A prohibitionist writes

Are you ready? Then we'll begin.

Abolish the Food Industry

Bang! That's the headline of this piece from The Atlantic. It sprang from the biro of Raj Patel. Dick Puddlecote's readers may recall the name. He thinks that each hamburgers "costs" society $200 in terms of environmental destruction and obesity. That is nonsense but, as we shall see, nonsense is Mr Patel's middle name.

He begins his article with a line of which the Daily Mash would be proud...

In the fall of 2008, San Francisco polished its progressive credentials by banning something.

Isn't that beautiful? I wish I'd thought of that. The essence of both "progressives" and the city of San Francisco encapsulated in one simple sentence.

He is referring to a ban on pharmacies selling cigarettes. This leads him to discuss tobacco advertising...

Joe Camel isn't familiar to children today, as he was in the 1970s

The first Joe Camel advertisement appeared in 1988, but never mind.

He then moves seamlessly onto alcohol...

Alcohol is similarly circumscribed, again with an eye to public health and, again, with a particular concern for young people.

And then comes the kicker...

But if public health is a legitimate reason to curb corporations' advertising to kids, why limit bans to cigarettes and booze, and not include, say, unhealthy food?

A very familiar argument, of course—the proverbial slippery slope. Last week we saw a textbook case of how one ban on "corporations' advertising to kids" snowballs; see JuliaM's post at Orphans of Liberty. Patel's article is one long attempt to blur the distinction between products while rehabilitating the reputation of prohibition. After giving a shout out to last month's risible 'toxic sugar' article, he brings his argument to its logical conclusion.

Why allow an industry that profits from the sale of unhealthy food at all?

Boom! He gets from a ban on cigarettes in pharmacies to the abolition of the food industry in three easy steps. This is world-class stuff.

The history of banning things is admittedly inglorious. 

No fooling.

The war on drugs, Prohibition, and censorship have few fans.

More than you might think, Raj. Take Robert Proctor, for example, who has recently published a weighty tome about smoking in which he calls for tobacco prohibition. Patel very much admires Proctor, of course, but dare not mention the P word. Instead, he talks about 'abolition'.

[Proctor] doesn't want to ban smoking. The language of abolition -- not prohibition -- is well chosen. Proctor doesn't yearn for the criminalization of smokers, nor does he foresee the end of cigarettes or tobacco.

See, he's not one of those nasty prohibitionists. The very idea!

He's simply arguing that the industry that profits from it oughtn't to exist in a society that has a minimum concern with public health. If you want to smoke, you're free to grow and cure your own tobacco, he suggests.

Gee, thanks. Nice of you to compromise on that, Proctor.

Look, here's the thing. People were free to make their own alcohol during Prohibition. Drinking was never illegal. Prohibition "only" outlawed was the sale, import and manufacture of alcohol. Just like Proctor, the prohibitionists blamed an industry for a habit which they detested. They thought that if they put the industry out of business, drinking would virtually disappear. They couldn't imagine that people drank because they liked it, just as today's tobacco prohibitionists cannot imagine that people smoke because they like it.

There is no difference whatsoever between Proctor's position and the position of the Anti-Saloon League. Indeed, the Anti-Saloon League was more moderate in that they allowed alcohol to be sold under certain conditions (religious ceremonies, medical use etc.). Proctor is, in the most literal sense, a prohibitionist.

And so is Patel...

...our food choices are far from free, in no small part because of the commercial and cultural power of the food industry. Weaned as most of us are on Big Food's free speech, we ought to be suspicious of our instincts when it comes to food.

What fresh sophistry is this? Free speech makes us less free? This is the rhetoric of every totalitarian—that "true" freedom comes from restricting freedom. That speech should be free unless the government doesn't like what is being said.

The food industry is an oligopoly that has transformed not only what we eat but how we eat it, and what we think of food.

The food industry is not an oligopoly. Their are millions of farms, millions of individual retailers and millions of independently owned restaurants. The very fact that food is so cheap is a reflection of the competitive market. If you don't like McDonald's and Tesco, you can go to a fruit and veg stall or your local restaurant. The barriers to entry are low.

Extending Proctor's argument to those very corporate powers invites us to imagine what a world without Big Food might look like -- and dream ourselves freer still.

Extending Proctor's arguments would mean abolishing the food industry while leaving us "free" to grow our own food, just as we will be "free" to grow our own tobacco. This is the kind of half-witted back-to-the-land garbage we hear from the New Economics Foundation and other upper-middle class misanthropists. Half the world would be "free" to live like medieval serfs and the other half would be free to starve. Get thee behind me, Patel.

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Jack3d - health threat or moral panic?

Readers of The Art of Suppression will be familiar with knee-jerk prohibitions of party pills and synthetic drugs based on anecdotal evidence. I wonder if Jack3d (pronounced 'jacked') is about to follow the same route.

The deaths of two U.S. soldiers who collapsed during physical training in the last few months have prompted a military investigation of a popular body-building supplement that was found in their systems.

The dietary supplement Dimethylamylamine, or DMAA, has been banned for sale at stores and commissaries in military bases across the country pending the results of the probe.

DMAA (1,3 dimethylamylamine) is extracted from the geranium plant and is a key ingredient in Jack3d, a dietary supplement much-used by body-builders and soldiers. It acts like mild amphetamine—or strong caffeine, if you prefer—and around 440 million servings of Jack3d have been consumed since 2007. If this stuff was truly dangerous, one would expect an epidemic of deaths to have taken place. Instead, we have two incidents, both involving soldiers who have died "after taking" it. They may have taken absurd quantities, or they may have taken something else as well, or it may all be a coincidence. Coincidence can certainly not be ruled out when a product is so widely consumed—indeed, it would be remarkable if there were not coincidences.

Nevertheless, the US army has banned it from sale on military bases. Meanwhile, in Australia...

Jack3d packed in at Queensland mines

A popular dietary supplement has been banned at a central Queensland coal mine after reports workers were using the stimulant to stay awake on the job.

Heaven forfend! And, interestingly, there is a party pills angle to all this:

It is claimed the drug has been used in the production of party drugs.

It is more than a "claim". Remember BZP? (If not, let me point you again in the direction of The Art of Suppression.) It was selling in the millions in New Zealand until it was banned in 2008. Incredibly, the ban on BZP didn't stop young people wanting to get high (who'd a thunk it?) and DMAA was one of the substitutes that filled the vacuum. This, from 2009:

New party pills leave four seriously ill

Health officials want one of the main ingredients in new-generation party pills restricted after four users became seriously ill.

Advice to the [New Zealand] Government highlights concerns about DMAA (dimethylamylamine), a derivative of geranium oil, which is a "psychoactive substance" that reportedly gives users an adrenaline rush.

DMAA is included in several new-generation party pill substances, including Sunrise and Hummer.

These flooded the market when BZP varieties were banned and were now being sold nationally in stores, including dairies, without age restrictions.

It's the same old story. DMAA was only introduced into the dietary supplement market after ephedrine was banned in the US in 2005 (as an amendment to the Patriot Act (!)—typical American log-rolling). There was never good evidence that either ephedrine or BZP were "killer drugs", although there were a handful of cases where people had died "after taking" it, which is a very different matter. There is a similar lack of evidence that DMAA is a genuine health hazard although, like any drug, it can be abused.

As for Jack3d, this is a very widely used supplement which had no reported health risks until the murky cases of the two soldiers this year. (The people who who were "left seriously ill" after taking DMAA in New Zealand had taken at least a gramme of the stuff in its pure form. A dose of Jack3d contains just 50 milligrammes.)

Genuine health risk or moral panic? We may never get the chance to find out because DMAA may soon go the way of countless other low-strength stimulants—banned on the basis of post hoc ergo propter hoc logic. If so, we can be sure that a similar substance will appear to the plug the gap almost immediately.

And so it continues.

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Yes, it's all about prohibition

An anti-smoking group calling themselves Tobacco-Free Washington have taken their crusade to its logical conclusion by demanding the prohibition of tobacco. Under their proposed law, possession would be a class C felony. Sale would be a class B felony.

Yes, I am serious and so are they. Initiative 512 reads...

