After botching their modelling on minimum pricing, the Sheffield Addictions Research Group have turned their hands to economics. In a paper published in the journal Addiction this week, they accidentally invented mercantilism, the zero-sum misunderstanding of the economy that was discredited by Adam Smith 250 years ago.
The authors say that the British government should do more to stop us spending money on “tobacco, gambling and sweets” because “shifting that spending toward domestic sectors like retail, recreation or trades, money stays within the UK for longer.” This, apparently, is the path to prosperity.
By the same logic, the government should announce a crackdown on foreign holidays. That would undoubtedly make money “stay within the UK”, but it would come at the cost of preventing people from doing what they want to do. From the perspective of the Sheffield Addictions Research Group, preventing people from doing what they want to do is the whole point, but they can’t say that out loud so they have resorted to a weirdly jingoistic approach to economic planning.
Friday, 6 February 2026
Economic nationalism in 'public health'
Thursday, 5 February 2026
What the hell is Impact Unfiltered?
Last November, I reported on the EU’s plan to force member states to levy punitive taxes on e-cigarette fluid and nicotine pouches. The European Commission launched a public consultation which received 18,480 responses, overwhelmingly from consumers who were against. Having lost the numbers game, anti-nicotine NGOs went running to Politico who published an article claiming that the consultation had been “swamped with pro-industry feedback”. Citing an unpublished analysis from a mysterious new “tobacco control consultancy” called Impact Unfiltered, it alleged that “thousands of the posts use terms created only by the [tobacco] sector”, including the phrases “harm reduction” and “illicit trade”.
As I noted at the time, Impact Unfiltered is an offshoot of the smugly named School for Moral Ambition which is run by the equally smug left-wing polemicist Rutger Bregman who inexplicably gave the BBC’s Reith Lectures last year. Neither organisation is on the EU’s Transparency Register, but Impact Unfiltered only seems to have two employees and they are both graduates of the School for Moral Ambition’s “Tobacco Free Future” internship courtesy of money from the fanatical anti-nicotine billionaire Michael Bloomberg via two of his many front groups.
Wednesday, 4 February 2026
Minimum pricing in Wales - a textbook example of policy failure
As in Scotland, minimum pricing in Wales had a sunset clause so it could be repealed if it didn't work. As in Scotland, it didn't work but the minimum price has not only been kept, it has been increased.
Independent research commissioned by the Welsh government suggests the policy could prevent more than 900 alcohol-related deaths over 20 years and reduce the number of "harmful drinkers" by nearly 5,000.
The policy was introduced in Wales in 2020 and the price increase follows a public consultation.
Public Health Wales figures show between 2019 and 2023 there was a rise of more than 50% in alcohol-related deaths.
Tuesday, 27 January 2026
Drink beer, smoke tabs
Impact of Alcohol Intake on Parkinson's Disease Risk and Progression: A Systematic Review and Dose–Response Meta-Analysis of Prospective Studies
The association between alcohol consumption and Parkinson's disease (PD) risk remains unclear, whereas smoking has an inverse relationship with the disease.
Using abstainers as the reference group, a pooled analysis showed a significant inverse association between total alcohol consumption and PD risk (RR = −0.45, 95% CI −0.58 to −0.32, I2 = 50%, P = 0.739).
Sääksjärvi et al. reported that light drinkers (<5 g/day) had an increased PD risk compared with non-drinkers (RR 1.81, 95% CI 1.12–2.93), indicating that former or low-level alcohol intake may not offer protection, or that early disease symptoms lead to reduced alcohol consumption.
Compared with non-drinkers, protective associations were observed in both men and women across all consumption levels.
Using non-drinkers as a reference, the lowest risk was found among ever-smokers who drank alcohol (LRR = −0.37, 95% CI −0.54 to −0.20), suggesting an additive protective effect.
...Although the inverse association between smoking and PD risk is well established, few previous meta-analyses have assessed the combined or interactive effects of alcohol consumption and smoking. In contrast, our review included two prospective cohort studies that evaluated joint exposure. Both studies consistently reported the lowest PD risk among participants who both drank alcohol and smoked, suggesting a potential additive or synergistic effect of these habits.
Neither alcohol consumption nor smoking can be recommended for PD prevention because of their established overall health risks.
