Does this study threaten smoking in the home?

BBC News reports:

Passive smoking 'damages children's arteries'

Odd, isn't it, that the harm occurred when both parents smoked. So it's alright if only one parent smokes?

I was asked to comment and I did:

"We must avoid scaremongering because damage to arteries could be caused by a number of factors including poor diet and other forms of air pollution.

"While it's sensible and considerate not to smoke around children in a small confined space it's far too easy to point the finger at smokers when the issue is extremely complicated."

It's fairly obvious what's going on. This the first (latest?) move towards a de facto ban on smoking in the home.

In response someone has tweeted:

BBC News - Passive smoking 'damages children's arteries'. Simon Clark @Forest_Smoking is a despicable man.

Charming.

Update on Thursday, March 6, 2014 at 14:28 by Simon Clark

Recommended reading.

Smoking bans in the home: the next logical step (Velvet Glove Iron Fist)

Chris Snowdon has in turn linked to this post:

Science and politics: the case of passive smoking (Lee Jones)

Morning after the night before

Feeling a bit groggy this morning.

Not sure if it was the port (very nice), the cheap plonk (not so nice) or the pints in the pub that followed last night's debate at University College London.

All I know is I got home just past midnight after falling asleep on the train and very nearly missing my station.

To recap: Chris Snowdon and I been invited to take part in a debate about smoking in cars with children.

The motion supported a ban but our hosts, UCL Conservative Society, had struggled to find anyone to propose it.

ASH, Cancer Research, the British Lung Foundation and Conservative MP Bob Blackman had been asked and they all said no.

Nevertheless they managed to find six speakers, three on either side. Chris and I were joined by Kevin, from UCL. Our opponents were also students.

In my experience this is not always a good thing because undergraduates are often much funnier than 'professional' tobacco control advocates and this tends to go down much better with a student audience, many of whom they already know.

Sometimes they are simply better at debating. I still have the scars from my first debate as director of Forest.

Our late chairman, Lord Harris of High Cross, and I were invited to speak at the English Speaking Union in Mayfair on the subject of smoking in public places.

I was feeling rather pleased with myself - new job, a peer at my side, speaking at a rather swish London address - and our opponents were no more than a couple of spotty students.

It turned out they were a world champion debating team and our arguments in defence of smoking in public places were torn apart and we were comprehensively defeated. Our humiliation was compounded when our opponents later confided that they were both smokers and they actually agreed with us!

Since then I've taken part in several debates with students, most recently at Durham, but also at Birmingham, Leeds, Dublin (UCD) and even Oxford where Antony Worrall Thomson and I fought another losing battle in a debate about the smoking ban.

This was especially disappointing because six months earlier (this was in 2006) the Oxford Union had reversed its decision to ban smoking in the Union bar because so many students had decamped to the local pub (where they could smoke) the Union found itself losing money.

Sadly, on the night Antony and I were speaking most of our potential supporters must have been in the pub. They certainly weren't in the chamber.

It wasn't all bad, though. We were treated to a very nice dinner before the debate. We were also shown photographs of the many famous people, including presidents, prime ministers and A-list Hollywood stars, who have addressed the Oxford Union over the years.

I like to think that in some musky corner of the historic Union building, there's a picture of Antony and me, smiling nervously, as we await our fate.

But back to last night. I have tweeted that it was the most enjoyable student debate I have been involved in. And it was.

It was enjoyable not just because we won (by a landslide) but because there so were so many laughs. Convivial doesn't do it justice.

Whoever decided that alcohol should be freely available before and during the event is a genius. Port in a plastic cup? Perfect.

I even developed a fondness for our opponents who were struggling, it must be said, to throw off the shackles of their innate libertarianism.

The vote was a formality.

ASH, Cancer Research, British Lung Foundation, Bob Blackman – your side took a hell of a beating. So sorry you weren't there.

PS. Good to see Oliver Cooper, chairman of Conservative Future, and James Lawson, co-founder of the UK Liberty League, at last night's event.

Speaking to them and people like Louisa Townson, who chaired the debate and is president of UCL Conservatives, gives me hope for the future.

Naturally we'll be inviting them and other young libertarians to Smoke On The Water, the Forest boat party, in July.

I hope you'll join us.

Localism and a disturbing lack of transparency

A report by the Director of Public Health to the Public Health Committee of Nottingham County Council makes a number of dubious claims.

Under the 'The Economic Cost of Smoking for Nottinghamshire' (page 3) we are told:

Smoking costs billions of pounds each year. Using national data it is estimated [my emphasis] that the annual cost of smoking for Nottinghamshire is approximately £203.5m. This includes:

- The total cost of treating smokers on the NHS: £39.9m
- The loss in productivity from smoking breaks: £42.9m
- The loss in productivity from smoking related sick days: £37m
- The cost of cleaning up smoking materials litter: £5.1m
- The cost of smoking related house fires: 37.5m
- The loss in economic output from the deaths of smokers and passive smokers: £60.6m

I won't waste time fisking these figures (the loss in productivity from smoking breaks, the loss in economic output from the deaths of passive smokers???) but it's worth noting that the report fails to mention the money that smokers put into the economy, nationally and locally.