(1) It is unlawful to sell, manufacture, or possess any tobacco products including, but not limited to, cigarettes, cigars, and smokeless tobacco.

(2) A person who:

(a) Sells or manufactures any tobacco product is guilty of a class B felony punishable according to chapter 9A.20 RCW; or

(b) Possesses any tobacco product is guilty of a class C felony punishable according to chapter 9A.20 RCW.

(3) For the purposes of this section, “tobacco product” includes any product containing tobacco or nicotine that is expected or intended for human consumption.

The prohibitionists are now looking for 300,00 signatures to move Initiative 512 forward. The good news is that they have used a clumsy definition of tobacco products which includes pharmaceutical nicotine 'therapies', so the bill will meet strong opposition from Big Pharma and the various anti-smoking groups they fund.

You have to laugh at the guy who is behind this law. Dr Ed Dolan is a dentist who doesn't sound too bright (you can listen to the half-wit here). Whenever prohibitionists are looking for a handy precedent to seem less nuts, it's only a matter of time before they point to seat-belts laws. They are, after all, one of the few laws which are imposed on people for their own good.

Such a law, if it came in to existence, would likely illicit a lot of resistance from those who believe taking away their right to smoke is a violation of their civil liberties. So Dolan compares it to the seat belt law - a law that yes, infringes on civil liberties, but significantly increases the average life expectancy of someone living in Washington.

One of the main objections to seat-belt laws in the 1980s was that they would be the start of a slippery slope to banning smoking, drinking and Lord knows what else. "Nonsense!", said the campaigners, but here we are 30 years later doing just that.

Dolan does acknowledge that it treads on a slippery slope. 

Dude, you're calling for the possession of tobacco to be a felony. Possession of alcohol wasn't even a felony under Prohibition. You don't need to worry about treading on the slippery slope. You hurtled down that a while ago.

When [it was] suggested that if cigarettes are outlawed, then red meat and alcohol could be next, Dolan said he's not sure about what could happen regarding health concerns and laws.

At least this numpty doesn't try to deny it. It's the next logical step, innit?

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A little taste of prohibition

Dec. 1920: Prohibition agents show off 89 confiscated stills.
(From here)

From The Morning Advertiser:

Five men who masterminded a major counterfeit vodka manufacturing and bottling plant in Leicestershire, were sentenced to a total of 17 years and ten months on Friday at Hull Crown Court.

The plot was uncovered in an industrial unit by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) when they carried out raids in September 2009. They seized 9,000 bottles of fake vodka, branded as Glen’s, manufacturing equipment, bottles and counterfeit packaging – labels and cardboard boxes, at the remote industrial unit at Moscow Farm near Great Dalby, Leicestershire.

The court heard there was a complete lack of any fire safety measures which posed a serious and life threatening hazard. The alcohol vapour alone could have triggered a major explosion if the lights had been switched on or a naked flame or cigarette had been lit.

It certainly could. You may recall what happened back in July...

Boston fire blast unit producing illegal vodka

An industrial unit in Lincolnshire, where five men were killed in an explosion, was being used to produce illegal vodka, police have confirmed.

This happened in Boston, England in 2011, by the way, not Boston, Massachusetts in 1921. Easy mistake to make.

This is part of a growing trend, as the UK's sky-high alcohol taxes combine with economic hardship to fuel demand for the black market. Half of all rolling tobacco is smuggled into the country. Counterfeit cigarettes are openly sold in the streets. We've got the smoke-easies (last week I was in a pub in central London where the landlord told people to light up and leave their cigarette stubs on the floor). Now we have criminal gangs producing poisonous moonshine and blowing themselves up with illegal stills. All we need now is Elliott Ness dancing the Charleston and we can have a full-blown 1920s revival.

The neo-prohibitionist fools believe they can avoid the consequences of prohibition so long as society falls short of a total ban. That's now how it works. It's a sliding scale. In The Art of Suppression I write about 'little prohibitions'—bans, price hikes, excessive regulations—which cause the same problems, only on a smaller scale. After all, as John Stuart Mill said: "Every increase of cost is a prohibition, to those whose means do not come up to the augmented price."

Still, at least people aren't getting literally blinded by moonshine like they did during Prohibition.

No, wait. They are.

25p vodka made me go blind

Christmas partygoers have been warned off bargain booze that can leave you blind. Eastern European gangs are flooding corner stores and even going door to door selling illicit drink in a £1billion- a-year trade.

Last night trainee accountant Dale Shaw, 27, told how he nearly lost his sight drinking the dodgy liquor. After being invited to a family party, Dale bought a bottle of Drop Vodka from an off-licence in Bradford, West Yorkshire.

He said: “I’d never heard of the brand before but it was £4 cheaper than the others. After downing a quarter of the bottle, Dale began to feel more drunk than usual and his vision began to blur.

But by the next morning he could not see at all and was suffering excruciating pains in the lower half of his body. “As soon as I woke I knew there was something wrong,” he said. “I was in agony and my sight was almost completely gone.”

Dale was taken by a relative to Bradford Royal Infirmary where a doctor immediately recognised he was being poisoned by the bootleg spirits. The cut-price vodka contained methanol – alcohol used in explosives, anti-freeze and racing car fuel – and not the safe ethanol found in legal booze.

Expect much more of this if Alcohol Concern and the BMA get their way.

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Another barking mad idea from a doctor

A letter in this week's British Medical Journal has been press released around the world and may feature in today's newspapers. Although it appears to have been written by a precocious child, it is actually from the pen of a grown man, and a doctor at that.

The letter is actually an online comment to an article in the BMJ from last month. The BMJ must have been so impressed by its startlingly original contents that it deemed it worthy of a wider readership.

Fundamental re-think on smoking is needed
Paul D Jepson
F2 doctor, public health

Excuse my naivety, but isn’t smoking’s continued legality one of the most important factors accounting for its slow rate of decline?

If you mean that fewer people would smoke if smoking was illegal, then yes, but it's not quite as simple as that, is it?

Any other drug causing a fraction of the morbidity and mortality of tobacco would have been outlawed long ago, putting aside alcohol for the moment.

Why should we put aside alcohol? Perhaps because it doesn't fit your argument?

In 2010 mephedrone became a class B drug following widespread media coverage and reports of some deaths in the preceding months, although the evidence surrounding the dangers of mephedrone does not exist.

I agree. Mephedrone should not have been banned, as I argued in The Art of Suppression. Unfortunately, we live in prohibitionist times and there is no greater engine of prohibition than the public health establishment, as epitomised by the British Medical Journal.

This is in stark contrast to tobacco, which is responsible for around 100,000 deaths each year in the UK. Why should smoking get special treatment?

I suppose because 1.5 billion people worldwide like consuming tobacco and people can function perfectly well under the influence of nicotine in a way that they can't under the influence of party drugs and amphetamines. The majority of people believe smoking should be legal so it is. We call it democracy and, in a free society, informed adults have a right to put what they like into their bodies even if it carries a risk to their health. The question is not why should smoking get special treatment, but why shouldn't drugs be legal?

For mainly economic and political reasons, adults with enough change in their pocket can walk into their local shop and buy a packet of cigarettes. They will not be judged and will not feel ashamed: smoking is an acceptable addiction.

If that is true - and broadly speaking, it is - it is not for want of trying from the denormalisers of public health. Every effort is made by alleged health campaigners to stigmatise smokers, demonise tobacco and villify the manufacturers. If this hate campaign has not yet led to actual lynch mobs, it only shows that the general public are more tolerant than the British Medical Association. That, again, answers your question as to why smoking remains legal.

If the tabloid press were to publish a list of the names of the more than 250 people killed by smoking related disease each day, would the government be as fast to react as it did for mephedrone?

[splutter]

[wipes coffee from keyboard]

Assuming this to be a serious suggestion, I will attempt a serious reply. Leaving aside the extraordinary distastefulness of the idea and the unconscionable invasion of privacy, the main problem is that such a scheme would be impossible to carry out. No one is able to name these hypothetical 250 people because doctors and coroners very rarely list smoking as a cause of death. Although the BBC recently affected shock at the reluctance of doctors to name smoking on death certificates, all smoking-related diseases are multi-factoral (ie. have more than one cause) and all smoking-related diseases can be contracted by nonsmokers.

