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Wednesday
Nov112015

Liberty and lobbying

Looking forward to an important event in London two weeks today.

On Wednesday November 25, from 6.15-8.15pm, Conservatives for Liberty (CfL) are organising a lobby evening at the House of Commons.

Speakers will address a number of freedom of choice issues including smoking, eating, drinking and vaping.

MPs will pop in and out and guests will be able to discuss and ask questions about tobacco, sugar, alcohol and e-cigarettes.

CfL chairman Emily Barley – who has been an active supporter of our campaigns against plain packaging and public smoking bans – says the aim is to show MPs that these are not fringe issues.

To attend you must register in advance. Email Stephen Hoffman, CfL's Parliamentary liaison officer, at stephen@con4lib.com. Numbers are limited so RSVP without delay.

I'll be there. I hope you will too.

Further reading: Forgive us our trespasses: The moral case
for choice and responsibility
(CfL).

Tuesday
Nov102015

Twitter never fails to surprise

This morning, ASH Scotland posted this tweet:

In response Forest tweeted:

Bizarrely, ASH Scotland 'liked' it.

Monday
Nov092015

Scotland's hospital smoking ban: law could be restricted to designated areas

The Scottish Parliament's Health and Sport Committee has published its report on the Health (Tobacco, Nicotine etc. and Care) (Scotland) Bill.

You may recall that in September I was invited to give oral evidence to the committee and I took the opportunity to complain bitterly about the proposal to bring in a law that makes it an offence to smoke on hospital grounds.

My comments were widely reported by BBC Scotland and the rest of the Scottish media including the Herald which quoted me at length.

The bad news is that the Committee has, as expected, endorsed the proposal to make it an offence to smoke in NHS hospital grounds.

The 'good' news, if I can call it that, is that the Committee appears to agree with Forest (and a "number of other organisations") that a comprehensive ban is a step too far:

According to the Committee:

Forest considered it totally wrong to ban smoking in all hospital grounds calling it inhumane” especially for visitors, staff and patients who may be experiencing stressful situations. Forest also highlighted safety concerns for staff and others who would have to leave NHS premises in order to smoke.

Forest called for the decision on where to restrict smoking to be left to the Chief Executive of each hospital rather than a one-size-fits all" approach imposed from central Government. A number of other organisations also argued that it should be left to each health board to decide the extent and boundaries of the non-smoking area designated under the Bill.

So instead of a ban on smoking across entire NHS sites, the Committee appears to believe it should be an offence to smoke only within certain areas.

Whether the Scottish Government will allow even this small concession remains to be seen. No doubt ASH Scotland and others will be lobbying ministers not to give an inch, but we'll see.

We will of course continue to press our own case. Sadly we won't be getting any help from the ex-smoking vaping community.

Invited to express an opinion on hospital smoking bans, their representative told the Committee, "I would rather not talk about tobacco, to be honest."

Priceless.

See Stage 1 Report on Health (Tobacco, Nicotine etc. and Care) (Scotland) Bill.

PS. Re the 100 yard comment erroneously attributed to me, here's my original explanation, which is worth repeating:

One thing I must correct is a remark attributed to me by the Press Association and repeated in several newspapers.

According to the PA I suggested "designated shelters or a 100-yard no-smoking zone would be more appropriate" than a total smoking ban.

That's not quite right. The 100-yard figure was [MSP] Richard Lyle's idea. I accepted there was a case for banning smoking around hospital entrances but I would never support a 100-yard exclusion zone around hospital buildings.

As I recall I specifically declined to put any distance on an exclusion zone. Instead I said there should be no 'one-size fits all' approach because hospital grounds vary enormously in size and it should be up to the hospital administrators, not central government, to decide on the exact policy.

As we've read today, the Health and Sport Committee seem to agree with me.

Sunday
Nov082015

Spectre: Bond and gagged

Everyone, it seems, has an opinion about Spectre.

I'm no different so for what it's worth (I've seen the film twice now with different members of my family) here's what I liked:

The nods and winks to previous Bond movies worked well, I thought.