Apart from tobacco taxation, which raises over £9b annually - fact not estimate - where would some local shops be without smokers? Significantly worse off, in many cases, or closed.

The report is less than honest in other ways too. For example, it fails to mention the figures were supplied by ASH who got them from a report by the think tank Policy Exchange.

The report, Cough Up: Balancing Tobacco Income and Costs in Society, was hugely controversial when it was published in March 2010. Here's what I wrote at the time:

Policy Exchange: words fail me, too
Damning indictment of that Policy Exchange report

We also sent this message to Forest supporters.

And it wasn't just Forest criticising the report. Dick Puddlecote had this to say: That Policy Exchange nonsense.

Mark Littlewood, just three months in to his tenure as Director General of the IEA, also weighed in: ('Tobacco tax proposals should go up in smoke').

Writing on Conservative Home Matthew Sinclair of the TaxPayers Alliance also commented.

And we mustn't forget James Delingpole who put into words what many of us were thinking: Is Policy Exchange the most loathsome think tank in Britain?.

Does any of this matter? Emphatically, yes.

Since the introduction of the Localism Act last year local authorities have been given substantial new powers to tackle public health.

Smokers are an easy target so it's no surprise to find documents like this in circulation. What is outrageous however is not just the dubious, one-sided nature of the statistics, it's the complete lack of transparency.

Councillors, media and the general public are clearly expected to accept these estimates and calculations without argument.

This morning on BBC Radio Nottingham a spokeswoman for the council (I didn't catch her name) described Policy Exchange an an "independent" think tank.

Perhaps she's unaware of the remarkably close relationship between ASH and Policy Exchange at the time the report came out. The author, Henry Featherstone, even attended the ASH AGM and sat alongside ASH CEO Deborah Arnott. How cosy.

See ASH and Policy Exchange - the plot thickens and Policy Exchange, ASH and YouGov.

Sadly there's another piece to this jigsaw I can't reveal. One day the full story must come out. And it won't make pretty reading.

Fiddling while Rome burns

So the Russian parliament has voted to send troops into Ukraine.

Meanwhile, over in Ireland, it was reported that 'FG want cigarette sales banned in pubs'.

Forget what's happening in Eastern Europe. The war on tobacco is far more important. Obviously.

Plain Stupid: full website coming shortly

Just putting the finishing touches to our new campaign website.

Plain Packs Plain Stupid will be launched next week. Our target audience is in Ireland but we welcome support from further afield.

Joe Jackson and the common enemy

Further to yesterday's post (E-cigs, I'm not an expert but …) musician Joe Jackson has responded to one of the comments:

I agree with the last post - we SHOULD all unite in the common cause of fairness, a free market, and getting the 'Public Health' monster off our backs. Unfortunately too many people can't see the wood for the trees. I think it's INEVITABLE that vapers and the producers of e-cigs should try to define themselves AGAINST, rather than with, smoking and smokers.

If you are marketing e-cigs, why would you not take advantage of the enormous power of the antismoking industry and use it in your own favour? And if you vape rather than smoke, of course you're going to think it's because e-cigs are 'better' - healthier, less stinky, whatever. OK, not all vapers, but many. Imagine that for decades, we had been bombarded with negative propaganda and restrictions on drinking coffee; and many people had therefore given it up and now have orange juice with their breakfast instead. Do you really expect 'juicers' to stand up for 'coffeers'?

I'm allergic to dogs, but if someone tried to pass a total dog ban, I would oppose it, on principle. But how many people can see beyond the end of their own nose, and think that way? I'd have to say, not many, and that is one of the most depressing things I've learned from getting involved in the whole smoking issue. The pub industry, for instance, should have fought the smoking ban en masse, on principle - the principle of being able to run their pubs how they want - but all they cared about was whether their own business would suffer if there wasn't a 'level playing field'.

I don't think many smokers or vapers think they have a common cause. But we do have a common enemy, and the only hopeful thing I see in Public Health attacking vaping is that it makes their dishonesty and nastiness more and more obvious. I think we will at some point see a general (delayed) reaction against the excesses of the healthist nanny state, but we still have a way to go.

Joe makes a lot of points, many of which I agree with. In particular, I support his contention that smokers and vapers have a common enemy.

And not just smokers and vapers. People who enjoy alcohol, fatty food or dairy products, not to mention sugary drinks.

The common enemy are politicians and 'public health' campaigners who think they know what's best for us and will do anything in their power to dictate how ordinary, law-abiding adults live their lives.

A handful might revel in being "outlaws" but the overwhelming majority of people don't want to live like that. That's why a group like Forest exists to fight excessive legislation whenever and wherever it raises its head. We want to be part of society not outlawed from it.

The 'good' news is, we have a plan for a campaign that will fight our "common enemy" on a broader front. Hopefully it will unite not only smokers and vapers but everyone who feels their choices are being threatened by an increasingly intrusive nanny/bully state.

It's called Action on Consumer Choice.

Watch this space.

Morning Call asks 'Is it time to toughen up on e-cigarettes?'