So while there is a good chance that a smoker who dies of lung cancer developed the disease because of his smoking, there is a chance that he would have got it even if he had not smoked. In the case of heart disease - which is the biggest contributor to the 100,000 figure - it is impossible to say that smoking was the cause of any one death. This lack of certainty in individual cases is the main reason why personal injury lawsuits against tobacco companies tend to fail in court.

Imagine a fat smoker with a family history of heart disease, a poor diet and a stressful job. Can a doctor say with any certainty that his heart attack was 'caused' by his smoking, his diet, his stress, his genes or his diet? It can't be done. The 100,000 figure comes from assumptions taken from the epidemiological literature based on aggregate data from hospitals. It is an estimate. It is not based on a running total of clinically proven 'smoking-related deaths'.

Even if such a list could be created, who is going to pay for the column inches in the tabloids every day? Since this letter was written by an authoritarian doctor of public health, we must assume that the taxpayer will, as ever, be expected to foot the bill. And why only tabloids? Are we to assume that smokers do not read the broadsheets?

Finally, on a practical note, the great majority of the 250 daily deaths would be of people in their 70s, 80s and 90s. Smoking prevention campaigns are largely targeted at people in their teens and twenties. It is doubtful whether listing the names of people who, for the most part, enjoyed the proverbial 'good innings' is really going to have desired the shock value for the target group of devil-may-care youngsters.

People’s attitude towards drugs should be evidence based, and not informed by politics or popular opinion.

Quite so. Let's legalise them. Prohibition didn't work with alcohol, it doesn't work with drugs and it won't work with tobacco.

How must smokers feel when they are encouraged to quit their habit by the same government that welcomes tobacco taxes so gladly?

I suppose it makes them think that politicians are greedy hypocrites. A valuable lesson learned, no?

While smoking remains legal, the number of smokers is never going to fall significantly—no matter how much taxes rise, how plain cigarette packets become, or how many millions of pounds is spent on cessation.

Smoking rates have actually fallen very significantly over the years and may continue to do so. Admittedly, they have flat-lined since 2006, when the government began listening to the 'experts' of tobacco control and introduced divisive, ill-considered policies like total smoking bans, graphic warnings and display bans. Maybe the politicians will learn their lesson and withdraw their funding from astro-turf anti-smoking groups in the same way as it has recently stopped funding Alcohol Concern. (Rather than try and raise money from the general public, Don Shenker has realised that the game is up and has resigned. Cheers!)

Perhaps the smoking rate will continue to flat-line. Or it might start going back up. Or it might fall again. Who knows? It's none of your business and it's none of mine either. The risks of smoking are universally acknowledged and there is a great big warning on every pack saying 'Smoking Kills'. Having accepted that prohibition doesn't work, we must also accept that informed adults have the choice to smoke or not smoke. There really isn't more to say on the matter. You live your life and I'll live mine.

As I mentioned, this letter may be the subject of some news coverage today, presumably because it raises the spectre of the 'next and final step'. I'll be on BBC Radio Sussex at around 9.50am talking about it.

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Does Facebook cause substance abuse?

Hot on the heels of Alcohol Concern's dodgy report about how Facebook causes binge-drinking comes a report from America's National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA), the neo-prohibitionist lobby group set up by Joe Califano in the early 1990s (see Velvet Glove, Iron Fist for Califano's background).

As faithfully report by Fox News and others, the report concludes that:

Facebook Linked to Teenage Drinking, Drug Use

American teenagers of middle and high school age are more likely to smoke, drink and use drugs if they also spend time on social networking sites, according to a new study by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.

The study, released Wednesday found that teens spending any time at all on social networking sites were five times more likely to smoke cigarettes, three times more likely to drink and twice as likely to smoke marijuana.

Califano has wasted no time in blaming Facebook et al. for kids drinking, smoking and taking drugs:

“The relationship of social networking site images of kids drunk, passed out, or using drugs and of suggestive teen programming to increased teen risk of substance abuse offers grotesque confirmation of the adage that a picture is worth a thousand words.“

He has no doubt that correlation equals causation:

"This year’s survey reveals how the anything goes, free-for-all world of Internet expression, suggestive television programming and what-the-hell attitudes put teens at sharply increased risk of substance abuse.

"Especially troubling - and alarming - are that almost half of the teens who have seen pictures ... first saw such pictures when they were 13 years of age or younger. These facts alone should strike Facebook fear into the hearts of parents of young children."

And there are the inevitable policy demands:

"The time has come for those who operate and profit from social networking sites like Facebook to deploy their technological expertise to curb such images and to deny use of their sites to children and teens who post pictures of themselves and their friends drunk, passed out or using drugs. Continuing to provide the electronic vehicle for transmitting such images constitutes electronic child abuse.”

"Electronic child abuse" and "Facebook fear" are strong terms, so what is the evidence to back them up? The survey's findings were as follows:

Compared to teens who in a typical day do not spend any time on a social networking site, those who do are:

• Five times likelier to use tobacco (10 percent vs. two percent).
• Three times likelier to use alcohol (26 percent vs. nine percent).
• Twice as likely to use marijuana (13 percent vs. seven percent).

The first thing to note is that 70% of the teenagers used a social networking site, and so the 'control group' (those who didn't) are not typical—they make up just 30% of the sample. This should lead us to ask the key question of why this minority of teenagers are not on Facebook, MySpace etc. in a 'typical day'? Maybe they don't have many or any friends. Maybe their parents won't let them have a computer or use social networking sites. Maybe they come from families who have strong moral or religious objections to using these sites. Perhaps they are strict Mormons or belong to the Plymouth brethren. Any or all of these factors would be consistent with non-Facebook users being non-drinkers, non-smokers and non-drug takers.

Teenagers use Facebook, in part, to socialise, organise nights out and share photos of those nights out. Those who are less interested in socialising will be less interested in using a social networking site, but they are also likely to be less interested in using the substances that act as a social glue for many teenagers (like it or not).

Before anyone gets upset, I am not suggesting that people who abstain from alcohol and tobacco (or Facebook) are friendless bores with no social lives. But I would contend that parents who won't let kids use social networking sites are more likely to keep from away from tobacco and alcohol.

Unlike Alcohol Concern—which blames the drinks industry for the phony Facebook menace—CASA thinks that social networking sites spread substance misuse by allowing users to post photos of nights out. This, it seems, warps the fragile little minds of American youth.

No wonder [Facebook users are more likely to use substances] – with what’s on Facebook and other social networking sites for teens to see:

• Half of the teens who spend any time on social networking sites in a typical day have seen pictures of kids drunk, passed out, or using drugs on these sites.

• Even 14 percent of those teens who spend no time on social networking sites in a typical day have seen pictures of kids drunk, passed out, or using drugs on these sites.

I have no idea what the second bullet point means. Perhaps Mark Zuckerberg has found a way of beaming Facebook directly into children's brains. But let's move on...

Compared to teens who have not seen such pictures, teens who have seen pictures of kids drunk, passed out, or using drugs on Facebook or other social networking sites are:

• Three times likelier to use alcohol.
• Four times likelier to use marijuana.

This is very likely to be true, but it tells us nothing more than that drinkers and pot-smokers tend to have friends who are drinkers and pot-smokers. It is merely confirmation that (a) like-minded people tend to associate with each other, and (b) lifestyle choices are influenced by one's peers.

Properly interpreted, this information is underwhelming to the point of banality. Teenagers saw their friends drunk, smoking and passed out before the age of Facebook, and will continue to do so if Califano succeeds in forcing the people at Facebook "to deploy their technological expertise to curb such images" (a massive infringement of free speech and free expression which should be opposed by all right-thinking people).

Joe Califano is 80 years old, so perhaps it is too much to expect him to understand that social networking sites do nothing more than extend social networks in the digital age. But even he should be able to spot the chasm between correlation and causation in this survey. After all, if Facebook really does double, triple and quintuple substance abuse, we should have seen a massive rise in drinking, smoking and drug-taking amongst American youth in recent years.

Here is how Facebook went from having virtually no users to having half a billion users in the space of six years.

