In the same debate last year Pritchard added:

“Having said that, I am a libertarian - if people want to smoke, they should be free to do so.”

But not, it seems, inside and or outside cafes, pubs and restaurants.

One thing I do agree with him on is this: “the campaign against smoking is not over” he told MPs.

You can say that again and it’s because of people like Mark Pritchard.

As for calling himself a “libertarian” while complaining about some mythical street “full of smokers’ smoke”, he’s either a fantasist or he’s having a laugh.

Countdown to prohibition

In 14 days the sale of menthol cigarettes will be banned in the UK and throughout the European Union.

I shall be writing quite a lot about this over the next two weeks. Posts will include a list of options for those who like their nicotine menthol-flavoured.

Forest will also be conducting an online survey, the aim of which is to give smokers a chance to have their say about the ban.

In the meantime Talking Retail has this report: Menthol cigarette ban will hit smokers at worst time, say campaigners.

How ASH turned the views of just SIX ex-smokers into a headline-grabbing 300k

Good news ... and bad news.

The good news is that earlier today I received the data tables for the ASH/YouGov survey that was published yesterday.

The poll generated quite a lot of headlines including 'More than 300,000 UK smokers may have quit owing to Covid-19 fears' (Guardian), 'More than 300,000 Britons quit smoking over Covid-19 fears' (ITV News), 'Surge in motivation' sees 300,000 smokers kick the habit (Yorkshire Post) and 'More than 300,000 Brits quit smoking amid coronavirus fears, study shows' (The Sun).

According to the Guardian:

The survey of 1,004 people suggested 2% of smokers had quit because of concerns about coronavirus; 8% were trying to quit; 36% had cut down; and 27% were now more likely to quit.

As I explained yesterday I was struck by the fact that, if this was a standard poll, the 1,004 respondents would be a representative sample of the general public.

Approximately 15 per cent of adults in the UK currently smoke so the odds were that the number of respondents who smoke would have been around 150.

That's a pretty small sample with a pretty large margin for error. Having read the data, however, the number of smokers polled was even less than that.

Of the 1,004 people polled, 56% (562) were never smokers; 31% (307) used to smoke but have given up; 9% (90) smoke every day; and 4% (40) smoke but not every day.

In other words, only 13% of the sample (130) were current smokers, significantly less than the national smoking rate.

The most important group however were the 310 people (or 307 according to the data) who used to smoke because it's from their responses that ASH extrapolated the headline figure of 300,000 smokers who have allegedly been driven to quit 'over Covid-19 fears'.

I'm no mathematician and I've been struggling to get my head round the figures, but with a bit of outside help this is how I think they did it.

First, let's round up the figures so the sample size is 1,000 people of whom 130 were smokers, and 310 ex-smokers.

Two per cent of the 310 ex-smokers cited concerns about Covid-19 being the reason they quit smoking in the last four months.

That's six people, or 0.6% of the 1,000 people polled.

The adult population of the UK is approximately 50 million and 0.6% of 50 million is ... 300,000.

The bad news therefore is that the headline-grabbing figure of 300k appears to be based on the responses of just SIX (6) ex-smokers who have quit in the last four months.

This mathematical exercise also seems to result in the claim that 550,000 smokers 'have tried to quit'.

According to the data, 8% of the 130 smokers polled said they had 'tried to quit smoking'.

8% of 130 is 10 (approximately). Therefore, ten out of the 1000 people polled said they had attempted to quit smoking.

Ten out of 1000 is one per cent. One percent of 50 million is ... 500,000.

OK, it's not 550,000 but it's in the same ballpark. I'm guessing that ASH used a different number for the adult population of the UK but I haven't got the patience to work out what it was so our figures differ slightly.

The point is, ASH/YouGov polled a relatively small number of smokers and extrapolated the most extraordinary figures.

According to ASH, 300,000 smokers have quit in the past four months, worried that smoking makes them more vulnerable to Covid-19, while an additional 550,000 have attempted to quit.

To remind you, these estimates are based on the responses of SIX and TEN people respectively.

Someone may tell me I've got this all wrong so do check the data tables for yourself and post your own analysis.

Or perhaps someone from ASH would like to explain how they arrived at their interpretation of the figures.

(Stop laughing at the back!)

Update: Chris Snowdon writes, 'Have 300,000 smokers quit because of Covid-19?'

Today is the Day to Quit for Covid says Public Health England

Public Health England is excelling itself.

Having kept a very low profile on the subject of smoking since issuing a highly contentious ‘story’ on April 3 that claimed that 'Emerging evidence from China shows smokers with Covid-19 are 14 times more likely to develop severe respiratory disease', PHE yesterday tweeted:

We welcome today's launch of #QuitforCovid and urge smokers across England to quit now, to improve their health and reduce their risks from Covid-19.

‘Today's launch?’