The locations were well chosen. London looked good, too, especially the scene on the Thames.

The theme song was quickly forgotten but the brooding, throbbing soundtrack played its part in driving the film along.

Product placement was far more discreet than in recent films. (I still can't get my head around Bond driving a Ford Mondeo as Daniel Craig did in Casino Royale.)

The cast was excellent. Their characters may not be a great stretch for the likes of Ralph Fiennes, Ben Wishaw and Christoph Waltz but what they had to do they did faultlessly.

Spectre may be the longest Bond film but it didn't feel like it. That honour goes to Skyfall which seemed to go on and on forever.

The only bit I didn't enjoy was the opening sequence in Mexico City which felt ridiculously overblown.

Truth is, you either like Bond or you don't. Some films are better than others (obviously) but if you don't like the character, or are lukewarm to the franchise in general, don't go – and spare us your nitpicking, whiny thoughts.

Anyway, for no reason at all, here are my top three Bond films:

1. From Russia With Love
2. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
3. The Living Daylights

As things stand, Spectre would be in my top five. It's good, fun entertainment. That'll do me.

PS. Lea Seydoux, who played Madeleine Swann, is the spitting image of a girl who works in my local Costa Coffee (and vice versa).

The conversation normally goes something like this:

Me: "Hello."

Her: "Hi, how are you?"

Me: "Fine. How are you? Busy?"

Her: "Yeah."

Me: "Medium cappuccino, please."

Her: "To drink in?"

Me: "Yes, please."

Her: "That'll be £2.35."

Me: "Thanks."

Her: "Chocolate on top?"

Me: "No, thanks."

Time, perhaps, to up my game.

Friday
Nov062015

Stigmatising smokers

Forest's John Mallon is in Dublin this week asking the question, 'Are smokers second class citizens?'

Yesterday he was on Newstalk, Ireland's national independent talk radio station, in discussion with Professor Luke Clancy of the Tobacco Free Research Institute.

The item was introduced on the back of a study published this week that suggested public health policies targeted at smokers may stigmatise them and, in the process, make it harder for people to quit.

Interesting to hear Clancy admit that, "Stigmatisation might not be a good thing." Denormalisation, however, is OK, I assume.

To listen to the discussion in full click here. It ends with a text from a listener, aka 'Smokey Joe' who wrote, "It's about time someone started sticking up for smokers. Thank you, Newstalk."

I think he means Forest, unless he's thanking Newstalk for broadcasting the item.

Next week John will move on to some of Ireland's regional towns and cities. His pitch includes this heartfelt plea:

“I have loved, cared for and supported my children all my life. Now they're being encouraged to think of me as someone like a drunk driver - someone to be ostracised and despised - simply because I'm a smoker. My children are encouraged to see me as weak, addicted, costly and inconsiderate. I am none of those things and I resent the fact that my own government sees me as such.

"We have complied with every regulation, restriction and limitation, but we are no longer willing to accept that, as a group, we are bad people responsible for all the problems of society. It's time the government started treating us as citizens with rights, just like everyone else."

See Smokers: Ireland's second class citizens? (Forest Eireann)

Friday
Nov062015

Ugly sister wins parliamentary award

Edinburgh East MP Tommy Sheppard yesterday won best newcomer at the Spectator’s Parliamentary Awards.

He later tweeted:

As it happens I was at university in Aberdeen at the same time as Sheppard and I don't remember him being much of a social democrat.

If I recall he was a member of what was called the 'Broad Left', a loose alliance of communists and socialists.

I wrote about him but I didn't know him personally.

We did however share a stage once, in a student union Christmas pantomime. I think he was one of the Ugly Sisters (and if he wasn't he should have been).

Oddly enough the t-shirt he wore featured the word 'Campus' which is the name of the "scurrilous" student newspaper I co-edited. I don't think it was a coincidence.