Teenage use of Facebook has risen from practically zero to 70% since 2004. If social networking sites make kids five times more likely to smoke, we should see some effect on the national smoking prevalence figures. Instead...

For current cigarette use, the prevalence increased from 27.5% in 1991 to 36.4% in 1997, declined to 21.9% in 2003, and then declined more gradually, to 19.5% in 2009.

For current frequent cigarette use, the prevalence increased from 12.7% in 1991 to 16.8% in 1999, declined to 9.7% in 2003, and then declined more gradually, to 7.3% in 2009.

And if users of social networking sites are three times more likely to use alcohol, we should also see a significant rise. Instead...

Current alcohol use among high school students remained steady from 1991 to 1999 and then decreased from 50% in 1999 to 42% in 2009.

Of the three substances under discussion, only marijuana has seen a rise in use in recent years, and the rise has been fairly slight.

The mistake made by CASA (and let's be charitable and assume it was a mistake) is to assume that the teenagers who don't use Facebook are the 'normal' ones who have evaded infection by the social networking evil. From that false assumption comes the belief that if Facebook stopped allowing users to share their depraved photos, substance abuse by the site's users would drop to the same level as its non-users. But the figures show that the non-users are far from 'normal'. Only 2% of them smoke, only 9% of them drink and only 7% of them use pot. This would be considered exceptionally low in any generation, with or without Facebook.

The question is not what Facebook does to kids to make them drink, smoke and take soft drugs. The question is why do abstainers from these substances also abstain from Facebook. That is a more interesting question, but the answer would not help CASA's agenda so it goes unasked.

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The medicalisation of pleasure

Some interesting news from Switzerland, where nicotine addiction is to be classified as a disease.

Following a Federal Court ruling, the Federal Health Office has concluded that nicotine addiction can be considered an illness. Basic compulsory insurance, which currently does not reimburse any anti-tobacco medication, will have to pay up.

On August 4 the Federal Court underlined that alcohol and heroin addiction could be considered an illness and that “under certain conditions” so could dependence on nicotine. In this case, insurance companies would have to reimburse medicines to treat smoking addiction.

This is intriguing for a number of reasons. Anti-smoking extremists generally oppose the idea that smoking/nicotine addiction is a disease/disability, because the diseased and the disabled have rights. Nicotine addiction is specifically excluded from disability laws in several countries to prevent smokers complaining about discrimination. Anti-smoking campaigners have to tread a fine line between saying that cigarettes are more addictive than heroin, on the one hand, and insisting that smoking is a matter of free choice that can be stopped at any time.

The pharmaceutical industry is not so bothered about maintaining this balancing act. Their lobbyists would like to entirely medicalise the issue in order to position their own products as the 'cure'. And it is they who have been the main drivers of the Swiss decision, as the headline of this story makes clear.

Tobacco ruling has a financial side

Indeed it does. Step forward, Pfizer...

The court partially agreed with drug maker Pfizer which wanted its Champix (or Chantrix) medication included in the list of medicines reimbursed by basic insurance.

'Reimbursement' has always been Big Pharma's aim. It is nice for them to be able to sell drugs like Champix or Nicorette to those who want to quit, but it is even nicer if the government (or insurance companies) buys their stock en masse and dishes them out to smokers as a matter of course.

This intention has been clear since 1999, when Glaxo, Novartis and Pharmacia became big-spending partners with the World Health Organisation to achieve a tobacco-free (note, not nicotine-free) world. In that year, Greg Deener, Glaxo's Director of Global Commercial Strategy, gave a speech which explained exactly what they wanted in return.

We want to support and be partners in tobacco control in a number of areas. We could use help in the area of reimbursement. Zyban was first launched in the US, but as yet there is minimal reimbursement for Zyban in the US. In the US, 42% of people on Medicaid smoke. Federally, Medicaid does not require reimbursement for smoking cessation because it is a lifestyle decision, in the same category as hair replacement... Reimbursement will increase quit attempts, make physicians more proactive.

Do you think he mentioned reimbursement enough? For the pharmaceutical industry to maximise its profits, the government must buy up their NRT products as if they were antibiotics, but for that to happen—as Deneer made clear—smoking cannot be seen as a "lifestyle decision", but as a disease.

This is a very iffy proposition, because smoking is not a disease, rather it is a risk factor for disease, as the insurance companies have pointed out.

For their part, health insurance companies have denounced the “negative message.”

“We only cover risk of illness and not prevention, which is not a risk. Prevention is down to individual responsibility and can’t be carried by everyone. This would be putting all types of behaviour under state control,” explained Yves Seydoux, spokesman for Groupe Mutuel.

But others have equated nicotine addiction with alcoholism, and there is a case to be made that if other addictions are considered diseases, then so should nicotine addiction.

Jacques de Haller, president of the Swiss Medical Association, does not quite agree. “From a medical point of view the two pathologies are different, but both are a dependency.”

“A smoker is addicted to tobacco which makes him lose his free will and can considerably shorten his life,” he said. In addition, there is “the real problem of passive tobacco addiction”.

I have literally no idea what "passive tobacco addiction" is supposed to mean. I wonder if even he knows. It seems that you can stick the word "passive" into any sentence and get people to nod their heads in solemn agreement.

Leaving that aside, it seems to me that the real problem here is that if you classify nicotine addiction as a disease, then industries that sell nicotine products are part of the problem, and that includes Big Pharma. As ineffective as they are, NRT products have a role as one of the options for people who want to quit smoking for the sake of their health. But if the problem is redefined as being nicotine addiction itself, they are clearly not a solution. It could even be argued that since NRT is much safer than smoked tobacco, the pharmaceutical products encourage people to stay addicted for longer. Put simply, nicotine products are not a cure for nicotine addiction.

But what else can Big Pharma do? They can't claim that their NRT products cure lung cancer and they can't claim they prevent smoking. If they are to be viewed as medicines, it can only be as a 'cure' to smoking, but smoking is a lifestyle choice and can only be viewed as an addiction if all nicotine use is classified as an addiction and, therefore, a disease.

It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but that doesn't seem to have stopped the Swiss. This is a major achievement for Pfizer as it sets the scene for the full medicalisation of nicotine. And medicalisation leads to prohibition.

At the start of the last century, a man could go into a shop and buy virtually any stimulant, narcotic, drink or tobacco product he wished, including opium, morphine and cocaine. By the start of the twenty-first century, only a handful of drugs remained publicly available—specifically: caffeine, alcohol and nicotine, of which only alcohol is an intoxicant. The rest had undergone prohibition, but what we call prohibition was really medicalisation. The drugs never disappeared, nor were they intended to disappear. Instead, a system which allowed ordinary people to use mood-altering substances as they saw fit was replaced by a system in which the power to distribute drugs was confined to the pharmaceutical industry and the medical establishment. Even under alcohol Prohibition in the 1920s, doctors were permitted to sell booze.

This enhanced the power and prestige of the doctors, and increased the profits of the drug companies. That is not to say that prohibition was their doing—on the contrary, the pharmaceutical interests initially opposed drug prohibition—but if you ask cui bono?, that is your answer. The sweeping prohibitions of the last century have largely been the work of moral entrepreneurs and zealous reformers, but the effect has been to medicalise a whole range of pleasure-giving substances, of which only a handful remain. In the process, a whole new range of 'diseases', 'syndromes' and 'addictions' has been invented which allows pharmaceuticals to be prescribed to an ever-greater number of people.

If this trend continues, it would be natural for nicotine and alcohol to go the same way eventually. As David Nutt and others have pointed out, there is no scientific reason for these drugs to be legally available when other drugs are classified substances. Alcohol is under no threat of imminent prohibition as long as the American fiasco remains in the popular memory, but David Nutt is personally working on developing a synthetic alcohol substitute and the government's guidelines on 'safe drinking levels' are so low as to be essentially medicinal.

The campaign against tobacco is far more advanced and, again, it has been pushed along by moral entrepreneurs to the benefit of the pharmaceutical industry. More recently, as events in Switzerland show, the pharmaceutical industry has taken a more active role. The long-term goal might be to have a similar nicotine market to that which already exists with drugs, ie. people acquire the habit on the black market and seek 'treatment' (which is actually maintenance of addiction) from doctors who prescribe pharmaceutical substitutes.

