I've written a briefing for Epicenter off the back of this year's Nanny State Index about the WHO's so-called "best buys" for alcohol. These are the policies that are supposedly most cost-effective in cutting alcohol-related harm. As I show, there is scant evidence that they are effective at all, and they are certainly neither a sufficient nor necessary way of dealing with the problem.
Download it here or read a slightly modified version on my Substack.
‘Unprecedented Levels of Industry Interference’ Stalls Decisions on New Tobacco Products and Pollution at UNFCTC COP11
Among the many lowlights at this year's WHO anti-nicotine shindig was the Framework Convention Alliance giving New Zealand the Dirty Ashtray award for repealing the ludicrous generational tobacco ban while giving Mexico the Orchid Award for making a speech about how ghastly the tobacco industry is. New Zealand's smoking rate has been falling fast and is now one of the lowest in the world. Mexico's smoking rate has been rising.
But Mexico banned e-cigarettes this year and that's good enough for the WHO. In tobakko kontrol, it's process and intentions that count, not outcomes. (See this article for the hilarious response of Beowulf scholar turned "public health" expert Janet Hoek to New Zealand's "national shame".)
The poor old WHO isn't doing too well these days. In a document circulated to member states, it says that it has a $1.06 billion shortfall and is having to make cuts. They include:
2,371 job losses and a 28% reduction in headcount. The WHO's Regional Office in Africa is bearing the brunt (who cares about Africa, eh?) with a 25% reduction in staff, but Europe is not far behind with 24%.
The WHO's leadership team was reduced by around 50% in June.
The number of WHO units will be cut from 206 to 127.
The Assistant Director-General post on Universal Health Coverage, Communicable and Noncommunicable Diseases has been abolished. 'NCDs' are now the responsibility of Britain's Jeremy Farrar who is a good fit for the WHO because he likes sucking up to China.
The WHO says that it aims to "build on assessed contributions, diversify funding sources, and streamline grant management through technology". Don't be surprised if Bloomberg steps up with some more cash to tighten his stranglehold on the organisation.
Meanwhile, the New Zealand government has cut the budget of its temperance groups. I'll drink to that.
Have a great weekend!
Sky Bet is relocating to Malta where it can enjoy an effective corporation tax rate of around 5 per cent rather than the 25 per cent it is currently paying in Leeds. The move comes after months of lobbying for higher gambling taxes and credible rumours that Rachel Reeves will increase remote gambling duty in next week’s Budget. Gambling operators cannot avoid paying duty on the Gross Gambling Yield generated by customers in the UK (which is essentially revenue, not profit), but they don’t have to be headquartered in the UK.
Since most gambling companies are based offshore and the government has done nothing to dampen talk of remote gambling duty going up from 19 per cent to 25 per cent or more, it should have taken no one by surprise when Sky Bet decided to flee the country. And yet the Chair of the Treasury Select Committee, Meg Hillier MP, was completely blindsided. “I’m pretty astounded,” she told ITV News. “The betting industry appeared in front of the Treasury Select Committee just a couple of weeks ago, extolling the virtues about how much tax they’re paying in the UK. And here we see a company going and offshoring. It rather takes the biscuit doesn’t it?”
The Betting and Gaming Council (BGC) did indeed appear before her committee last month, as I reported at the time, but it takes a tin ear to think that they were merely boasting when they explained that their members pay an effective tax rate of between 65 per cent and 80 per cent. They explicitly said: “The BGC’s role is to highlight to the Committee and the Treasury the negative impacts of any additional tax rises on the whole of the betting and gaming industry and the jobs it supports.” Mrs Hillier apparently misheard this as: “We pay lots of tax and would be delighted to pay some more.”
The WHO’s big biennial tobacco conference kicks off this week in Geneva. A global tobacco conference wouldn’t be a bad idea right now. In a sane world, governments would be getting together to discuss how things are going so badly wrong and how to correct their mistakes.
Led astray by fanatics, a growing number of countries are seeing unintended consequences that are too disastrous to deny. Australia is the most dramatic example, but the black market in tobacco in Britain is also now a major source of criminal activity. Here are just some of the BBC stories from the last month involving the illegal sale of cigarettes:
Mini market closed after illegal cigarettes seized
Man jailed over illegal cigarettes and tobacco
£30,000 of illegal tobacco and vapes seized
Illegal vapes and cigarettes worth £60,000 seized
Illegal goods worth £280k netted in city shop raids
Arrests made and goods seized in police raids
Mini-mart crime network a ‘pull factor’ for illegal migrants, say MPs
Illicit cigarettes found under fake shop floors
Hundreds arrested in High Street crime crackdown
High Street action uncovers £75k of illegal goods
In countries such as France and the Netherlands, the illicit trade is similarly spiralling out of control. In Eastern Europe, balloons are being used to smuggle tobacco into neighbouring countries. In India, a WHO-approved ban on vapes has predictably led to a “rampant unregulated gray/black market”.