Image lifted from a fellow student's Facebook page

Tuesday
Nov032015

The perils of smoking outside – a mother's concerned plea to a police officer

On Sunday I took a phone call from a friend.

Her daughter is currently studying in the United States. On Friday night Lucy (not her real name) and two friends, including her boyfriend, celebrated Halloween in a downtown bar.

Lucy smokes so at one point in the evening she went outside, on her own, to have a cigarette. What happened next is described in a heartfelt email her mother sent to the police officer her daughter turned to for help after she was physically restrained by bouncers outside:

Dear xxxx

I am writing as the mother of the young lady who inadvertently got involved in an incident at xxxx on Halloween.

Firstly, I want to thank you for giving her the best advice, which was to go home. My daughter works and studies all the time and she has the grades and commendations to show for it. However, she also smokes and, given the laws of most countries in the world, now spends a lot of time outside of restaurants, office buildings and even bars to have a smoke.

On Halloween she did just that. She was at a bar with her boyfriend and a girlfriend and left the bar to step outside to have a smoke. Unfortunately her timing was not good as the bouncers were in the process of evicting some boys (not a mixed group).

My daughter walked outside the bar and was immediately put in an arm lock by a woman bouncer who assumed that she was part of the all male group they were evicting. She jerked and told them she was not involved.

She then watched as the bouncers held the young, drunk boys who were being kicked out and witnessed the bouncers beating them up. She doesn’t like violence and she has been raised to defend those who are unable for whatever reason to defend themselves.

She put her now free hands up and told them to stop and tried to break it up. A very large, bald male bouncer than rushed up to my size zero daughter and put her in the type of headlock that lead to the death of a man in New York last year.

By this time her boyfriend and girlfriend had come to find her and she was released. She went to find you. You listened to her but, as is probably your mandate, you took the view of the bouncer that she was a perpetrator not an innocent patron who had chosen the wrong time to exit the premises for a cigarette.

Your advice for her to go home was wise and fortunately she took it and then phoned me once she had arrived at home.

While I am grateful to you for getting her away from a situation she should never have been in, I feel very strongly that someone needs to speak privately to those bouncers and ensure that an incident of that nature does not take place again.

1. The bouncers did not properly identify the clients they were trying to extricate.

2. My daughter and indeed all other patrons exiting the premise for whatever reason should have been allowed to do so safely and in no way should they have been misidentified as being part of a group to which they did not belong.

3. The bouncers absolutely have the right to kick someone out of the club but they should not have punched them or physically harmed them. These are drunk college kids on Halloween who are unarmed and simply behaving badly or, as I understand, falling asleep at the bar.

4. My daughter should have never been put in an armlock and she should have been released immediately and the bouncer should have apologised.

5. The grown male bouncer should never have put a size zero female in an necklock that could have caused serious damage.

My daughter’s solution is to never go there again and to forget about the incident. She was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and it could have been worse.

She also feels badly for not behaving appropriately herself as she let her own anger and frustration get the best of her. Having never been involved in any incident previously and having had a few drinks herself and having been physically harmed this behaviour may not be surprising, but is still not correct.

However I am appealing to you as a professional to have a word with these bouncers. They need to understand that they cannot and should not behave over zealously. If they continue to perform their duties in that manner someone will get hurt - perhaps severely. I am just grateful that my daughter was not more seriously injured.

I appreciate that you are in an untenable situation trying to protect kids behaving badly and the public at large. Bouncers need to feel that you support them. However, I would like to feel that you have taken the time to teach them to do their job properly – or at the very least advised them.

My daughter sought you out because she believed that you would reprimand the bouncers for not handling the situation correctly. Hopefully after my daughter left you did just that – quietly and professionally. However, if you did not, I hope you will because if those bouncers harm someone, anyone, we will all be guilty.

The mother adds:

My daughter told me that, yes, she had had some drinks. It was Halloween and she was taking one night off from her studies. Yesterday her arms still hurt from the over zealous female bouncer.