Tobacco and alcohol survived the prohibitionist wave of the twentieth century by no more than historical accident. There is no reason to be expect them to be around forever.

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Planning for prohibition

Apologies for the week's absence. Last Tuesday was another bad day for the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement as it saw the birth of my daughter (pictured left), amongst many others. As you might imagine, this event has been taking up much of my time. But normal service will be resumed this week, starting with an article I wrote for The Free Society about the people who said it wasn't about prohibition making plans for prohibition.

The piece looks at a recent paper titled 'Daring to Dream' in which anti-smoking advocates look at "end-game strategies" to wipe tobacco from the face of the earth. What could possibly go wrong, eh?

It also looks at a study published in the International Journal of Drug Policy—called 'History of Bhutan's prohibition of cigarettes: Implications for neo-prohibitionists and their critics'—which looks at how tobacco prohibition has been going in Bhutan. The answer, of course, is not well.

There is, says its author, “a thriving black market and significant and increasing tobacco smuggling… 23.7% of students had used any tobacco products (not limited to cigarettes) in the last 30 days… tobacco use for adults has not ended or is even close to ending… cigarette prohibition is instrumental in encouraging smuggling and black markets… The results of this study provide an important lesson learned for health practitioners and advocates considering or advocating, albeit gradual, but total cigarette ban as a public policy.”

That’s right. Prohibition still doesn’t work.

Do pop over and have a read...

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Drinking is the new smoking (part 94)

Those who were at Stony Stratford on Saturday will have heard Roger Helmer predicting that the day would come when those who ordered wine in restaurants would be given a bottle emblazoned with a picture of a diseased liver.

Pro-smoking hyperbole? Reductio ad absurdum? Not at all. Regular readers will know that such images have been considered in Thailand and that the plan is for 'graphic warnings' to go worldwide.

In Australia (where else?), the hapless drinks industry has decided to play ball with the neo-prohibitionists under the pathetic illusion that they are dealing with reasonable people. Consequently, they have agreed to place written health warnings on their cans and bottles.

Well, guess what? The wowsers still aren't happy...

The industry’s move to put messages on the labels of all alcohol products is theoretically the right move and one that we’ve been advocating for.

Indeed you have, indeed you have. You must be delighted.

“The labels introduced voluntarily by the industry do not go far enough,” Dr Hambleton [president of the Australian Medical Association] said.

Oh.

The Alcohol Policy Coalition recommends health messages that are outcome-related, that takes up 25 percent of the package surface and includes prominent text and graphic warnings.

Well, colour me flabbergasted. A bunch of temperance cranks demands the drinks industry put health bigger, graphic warnings on booze and when they foolishly oblige—and before the change has even been implemented—the cranks start crying that it's not enough. We've been here before, have we not?

And then, as Penn and Teller would say, there's this asshole...

Public Health Association of Australia spokesperson Professor Mike Daube said the push was little more than public relations rather than a meaningful public health promotion.

Does that name ring any bells? It should. Mike Daube was the president of ASH (UK) in the late 1970s when he put that organisation firmly on the path to prohibition. If drinkers have any doubt that they're on the same trajectory as smokers they might take note that they're not just faced with the same rhetoric, but with the same personnel.

But, hey, all these guys want is a graphic warning that covers 25% of the pack, just like cigarettes. After that they'll calm down and move onto something else, just like these anti-smoking campaigners did...

Larger packet warnings fail to satisfy anti-smoking lobby

Regulations requiring tobacco manufacturers to carry larger pictorial and written warnings on cigarette packets have failed to satisfy tobacco control groups.

Tobacco control groups failing to be satisfied?! Say it ain't so!

They say the graphic warning pictures of cancers and other diseases which can be caused by smoking do not go far enough to deter smokers.

This is completely out of character for these folks. Usually, they're so easy to please. Something must have really rattled them this time, so what gives?

Churit Tengtrisorn, director of the Public Health Ministry's Office of Tobacco Control Committee, has announced regulations requiring tobacco companies to increase the size of anti-smoking pictures to cover 60% of the pack, up from the current 55%.

And how right he is. With so many people thinking cigarettes are good for them, expanding the warning from 55% and 60% should make literally millions of people give up smoking. Thank God this man has brought this discrepancy to light. But perhaps we could do even more?

Bungon Ritthiphakdee, director of Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance, said Uruguay had succeeded in introducing warning pictures which made up 80% of the space on cigarette packs.

Well, there you go. Still, that's Southeast Asia. Nothing so silly could happen in Australia, the land the of fearless individualism, could it now?

In its release of draft plain packaging bill, Australian government also announced it would increase size of picture warnings to 75% of front and 90% of back of tobacco packs from 2012. Australia will then have overall world's largest pack health warnings, with average of 82.5% of front and back.

D'oh!

Drinkers, don't make me spell it out to you, this is getting embarrassing for both of us. Let me just say it again in two words.

You're next.

Oh, and they're banning swearing in Victoria. As Clive James once said, the problem with Australia isn't that we sent a load of prisoners there, but that we sent a load of prison wardens there. Poor buggers.

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Then they came for the drinkers...

"Prohibition is won, now for tobacco."

So said the great anti-saloon preacher in 1919. 2011's version is only slightly different.

Cigs war won: Now cancer campaigners set their sights on beer

This is from Australia, natch. Nonsmoking drinkers should pay attention, particularly those of the complacent Campaign for Real Ale variety. This is all about you now.

HEALTH activists who believe even one alcoholic drink can cause cancer are lobbying MPs in Canberra today for limits on how much we consume and how much we pay for it.

If they're successful in branding alcohol a carcinogen it could lead to tough restrictions similar to those applied to tobacco, including warnings on labels and laws requiring plain packaging.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave. Still, at least there isn't an equivalent of Action on Smoking and Health to fight a vociferous campaign against drinkers. No, hang on, there is.

Today's offensive on drinking problems, including limits on how much we consume and how much we pay for it, is being launched by the National Alliance for Action on Alcohol (NAAA), a group of health and community organisations formed in March last year.

But surely they wouldn't equate the risks of drinking with the risks of smoking?

The Cancer Council of Australia argues even one drink is dangerous, a view similar to its position that even one cigarette can injure health.

And don't bother pointing out that a little alcohol is good for your health. The wowsers have got that one covered as well.

It’s bad news for wine lovers - a leading health researcher has dismissed one of the cherished hopes of drinkers everywhere - that a couple of glasses a night is good for the heart.

Professor Tanya Chikritzhs, of the National Drug and Research Institute, says the health claims are based on flawed and biased research.

My, my. This is terribly surprising news isn't it? And all the more ironic since only last week the drinks industry was  whining about a BAT advert depicting a beer can in plain-packaging as a warning of what is to come.

Stephen Strachan, the chief executive of the Winemakers Federation of Australia, said his members would reject any suggestion of a link between alcohol products and tobacco that the ad implied. There was no suggestion that alcohol products were to be subject to plain packaging.

"Our industry does not like any association between tobacco and alcohol," Mr Strachan said.

As I've said many times before, it doesn't matter a damn how the drinks industry sees itself. It only matters how the neo-prohibitionists see them, and they see alcohol as a carcinogen that causes death, disease and "passive drinking".

It is undeniable that alcohol causes some cancers, so any dunce who justifies extreme anti-smoking policies because of the "I don't see why I should pay for smoking-related disease" argument (which is a myth anyway), should bear in mind that they've sowed the seeds of their own vilification.

As Dick Puddlecote wrote a couple of years ago:

I once suggested to some beardy tossbag from CAMRA that he should throw his weight behind objecting to tobacco prohibition because his vice was next. He piffled that drinkers were too numerous to be subject to the same denormalisation.

May God rot his middle class pompous paunch if he doesn't now realise that he was disastrously wrong.

Well, guess what? Wowsers, health fanatics and puritans are not the drinker's friend. Never have been, never will be. Those of us who enjoy pleasures that carry a measure of risk are on the same side. Always have been, always will be. The temperance lobby met with ASH in Scotland recently to swap notes, for God's sake. How far down the slippery slope do you need to be before you realise you're on your arse?