The launch of #QuitforCovid is old news. I first read about it on March 19 when tobacco control 'expert' Prof Robert West tweeted:

An important initiative has just been launched by @ASH_LDN under the rubric #QuitforCovid. 200 people die every day in the UK from smoking and research shows smokers to be at a substantially increased risk from #Covid19. Here's the website todayistheday.co.uk. Please RT.

I recognised the URL because the same domain name was used when ‘Today is the Day’ was adopted as the No Smoking Day theme in 2019. According to Magpie, a creative communications agency:

Following the success of our Today is the Day campaign across Leeds two years ago [2017], Public Health England has invited us to re-run the campaign to a national audience on National No Smoking Day: a huge step up from the original city-based campaign.

The QuitforCovid initiative is not only using the ‘Today is the Day’ URL, previously used to promote No Smoking Day, it is also recycling some of the design cues. (See images above and below.)

Yesterday's PHE tweet invited us to visit the Today Is The Day website where you will find information about why you should quit, help to quit, and 'How to protect others from secondhand smoke'.

Neither #QuitforCovid nor ASH were claiming that yesterday marked the launch of the initiative (hardly surprising since it has been active for over six weeks), so what is Public Health England playing at?

Did someone at PHE think the ailing initiative needed a reboot on the back of yesterday's ASH/YouGov poll that claimed that 'More than 300,000 UK smokers may have quit owing to Covid-19 fears'.

(In the absence of the missing data tables one has to conclude that the figure of 300,000 is based on polling a statistically insignificant number of smokers, almost certainly fewer than 200. Chris Snowdon agrees with me.)

As for urging smokers to 'quit now, to improve their health and reduce their risks from Covid-19', why is PHE behaving not like an arm of government but like an anti-smoking pressure group?

We have have heard nothing from this publicly-funded body on the many studies that suggest smokers may be protected from Covid-19.

Why not? Some of those studies may be flawed but no more than the study of just 78 patients (only five of whom were smokers) PHE risked its reputation on last month.

Since then not only have there been multiple studies suggesting a very different conclusion, but a subsequent review of 28 studies found the current data to be "inconclusive" – a far cry from PHE's claims that 'smokers with Covid-19 are 14 times more likely to develop severe respiratory disease' (April 3) or 'research shows smokers to be at a substantially increased risk from #Covid19' (May 4).

One study, by researchers in France, 'found that smokers seemed to have a fifth of the chance of non-smokers of being infected with the virus' (The Times, today). Is that not worth a comment – even if it’s only an acknowledgement – from the tobacco control programme lead for PHE, Martin Dockrell?

Has PHE even bothered to commission its own review of the evidence?

The truth is, Public Health England is engaged in a propaganda war against smoking and is no better than ASH and all those other publicly-funded pressure groups.

PS. I was a bit surprised to find that PHE was the link between the 'Today is the Day' initiative in Leeds and No Smoking Day.

Less surprising is the sight of PHE promoting an ASH-led initiative urging smokers to #QuitforCovid.

I'm just curious why it took PHE over six weeks to come to the party.

Update: Re the ASH poll about smokers quitting for Covid, I have received the data tables from YouGov. As expected, they make interesting reading. More to follow ...

ASH and the boy who cried wolf

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.

It was 30 years ago today

My wife found this photo in a box at the back of a cupboard.

It was taken on our first visit to Sleat, Isle of Skye, in May 1990.

As soon as lockdown is over and hotels have reopened it’s on my bucket list of places to return to for a short break.

Other places include Bath, Chester (to visit my mother), Harrogate and St Andrews.

For a holiday I’d like to go to Austria, New York, California or Corfu.

From the sound of it foreign travel may be difficult for some time but, assuming you can go anywhere, where would you like to visit?

PS. I posted the picture on Facebook and someone commented,

“You remind me of a local news reporter ... Simon Clark for BBC Scotland on the Isle of Skye.”

Smoking and coronavirus: current data 'inconclusive' says CEBM

H/T Rob Lyons for bringing this to my attention.

The Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine in Oxford has updated its six-week-old article 'Smoking in acute respiratory infections' in order to 'capture emerging data on smoking and Covid-19'.

In truth it doesn't add much to what we already know but that in itself is quite significant.

Back in March, when the authors first addressed the issue, it was intuitive and not unreasonable to state that 'Smoking is a known risk factor for acute respiratory infections in general' and to warn that smokers might be at greater risk from a coronavirus.

The former is still true but the implication that smokers might be at greater risk from Covid-19 is proving harder to justify.

As you know, multiple studies have now been published that suggest that smokers may actually be protected from Covid-19.

Some of them may be flawed but the comment made by health secretary Matt Hancock on March 16 in response to a question by Bob Blackman MP, chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Smoking and Health, is looking unnecessarily alarmist.

According to Hancock, "It is abundantly clear that smoking makes the impact of a coronavirus worse."