Tobacco duty receipts are declining, but in many countries smoking rates are holding steady. In the EU, the smoking rate has barely budged in a decade.
Faced with the consequences of its own actions, the anti-smoking lobby has shoved its head deeper into the sand. The secretariat for the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) has set out its stall for the eleventh Conference of the Parties (COP 11) by proposing some “forward-looking measures” that are just different flavours of prohibition. The real solution is to make smoking reasonably affordable while encouraging the use of low and ultra-low risk nicotine products like pouches and vapes. Instead, under the influence of Mike Bloomberg’s billions, they are demanding ludicrous policies such as putting health warnings on individual cigarettes and banning cigarette filters.
“a range of supply, demand and harm reduction strategies that aim to improve the health of a population by eliminating or reducing their consumption of tobacco products and exposure to tobacco smoke”.
The WHO is no longer very interested in reducing people’s “consumption of tobacco products”. It is now focused on reducing people’s consumption of products that contain no tobacco, do not produce “tobacco smoke”, and are substitutes for tobacco products. It is debatable whether this is even within the remit of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control - given the WHO’s own definition of “tobacco control” - but it is certainly counter-productive and a threat to individual liberty. As I argued recently, it is quite possible that there would be fewer smokers around today if there had never been an anti-smoking movement.
As with the last two COP meetings, I will be in town with an impressive array of experts to have a reality-based discussion about what governments should do to heal their self-inflicted wounds, cut crime and improve health. The public and media are always banned from attending the conference (!), and it is anyone’s guess who will be on the UK’s delegation, but we’ll be doing our best to report on what’s happening and will be live-streaming a series of interviews and panel discussions throughout the week, so keep an eye on YouTube if this is your kind of thing.
Cross-posted from the Snowdon Substack
Mr Kenny, the retired co-founder of Paddy Power, confirmed this approach by industry, noting that “[W]hen I campaigned for the gambling industry, I always used to talk about black markets and job losses. We saw it again when the FOBT [Fixed Odds Betting Terminal] legislation was brought in: “Oh, this will close all the shops,” but it didn’t. It is a bit of scaremongering.”
However, a recent paper in the Harm Reduction Journal noted research arguing that “[ … ] narratives advancing a threat of black-market provision of gambling [are] a form of ‘regulatory resistance’. Regulatory resistance is characterised by industry-led argumentation, often using industry-generated evidence, and arguments that reduced regulation can ‘protect’ the industry from the black market.”
Our best attempt to estimate the maximum ‘bearable’ rate of taxation produced an estimate lying around the 30% threshold, which is nearly the double of what was predicated by previous studies (e.g., 15% [13]).
France’s Illegal Gambling Market Surpasses Regulated Sector as Calls for Reform GrowFrance’s illegal online gambling market has overtaken the regulated sector for the first time, according to new data from the Association française des jeux en ligne (AFJEL). The group estimates 5.4 million players now use unlicensed websites generating about €2 billion in gross gaming revenue (GGR) in 2025 — a 25% increase since 2023.
The prof confirms that the slippery slope is very real. pic.twitter.com/LoqwzGZ7HY
— Christopher Snowdon (@cjsnowdon) November 6, 2025
Van Tulleken says the quiet part out loud. He wants warning labels on food because it will start a cascade of taxes and regulation. #slipperyslope pic.twitter.com/4XVdtwraSp
— Christopher Snowdon (@cjsnowdon) November 5, 2025
“We should just not advertise food.” pic.twitter.com/1EEerV7gtF
— Christopher Snowdon (@cjsnowdon) November 6, 2025
Opinion differs on what drives van Tulleken's increasingly demented campaign against brown bread. Some say he is a grifter trying to sell copies of his book. Others say he is an attention seeker. My view has always been that he has an unhealthy relationship with food and suffers from orthorexia nervosa. He casually mentions in his book that he has been known to make himself vomit so he can eat more food, i.e. he has (or has had) bulimia, but seems to think that this is perfectly normal.
Professor Van Tulleken bravely opening up about his eating disorder. pic.twitter.com/m8OwkBgjUb
— Christopher Snowdon (@cjsnowdon) November 6, 2025