On the plus side, the temperance lobby are following the anti-tobacco blueprint to the letter, so drinkers know what's coming. On the down side, many of them have conceded so much ground to their enemy by accepting their arguments against smokers that it's difficult for them to put up a consistent defence of their own pleasures.

Still, good luck, and remember...

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Nowhere left to hide?

The New England Journal of Medicine has published a comment piece about the future of tobacco control in the light of New York's outdoor smoking ban. I haven't written about the New York ban because, really, what is there to say? According to the BBC:

Smoking will be allowed on pavements outside parks, and car parks in public parks. One area the ban does not cover is "median strips" - known as the central reservation in the UK - the sliver of land in the middle of a large road.

It is possible, dear reader, that you consider this to be a reasonable and proportion piece of legislation. You may believe that allowing people to smoke in the middle of the road—but not on the road, and certainly not on the pavement—is a fair compromise which neatly balances the rights of nonsmokers with smokers.

But if you believe that, I doubt there is anything I can say that would bring you to your senses. There isn't anything to say about the health grounds for the ban, because they're aren't any. There's nothing to say about the scientific basis for the ban because none has been offered. It's a simple case of 'might is right'. Michael Bloomberg is a billionaire bully who should move to Bhutan and I feel sorry for New Yorkers, but it's not as if he's done it all himself. Take this guy, for example:

“I think in the future,” the city’s health commissioner, Thomas Farley, said at a public hearing, “we will look back on this time and say 'How could we have ever tolerated smoking in a park?'”

If that sentence doesn't make you shudder then, again, you're reading the wrong blog. Imagine a society in which smoking is not only banned in parks but in which people find it unbelievable that such a thing could have ever taken place. How many years of illiberalism, molly-coddling, fear-mongering and 're-education' would have to pass before people's minds became that narrow? If ever there was an argument for lighting up, drinking up and checking out early, Thomas Farley's vision of the future is it.

So what does the NEJM article have to say about all this? Well, actually it's pretty reasonable. It reminds us that smoking bans pre-dated the secondhand smoke studies and that, therefore, bans have never been purely about health. It suggests that one of the justifications for the NY ban—that smoking outdoors is the main source of litter—is based on a highly dubious measure which counts the number of individual items rather than overall volume. It accepts that outdoor smoking bans are primarily part of the denormalisation campaign and are ethically questionable. And it says, as this blog frequently says, that what we are witnessing is creeping prohibition.

Most health professionals agree that an outright prohibition on the sale of cigarettes would be unfeasible and would lead to unwanted consequences such as black markets and the crime that accompanies them.

Yet steadily winnowing the spaces in which smoking is legally allowed may be leading to a kind of de facto prohibition. Smoking bans imposed by states and municipalities have been accompanied by comparable measures in the private sector. Some employers and property owners prohibit smokers from congregating in building doorways; colleges and universities have banned smoking on their campuses; condominiums, apartments, and other multi-unit dwellings have passed requirements for smoke-free apartments. As the historian Allan Brandt has noted, smokers may soon have nowhere left to hide. Pressed by a city council member about where he believed people should be allowed to smoke in New York City, Farley responded, “I’m not prepared to answer that.”

Go read.

On a similar note, the Free Society and Privacy International are hosting a debate about smoking and civil liberties at the Institute of Economic Affairs next Wednesday. Details here.

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Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder

A couple of vaguely related links today. At the Free Society, Joe Jackson has written about how the doctrine of zero tolerance is the precursor to prohibition.

Zero-risk and zero-tolerance are increasingly promoted as ‘the only game in town’. If pleasure is mentioned at all, it’s likely to be depicted as something illusory, and as a sign of weakness. Moderation? Freedom of choice? Even if there are such things, we apparently can’t be trusted with them.

We’re living longer than ever, but we seem to be doing so in a state of constant fear – thanks to the people who are supposed to be there to make us feel better. It almost makes you want to go to a monastery and live on raw carrots. Except that sooner or later, someone is going to decide that that’s bad for you, too. So it’s hardly surprising that some of us say, to hell with it all, and just get drunk.

That’s the problem with zero tolerance: anything else, however moderate, however pleasurable, becomes ‘extreme’ – and also a transgression, which invites more and more stringent prohibition. It never ends.

Meanwhile, the BBC reports the end of a chapter for one prohibition. Absinthe was banned in France after a moral panic in the nineteenth century because...

"The anti-alcohol lobbies really rammed home the message that absinthe makes you crazy and a criminal," she says.

"So that has stayed within the collective memory; people are afraid of absinthe."

Now the ban is being fully overturned, although not for the noblest of reasons.

Absinthe was first made, not in France, but just across the border in the Val-de-Travers region of Switzerland.

And a Swiss judge recently approved a request to give the region exclusive rights to produce it. For the moment, this ruling applies only in Switzerland, which is not a member of the European Union - and so has limited impact.

But because of Switzerland's close ties with the EU, it is possible that the Swiss could seek to extend the ruling across the block.

Producers say that this is what has galvanised the French government to lift the ban now.

France would be the biggest loser if such a ruling were to be extended, but with the drink still technically illegal at home, it would have found it virtually impossible to contest.

It's an interesting read and includes this great quote from Oscar Wilde.

After the first glass you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. Finally you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world.

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Think of the (very small) children!

What age-group do you think of when someone says the word 'children'? 16 years or younger? Under-18 perhaps?

And what about 'young children'? Ten year olds? Eight year olds? Maybe younger?

So what about 'very young children'? That would have to be toddlers and pre-school children, right? Six or seven at the most.

So what can we make of Diane Abbott saying this?

"It is wrong that very young children can get out of their skulls for less money than it takes to buy a bottle of Coca-Cola."

Leaving aside the fact that a bottle of Coke costs 70p, which is far too little for anyone to get 'out of their skulls' on, Abbott's twist on the old 'think of the children' canard means one of the following:

a) she have a unique definition of what a 'very young child' is

b) she honestly believes that very young children are getting 'out of their skulls' on alcohol for 70p

c) she is one of the stupidest people to ever become an MP in British history

d) she is deliberately using misleading language to scare people into supporting minimum pricing

It could very easily be a combination of (c) and (d). Incredibly (or not), this serial incompetent and self-confessed hypocrite in on Labour's shadow cabinet. Still more incredibly, she is the spokesperson for health, which should be interesting when she has to tackle obesity (something she has clearly never attempted before).

Still, it gives me an excuse to show this again:

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ASH Wednesday (part 2)

I didn't finish writing about the UK government's 'new' tobacco strategy last week (the strategy being to do whatever ASH say despite their appalling record of failure and broken promises).

Reading the government's Tobacco Control Plan 2011, the first thing that struck me was that it was identical in style and content to the numerous public health papers that came out in the Labour years. Now, obviously I didn't expect Andrew Lansley to write the thing himself but, seriously, it was indistinguishable. I would hazard a guess that the whole thing was the creation of ASH, Cancer Research and other "stake-holders" in collaboration with the same people from the Department of Health who were instrumental in dictating policy to the previous lot. And we know from the Dark Market e-mails how closely these groups like to work together.

The headline news is that the ludicrous display ban is to be brought in as planned and the bat-shit crazy plain packaging plan will probably follow. Why both should be required is a mystery. Common sense dictates that they both do the same job of shielding evil colours and fonts from the eyes of naive young consumers. Bring in one and you don't need the other. Still, ASH are "delighted".

Plain packaging is not yet a done deal. There is to be a public consultation. Perhaps it's started already, who would know? It's not as if they advertise these consultations to the public, but you can be sure those in the club are always kept well informed. We know how this process will work. The fake charities and the quangos will collect names by e-mail using state funds and the voices of private citizens will be expunged from the record. Like this guy said:

"It will come as no surprise to us if the Department of Health has funded organisations that provide the responses to consultations that the Government is looking for. The public are understandably cynical about the way Labour consults the public—it's time we had a Government that treats the public and their views with the respect they deserve.”

Those are the words of Andrew Lansley, speaking about the consultation for the display ban while he was in opposition. The same Andrew Lansley who has just given the green light to the display ban and has authorised another pretend consultation on a measure that even the Labour party seemed unsure about. Funny old game, politics, isn't it?