One can of course sympathise with bouncers and police officers faced with drunken students, or worse. According to the police officer, who responded quickly and courteously to my friend's email, "We had never seen that number of people on the street, it was a hell of a night."

Nevertheless there are some serious issues here and several relate directly to smoking.

One, my friend's daughter would not have been "in the wrong place at the wrong time" had she not been a smoker and forced to go outside for a cigarette.

Two, clubs and bars have a duty to protect all their customers, and that includes those who have gone outside for a cigarette and intend to return.

Three, the very nature of a club or bar will result in some people getting drunk (to some degree) with the result that some may be asked to leave or are thrown out. Those people should never be confused with others who have simply slipped out for a quiet smoke.

Four, I'm all for personal responsibility but any establishment that serves alcohol cannot wash its hands of customers who get drunk. If a customer is moderately drunk but not causing any trouble the proprietor has a duty of care to that customer whether they are inside or outside the premises and planning to come back in after they've had a cigarette.

As my friend said to me again this morning, her daughter could have been any young person who smokes.

The truth – and no-one wants to admit it – is the smoking ban has made going out potentially more dangerous for millions of people.

This was a relatively minor incident but it could have ended far more seriously.

A week or so ago 13 people in a smoking area outside a pub in Porthcawl, South Wales, were injured, some seriously, when a car drove into them. That would not have happened had they been allowed to smoke inside, even in a separate smoking room.

Eight years ago (in what is still, thankfully, an isolated case) a nurse was murdered by a stranger when she was forced to light up away from hospital grounds during a legitimate work break.

Meanwhile how many incidents like the one involving my friend's daughter happen but are never reported because the smoker feels guilty ("It was my fault, I shouldn't smoke") and doesn't want to make a fuss?

Tobacco, as I keep saying, is a legal product. Any reasonable person must accept that smokers have some rights and the right to have a cigarette without being exposed unnecessarily to the risk of assault or worse is one of them.

Saturday
Oct312015

Stoptober is proof that comedy isn't the new rock 'n' roll (and never was)

So that went well.

It was announced yesterday that more than 215,000 smokers joined Stoptober, the annual taxpayer-funded quit smoking campaign.

Many were inspired, perhaps, by the gentle coaxing of comedians Al Murray, Rhod Gilbert, Shappi Khorsandi and Bill Bailey (above). Or maybe they weren't because the number of people who signed up was 15 per cent fewer than in 2014.

Naturally Public Health England had a ready-made excuse for the relative failure of Stoptober 2015. The drop, they said, reflected the year-on-year decline in smoking rates in England.

Except it didn't because the fall in smoking rates in England in 2014-15 is nowhere near 15 per cent, a fact rightly mentioned in this report Fewer people joined Stoptober smoking challenge. (H/T journalist Peter Russell.)

Meanwhile the Oxford Times reports that 'Smoking target missed by 50% as fewer quit cigarettes habit':

Some people will of course suggest that e-cigarettes are the reason these state-sponsored initiatives are failing. Who needs a calendar to quit when you can switch to vaping any time you please?

That may be a factor but the principal one, I'm sure, is warning fatigue, while the noxious sight of four comedians preaching what they didn't practice when they were younger is wearing thin.

My advice to Al Murray, Rhod Gilbert, Shappi Khorsandi and Bill Bailey? Take a leaf out of the great Keith Richards' book and mind your own business.

PS. Just to show we're not against quit smoking initiatives per se, here is Forest's response to the end of Stoptober 2015, as quoted by one local newspaper:

"Good luck to anyone who wishes to quit smoking. It's important to remember however that millions of adults choose to smoke and a great many enjoy smoking and don't want to stop.

"We're not against initiatives like Stoptober but tobacco is a legal product and an adult's decision to smoke must be respected. Smoking cessation must be based on choice not coercion or social engineering."

See Thousands try to quit smoking in North East this month (Northumberland Gazette).

See also Stoptober 2015 concludes (Public Health England).

Finally, a serious question. How much does Stoptober cost the taxpayer? Just asking.