Monday, 19 January 2026
Money for almost nothing
Last week I wrote for The Critic about the Sheffield University alcohol research group continuing to get government grants rolling in despite having been wrong about everything for the best part of 20 years. I also wrote for the Spectator about the deranged war on non-alcoholic drinks by people who supposedly want us to drink less alcohol.
These two themes converged when I saw this article in the BMJ by Sheffield’s John Holmes - who is now a “professor of alcohol policy” - and three like-minded souls. It is titled ‘How should public health respond to rise of alcohol-free and low alcohol drinks?’, to which the answer should be either ‘nothing’ or ‘throw a little party’. Instead, the four amigos - who think they represent ‘public health’ - drone on at great length about the trivial concerns of pointless academics.
Selling zero-alcohol drinks to kids
Labour is weighing up a crackdown on people under 18 buying ‘no and low-alcohol’ drinks. On current form, this means Keir Starmer’s government will launch a public consultation, commit itself to a ban, endure weeks of mockery and abuse from the public and then perform a humiliating U-turn. But when the inevitable climbdown comes, what will be the main reason? Let us consider the options.
Firstly, it is impractical. Where do zero-alcohol drinks end and soft drinks begin? The very definition of a soft drink is that it has no alcohol. Assuming that the government doesn’t want to ban teenagers from buying Fanta and Pepsi Max, it is going to have to make a legal distinction between a non-alcoholic drink and a soft drink. It could do this on the basis of branding, but if a non-alcoholic beer removes the word ‘beer’ and calls itself a soda, what is the government going to do about it? Conversely, what if a company decides to call its brand of apple juice a non-alcoholic cider?
Kids can buy drinks that have up to 0.5 per cent ABV. One option is for the government to drop this limit to zero. But there is a reason the current limit is 0.5 per cent. Sugars in soft drinks can ferment slightly, meaning that they might contain minute traces of alcohol; less than 0.1 per cent, perhaps, but not nothing. Some fruit juices can contain up to 0.5 per cent alcohol. Even ripe bananas are slightly alcoholic because natural fermentation converts sugars to ethanol.
Thursday, 15 January 2026
Waking up to the reality of tobacco's black market
There's a website called Tobacco in Australia: Facts and Issues which is written by a few anti-smoking activist-academics. It provides lots of tobacco-related statistics and a bit of editorialising.
As has occurred in New Zealand1 and the UK2,the major tobacco companies operating in Australia have commissioned the production of many reports over the past 15 years claiming alarmingly high estimates of the extent of illicit trade in tobacco in Australia.3-6
Industry estimates suggest that illicit tobacco consumption as a percentage of total consumption increased from 11.8% in 2012 to 23.5% of the total tobacco market in 2022. This contrasts to the 2022 estimate from the Australian Taxation Office of 14.3%.
People most likely to buy packs originating from overseas—being travellers, recent migrants and international students or special visa workers—are much less likely to be motorists and much more likely to be walking and using public transport. The packs they use are therefore much more likely to enter the litter stream in public places than are packs used by cigarette consumers who do not travel frequently overseas.
Between 2015 and 2022, estimates of the extent of illicit tobacco used in Australia prepared by the Australian Taxation Office were consistently substantially lower than those included in the reports produced for tobacco companies by KPMG LLP.
This year, the ATO has performed its traditional analysis on the total tobacco gap using the existing channel-based bottom-up method. However, preliminary data from a University of Queensland research project that is looking at the biomarkers of tobacco leaf consumption in samples of waste water throughout Australia suggests that the total tobacco market and therefore the total illicit market is significantly higher than what we have previously estimated.
With this information, we now assess this tobacco tax gap estimate as unreliable and are undertaking a review of the methodology. We caution using this information as it is no longer a sufficiently credible or meaningful estimate of the illicit tobacco market in Australia.
A number of academic papers, reports produced by US government research agencies, statements by political parties and research services and newspaper articles, allege that powerful and dangerous criminal gangs and terrorist groups are involved in counterfeiting activities on a massive scale..... Such reports have been embraced enthusiastically by think-tanks with a political agenda of keeping taxes very low. The tone of these reports is often highly emotive and alarmist, and are consistent with in the interests of tobacco companies to ‘talk up’ the problem of illicit trade in general and counterfeit cigarettes in particular.
In Australia, Hamad’s crew were busy waging a relentless turf war for control of Australia’s multibillion-dollar illicit tobacco trade, a battle involving dozens of firebombings and the gunning down of business and personal rivals.