What is the evidence that any of this will further the government's arbitrary goal of reducing smoking prevalence to 18.5% by 2015? There is almost nothing to go on. ASH's "evidence" that plain-packaging had public support was such a pathetic concoction of wishful thinking that even they seemed embarrassed by it and resorted to getting Martin Dockrell to launch it on a left-wing blog. Every media outlet, including the BBC, ignored their what-if survey.

A few countries have tried the display ban but there has been no effect on the smoking rate. Evidence from Canada and Ireland suggests that it has increased both smuggling and youth smoking. No one's tried plain packaging.

But evidence just doesn't come into it. It's about being a world leader at the lowest possible cost and that's something that's always attracted politicians to tobacco control. It's cheap and you can look like a tough guy for a day. We'll try anything now. England has been sprung into the position of having Californians pointing and laughing at us for a change. How very embarrassing. We are now the test bunnies for moral entrepreneurs everywhere. We are in the do-anything business. It's as if the anti-smoking lobby is throwing anything and everything out there before they start being judged on results.

And time is running out. Even in their line of work, you cannot keep making promises and failing to deliver indefinitely. This, from the BBC's report on the plans:

A fifth of adults smoke - a figure which has remained steady in recent years after decades of rapid falls.

Every other report made a similar point but failed to grasp its significance. Before 2007, Britain had almost nothing in the way of anti-smoking legislation. There were no graphic warnings on packs. You could smoke at 16. You could smoke in a pub, in an office, in a nightclub—pretty much anywhere so long as the owner of those private premises agreed. Taxes went up every year and there were no cigarette advertisements, but that was about it. And then everything changed. The whole professional anti-smoking blueprint was unleashed like a flood. It was never out of the news.

And what happened? Smoking rates suddenly stopped falling after dropping for many years. For the first time since they were behind the bike sheds, smokers weren't just people who smoked. They were an identifiable community. The government was turning the act of lighting a cigarette into an act of defiance once more.

If you inclined to such theorizing, you might go even further and say that, in its small way, smoking is becoming—and with these new policies will become more so—a political act. It's certainly a more effective political act than voting these days. As this policy document makes crystal clear, voting changes nothing when it comes to public health legislation. Nothing could make this more apparent than the fact that both Tories and Lib Dems opposed the display ban in opposition and then pushed it through in power.

Public health rolls on regardless of which government is in charge. If you want to see what legislation will come about this decade you only have to look at the list of what legislation they want to come about (12 Steps to Better Public Health).

Does it not seem perverse and strange that all three parties are behind measures which are widely derided by the public? The most common response I've encountered to both the display ban and plain packaging is a tut, a shake of the head and perhaps a swear-word. Even the BBC's coverage could not disguise the fact that most of the population thinks these schemes fall somewhere between stupid, pointless and loopy. How can it be that the majority of people who think these ideas are barmy have to vote for minority parties if they want to voice their democratic disapproval? Has something not gone badly awry in the political class when this happens, and happens so often?

Yay-sayers are quick to point out that none of this prevents people buying cigarettes. It will be a major cost and inconvenience to shop-keepers, of course, and that is deplorable, but the consumer goes untouched. This is true. In a way, we should be thankful that the anti-tobacco industry has found a way of attracting derision without penalising smokers more directly.

But this misses the point. Regardless of who is being directly penalised here, I don't want a government that treats its people with such contempt that they think we cannot see some cigarettes without wanting to buy them. I don't want to live in a country where a product consumed by millions of ordinary people is sold in Soviet grey behind curtains and boards with a nudge and a whisper. Nor do I want to live in a country where those same millions are denormalised by people who are anything but normal themselves.

It is an absolute racing certainty that the temperance movement will demand graphic warnings and plain packaging on alcohol in the fullness of time. It would be not just inconsistent but hypocritical to do otherwise, and surely we no longer have to demonstrate that the slippery slope exists.

The most plausible reason for Lansley's headlong into anti-tobacco extremism—as hinted at elsewhere—is his desire to throw the neo-prohibitionists a bone in the area of smoking while disappointing them in the area of drinking. In the last few days, he'll have noticed that such a policy doesn't work. The neo-pros' attempts to undermine the government on drinking will have shown him that they always bite the hand that feeds it. This should be a lesson learned for the coalition. No matter they do, the prohibitionist beast will keep howling. You might as well starve it instead.


UPDATE: Somewhat related from Prime Minister's Questions today:

For me, the significant moment was Mr Cameron’s response when Mr Miliband reminded him that the British Medical Association has criticised Coalition health plans.

The PM’s response was agressive, a full-frontal attack on the BMA as just another trade union opposing public sector reform.

The BMA opposed foundation hospitals, longer GP opening hours and every others significant reform of recent years, Mr Cameron said.

Mr Miliband couldn’t resist backing the BMA because he instinctively sides with the sectional interests of organised labour, the PM said:

“Just as he has to back every other trade union, he comes here and reads a BMA press release.”

The attack on the BMA reflects ministers’ private anger at the doctors. Aware of the public standing of the medical profession and the central role GPs will take in a reformed NHS, Coalition criticism of the BMA has so far been muted. Does Mr Cameron’s flash of anger signal a new willingness to take on the doctors?

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Is that a slippery slope I see before me?

How many times have smokers warned drinkers that the neo-prohibitionists will not stop with tobacco? I suggested a few ago that non-smokers should actively oppose the anti-smoking crusade if only because smoking provided a buffer between the puritans and other pleasures. So long as that buffer remained it place, they could not get their teeth into drinking, food, driving, meat eating and the rest. Back then, the popular view was that smoking was a unique case. That particular piece of self-delusion is pretty hard to maintain today.

If there's one industry that should understand the threat of prohibition it's the drinks industry. Just as the moral entrepreneurs moved from alcohol to tobacco without missing a beat when Prohibition was enacted in America, history is repeating itself with the twist being that the move is now from tobacco to alcohol.

Did the drinks industry really believe that people who use a junk science estimate of 54 hospitality workers dying each year to bring about a total smoking ban in every pub in the land were going to think twice about using the same tactics on an industry they blame for 40,000 deaths each year?

The drinks company Diageo seems to have finally woken up to this inevitable mission creep. Lord knows, the neo-prohibitionists could hardly have made it more obvious for them when they arranged a get together (at the taxpayer's expense, natch) to discuss how to use anti-smoking methods against drinkers. They then took another leaf out of the tobacco control manual by banning the drinks industry from the event.

Finally taking this a subtle hint that alcohol is next, Diageo have kicked off. From the Scotsman:

Drinks giant Diageo has cut its ties with Scotland's most prominent alcohol awareness charity over controversial moves by the campaigning group to link the impact of alcohol to that of smoking.

The company, which makes Johnnie Walker, Bell's, Guinness and Smirnoff, has retaliated against Alcohol Focus Scotland after being frozen out of a conference next week which the group is co-hosting with anti-smoking lobbyist ASH.

Quite right too. Banning the drinks industry from a discussion about 'alcohol control' (expect to hear that phrase more and more) is a good indication that the neo-pros don't so much want to work with industry as go to war with it. What do they have to fear from having people who understand the drinks industry attend their cosy little shindig? Do they really feel they have nothing to learn or are they worried that a bit of real-world knowledge might make their carefully prepared Powerpoint presentations look a tad naive?

Banning stake-holders from industry from attending meetings is a policy that started when the EU banned all tobacco industry delegates from attending tobacco control meetings. When they first did this, there were warnings that it would lead to representatives from oil companies, drinks companies, car manufacturers etc. being similarly banned. No, no, said the neo-pros. Tobacco was a special case. There's no slippery slope here, don't be silly.

Edinburgh-based Diageo has written to AFS, arguing it is "misleading and unjustified" to suggest smoking and drinking should be tackled in the same way when there is evidence that responsible drinking causes no harm.

They're still not quite getting it, are they? There are important differences between smoking and drinking, but, to the neo-pros, they differ only by degrees. Alcohol Focus, like David Nutt, see no fundamental distinction between tobacco and alcohol. They never have. Smoking just happened to be an easier target, just as alcohol was an easier target in 1920. Diageo are complaining because they resent having their products grouped in with cigarettes, but what they want is of minimal importance. The fact is that moralists and puritans have always grouped smoking and drinking together.