Another day another interview on e-cigarettes.

This time I was woken up by a call asking me to go on Morning Call, the BBC Radio Scotland phone-in:

Sales of e-cigarettes have soared by 340 per cent over the past year leading to calls for greater restrictions on them … Charity ASH Scotland say e-cigarettes normalise smoking, and are calling for age restrictions and limits on advertising the products. Louise White asks: Is it time to toughen up on e-cigarettes?

I was on for 40 minutes but didn't say an awful lot, which wasn't a bad thing. It was far more interesting listening to callers, the majority of whom were smokers and/or vapers.

My direct opponent was a woman called Merissa (?) who was described as a "PhD researcher". She favoured the precautionary principle and was very articulate.

Nevertheless her opening comments were peppered with the word 'may'. E-cigs 'may' result in this, 'may' result in that.

Michael Matheson, minister for public health in Scotland, was also on. I got the feeling that his position on e-cigs is driven primarily by hatred of the tobacco industry, which is extremely short-sighted (in my view).

One or two callers were equally hostile to the companies and didn't want them advertising any products on television.

The caller I agreed with most was comedian Karen Dunbar who was vaping as she spoke. She made the strong case that nicotine is a recreational drug and should be treated no differently to caffeine.

Another caller, John, was an ex-smoker with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). It's not sexy to have lung cancer, he said, and I don't know anyone who would disagree with that.

However this is not an argument against advertising e-cigarettes on television or anywhere else. There is no evidence that vaping leads to smoking, or causes lung cancer (or COPD).

I have never come across anyone who started smoking through vaping.

Indeed, every caller on Morning Call who said they vaped was either a smoker or ex-smoker.

E-cigs - I'm no expert but ...

I was on LBC last night talking about the EU's Tobacco Products Directive.

We discussed the ban on menthol cigarettes and ten packs and how this was an attack on consumer choice.

I pointed out that these products were being outlawed yet there had never been a debate in the UK parliament.

I also queried the need for plain packaging since the health warnings must in future cover 65 per cent of the front and back of the pack leaving little room for branding.

Then the issue of e-cigarettes came up.

"I'm not an expert," I said, "but ..."

And I burbled on about that for half a minute.

As it happens, I had just read Chris Snowdon's post about Martin McKee's sudden interest in e-cigarettes.

According to Chris, McKee showed little or no interest in e-cigs until last year. Now he's portrayed as an 'expert' (who wants to regulate them into oblivion, apparently).

Now I happily admit I'm no expert but in the wake of Chris's post I did a quick search of this blog to see when I first mentioned e-cigs.

The answer was January 20, 2010 when I wrote a post entitled 'Wanted: Comments on e-cigarettes'.

Apart my obvious ignorance, the most interesting thing about that post was the response - 111 comments.

Since then I have written (and been interviewed) about e-cigarettes on numerous occasions. For example:

A touch of the vapers (September 7, 2010)
Their own worst enemy (November 7, 2010)
The arguments against e-cigarettes (December 8, 2011)
Why I hate (some) e-cigarette retailers (March 7, 2012)
E-cigs and a crafty fag – join the conversation (November 5, 2012)
Will e-cigarettes take centre stage in 2013? (January 1, 2013)
More on e-cigarettes (January 8, 2013)
Wanted: a consumer champion for e-cigarettes who is not anti-smoking (February 17, 2013)
I won't invest in smoker phobic rants, I'm out (September 2, 2013)
Forest, e-cigarettes and the BMA's "self-serving politically correct agenda" (October 21, 2013)

And of course I've written several more posts about e-cigs in the past few months.

The problem is, while I say all the 'right' things about consumer choice and do my best to support e-cigarettes, I find it hard to empathise with vapers in the way I empathise with smokers.

The reason is simple. I hate the quasi religious zeal of some vapers and the refusal/reluctance of many to support smokers in their struggle against oppressive regulations that will affect vapers just as much as smokers.

I understand why vaping organisations and spokesmen have stood apart from smokers. Culturally and politically, however, we are in the same boat. If the vaping community didn't understand that before, yesterday's vote by MEPs may have brought some of them to their senses.

Like it not not, smokers and vapers are cut from the same cloth. The common bond is nicotine. The only difference is the delivery system.

I recommend therefore that you read this article, Time for vapers and smokers to unite, published on Monday by Forest's Free Society website.

Via Twitter we encouraged vapers – and smokers – to retweet the link. Hardly anyone did.

That said it all, really.

Update on Thursday, February 27, 2014 at 13:16 by Simon Clark

The Advertising Standards Authority has reacted quickly to complaints about an "overly sexual" e-cigarette ad:

"I want you to get it out. I want to see it. Feel it. Hold it. Put it in my mouth. I want to see how great it tastes."

Full story: 'Overly sexual’ VIP e-cigarette ads attract 1,156 complaints (Marketing Week)

Meanwhile it's almost 14 months since Forest complained about a government ad that was equally explicit (15 cigarettes can cause a mutation that leads to cancerous tumours) and we are still waiting for the ASA to publish its final adjudication.

See Lord Smith: Another fine mess.