Just over a fortnight later, on April 3, Public Health England went even further. Smokers, said PHE, are not only at greater risk of severe respiratory disease from Covid-19, 'Emerging evidence from China shows smokers with Covid-19 are '14 times more likely to develop severe respiratory disease.'

Incredibly, despite all the evidence that has emerged since, that over-hyped 'story' remains PHE's only public contribution to the discussion about smoking and coronavirus.

Martin Dockrell, formerly of ASH and now the tobacco control programme lead for PHE, might as well be the Invisible Man.

This latest review – which is written on behalf of the Oxford Covid-19 Evidence Service Team, the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine and Cochrane Tobacco Addiction Group, the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences and the University of Oxford – takes care to reaffirm that 'Smoking is considered a risk factor for all respiratory infections' (including, one presumes, a coronavirus) but however hard the authors try they cannot escape the evidence, or the lack of it.

Q: 'If you quit smoking during an acute Covid-19 is your outcome better?'
A: 'There is no data on this relating to Covid-19.'

Q: 'Will quitting smoking now help reduce risks from Covid-19?'
A: 'There is no direct evidence with which to answer this question.'

They conclude:

'Smoking is a known risk factor for acute respiratory infections more generally.'

Yes, we know that. Anything else?

'Smoking is a known risk factor for a range of comorbidities, many of which are associated with worse Covid-19 outcomes.'

Yes, yes, but where is the EVIDENCE that Covid-19 patients are at greater risk of hospitalisation or critical illness if they smoke?

'More research is urgently needed into the role of smoking in Covid-19. Current data is inconclusive.'

Compare that with the comments of Matt Hancock and Public Health England quoted above and subsequently repeated ad nauseum by ASH and other anti-smoking activists.

In short, if the underlying message of this updated article isn't a massive rebuke to the Secretary of State for Health, Public Health England and every anti-smoking campaigner who jumped on the 'Quit for Covid' bandwagon, I don't know what is.

The authors will probably deny it but decide for yourself.

Talking liberties

Forest’s first Zoom meeting went pretty well, I thought.

As I explained yesterday, following last week’s disastrous experience on another Zoom meeting, I was advised to sit as close to the router as possible.

I’m not sure it was strictly necessary but I arranged things so I was sitting within a foot of it, in the sitting room, rather than in my office upstairs.

The good news is I had none of the connection problems I had last week so that was fine.

As for the meeting, huge thanks to Rob Lyons for chairing it and pressing all the right buttons at (mostly) the right time.

Had it been me I would have got horribly mixed up and would have muted and unmuted speakers at all the wrong moments.

That said, what I enjoyed about the meeting was its rough edges, and I don’t mean that in a bad way.

I didn’t want it to be a business-like conference call, and it wasn’t.

Nor did I want two or three speakers dominating the event, and that didn’t happen either.

As much as it was possible, Rob and I wanted everyone to have an equal opportunity to speak.

We did give the meeting some focus by concentrating on three issues - smoking and coronavirus, the menthol cigarette ban and creeping prohibition.

But we wanted it to be like a pub chat rather than a formal speaker-meeting or seminar and - technical limitations aside - I think it worked quite well.

Although fewer than a third of the 33 participants (50 people registered) spoke, I think everyone who wanted to did so.

I liked the fact that we could see most of the participants, although some appeared to be audio only and instead of a video all we could see was their name.

I would have liked to hear people laughing - there were several funny moments - but that’s not possible unless you unmute everyone and that can lead to other problems, people speaking over one another, for example.

Sometimes the most interesting thing about an online meeting is not what people say but the pictures of them on screen.

No two locations are the same.

Gawain Towler, for many years Nigel Farage’s right-hand man and something of a Westminster legend, could be seen smoking in what appeared to be a very stylish living room.

On the wall behind him was a colourful painting of Farage that had echoes of The Simpsons.

Chris Snowdon sat in a large leather armchair with a Lucky Strike ad over his shoulder.

Dan Donovan spoke from his garden studio, a large shed also known as the ‘Moose Shack’.

Liz Barber, a long-time Forest supporter, sat at a desk in a bright upstairs room.

And so on.

If you don’t want to reveal where You are Zoom allows you to choose from a range of backgrounds.

John Mallon, Forest’s spokesman in Ireland, joined us from Cork and appeared in front of the Northern Lights.

He looked (and sounded) like he was about to announce the votes of the Irish jury in the Eurovision Song Contest.

The participant furthest away was in India, and we also had someone log in from America.

We were pleased too to welcome Frank Davis who has been writing about smoking and coronavirus long before the mainstream media.

We finished, as scheduled, after 60 minutes, but could have gone on longer. And that was good too. Always quit while you’re ahead.

Most participants seemed happy just to watch and listen, which is what I’ve done at most of the webinars I’ve taken part in.

Next time, though, we’ll try and squeeze in a few more people to the discussion.

To create a virtual pub atmosphere we also need more people to bring a drink to the meeting!

Watch this space.