Having given Alcohol Focus £140,000 in recent years, it has also decided to redirect funding to other alcohol education programmes.

Talk about making a rod for your own back. Now, a little too late, Diageo have started to realise that these people can't be bought off or compromised with.

AFS claim the drinks and tobacco industries regularly share tactics on how best to counter public health arguments and that new research suggests even small amounts of drink could be harmful.

No safe level of alcohol. As I said the other day, this is true prohibitionist rhetoric.

Mark Baird, head of corporate social responsibility, said: "We believe it is misleading and unjustified to suggest alcohol and tobacco should be treated the same way with regard to public health policies and we strongly believe the recent moves by AFS to associate the two are a serious mistake which cannot go unchallenged."

It's too late for that, sunshine. You are now the evil 'liquor trade'. You had every chance to take a principled stand on personal liberty but ignored your allies and funded your enemies. If you're going to sup with the devil, bring a long spoon. It's not as if these people haven't shown you time and again that they are not your friends.

AFS said it had decided not to invite drinks firms to the summit because organisers did not want "vested interests" involved in a discussion on possible public health reforms.

A brave and principled stand, and one that I'm sure Alcohol Focus Scotland's new partners at ASH will support 100% because if there's one thing they hate, it's having vested interests at their events.

Day One: Monday 14th June 2010

Room 1
How to interpret a scientific paper and make your own conclusions
Craig Beck and Imran Khan, Medical and Scientific Relations, Pfizer Ltd, Tadworth, UK

Room 2
Lose the Smoker in You: A community approach to quitting in New Parks, Leicester
Louise Ross, Tobacco Control Delivery Manager, NHS Leicester City, UK and Kay Harris, Head of Local Marketing, Pfizer Ltd, Tadworth, UK

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New York conversation

What can I say about New York's latest smoking ban in 'public places' (how the definition of that changes)? I write about how these things are going to happen but when they do there doesn't seem to be anything left to say. It can't be justified on the basis of secondhand smoke, obviously, and very few people have tried to do so. In civil liberties terms it's beyond the pale. It probably can't be enforced, but we shall see. It's very sad, but New Yorkers knew what they were getting when they re-elected Bloomberg.

All this you know, so I'll just quote what other's have been saying.

Whoopi Goldberg's having none of it:

"I'm done with this (anti-smoking) because I feel I pay taxes here just like everybody else. There should be a designated place and I'm tired of being treated like some damn criminal. If they're really worried about the smell in the air, give us electric buses, give us electric cars, and then I'll understand!

"But you know, (give smokers) a little respect because I understand that not everyone wants to smoke, I get that, but you can't keep treating people like they don't matter."

And Goldberg has vowed to defy the ban and pay the $50 fines for smoking in the newly-banned areas until nicotine lovers are given specially-designated spots to puff away in public.

She adds, "I'm going to take the hit, I'm gonna write the cheque, do everything until you guys do what you need to do to stop this nasty smell of cars and all the other nasty stuff... I'm smoking my cigarette, I'm sick of this!"

She may not have to pay many fines, if Carl at Ep-ology's experience is anything to go by:

I was in New York a couple of days ago and enjoyed the juxtaposition of talk of the brand new law against outdoor smoking and hanging out with people who chose to defy even the indoor ban, demonstrating that there is really no problem getting away with that.

The Daily Mash gives us the satirical take:

New York is bidding to reverse its plummeting violent crime figures by not letting anybody smoke.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg extended the city's smoking ban to parks insisting outdoor tobacco fumes were preventing people from enjoying the exhaust emissions from more than 300 square miles of gridlocked traffic.

But tourism experts say the move will also resurrect the authentic New York atmosphere portrayed in much loved Hollywood classics such as Mean Streets, Bada Bing and Fuck You.

New York cabbie Tom Logan said: "Ordinarily I would recommend the cultural highlights and reasonably-priced restaurants in our fair city but after pulling a 12-hour shift without a smoke I'll probably just spray the entrance to the Waldorf with machine-gun fire and then drive this motherfucker straight off the Brooklyn Bridge."

New York's anti-smoking laws are some of the strictest in America, though there is a loophole in the legislation to allow the public smoking of crack.

Rob Lyons has a less-than-romanic view of the Land of the Free:

This is a country where you can be arrested for not crossing the road in a state-approved place or for having a drink when you're 20 years old. Bloomberg seems to be just tidying up a few loose ends.

But of particular interest to me was the editorial in the New York Times (h/t Carl Phillips). NYT editorials acted as something of a barometer of public opinion during the last great American Anti-Smoking Crusade (1899-1920).

As readers of Velvet Glove, Iron Fist will fondly recall, when the first rumblings of anti-cigarette fervour began in 1884, the NYT ran a xenophobic editorial attributing Spain's decline to the smoking of cigarettes and warned that "if this pernicious practice obtains among adult Americans the ruin of the Republic is close at hand."

But by the first decade of the next century, the newspaper was striking a more libertarian chord. When cigarettes were banned in Indiana, it called the ban "a scandalous an interference as can be conceived with constitutional freedom" and consistently defended the right to smoke.

If the NYT has written anything critical of the tobacco control lobby in my lifetime, I missed it. So perhaps—just perhaps—their latest editorial marked the moment when the NYT realised again that this is a prohibitionist crusade they're talking about:

No smoking at the crossroads of the world? The vortex of tourism that brings smokers and nonsmokers in great numbers? The site of the world’s most famous New Year’s Eve party, where who knows what goes on? All of this takes the mayor’s nannying too far, even for those of us who want to avoid the hazards of secondhand smoke...

Meanwhile, there is talk that the mayor and the City Council want even more, like banning smoking near doors of office buildings and apartments. They need to take a deep breath and remember that we tried prohibition 90 years ago. They called it a noble experiment. It turned into a civic disaster.

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Bhutan's iron fist

References to the tiny nation of Bhutan in the Western media tend to romantise the country and its supposed commitment to happiness (it uses a measure of Gross National Happiness). The less palatable truth is that Bhutan is ruled by a racist tyrant whose every whim is law. Despite its violation of human rights and persecution of ethnic minorities, some distant observers continue to see it as a Buddhist Utopia.

When you consider that some of the king's schemes to increase happiness have included banning television, banning advertising and banning tobacco, you can see how this tin-pot dictatorship appeals to those of a similarly autocratic persuasion.

What Bhutan really does is demonstrate the problems of having the state decide what constitutes happiness. Whether happiness is defined by a monarch (as in Bhutan), or by committee (as with David Cameron's ludicrous National Wellbeing Project), it will inevitably result in minorities being punished for finding their pleasures outside of the government-approved activities.

Tobacco-users are not the first minority to suffer persecution in Bhutan for not fitting the mould, but as the king clamps down on their habit, they are increasingly seeing what it's like to be on the wrong side of state's view of happiness. I say tobacco-users because the story below does not even involve smoking:

A Buddhist monk could face five years in prison after becoming the first casualty of a stringent anti-smoking law in the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, which vows to become the first smoke-free nation.

The monk has been charged with consuming and smuggling contraband tobacco under a law that came into force this month, the newspaper Kuensel reported Friday, having been caught in possession of 72 packets of chewing tobacco.

Bhutan, where smoking is considered bad for one’s karma, banned the sale of tobacco in 2005. But with a thriving smuggling operation from neighboring India, the ban failed to make much of an impact.

The new law has granted police powers to enter homes, threatening jail for shopkeepers selling tobacco and smokers who fail to provide customs receipts for imported cigarettes.

“He can be charged with smuggling of controlled substances, which is a fourth degree felony,” a police official from the Narcotic Drug and Law enforcement Unit of Bhutan, who did not want to be identified, told the Bhutan Today newspaper.

A fourth degree felony can carry a sentence of five years.

When Bhutan banned the sale of tobacco in 2005, The Lancet glowingly predicted that "The tobacco-free age is just around the corner." If so, Bhutan gives us a glimpse of what this brave new world will look like.

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