ASH's brass balls

One of ASH's most vulnerable flanks is that the tax rises they have demanded for the last forty years are highly regressive, plunging hundreds of thousands into poverty. Almost unbelievably, they have come out with a report that accuses smoking - not tobacco taxes, oh no! - of plunging hundreds of thousands of people into poverty. ASH also pull the old 'tobacco taxes are progressive because the poor are most likely to quit as a result' line. It is a demonstrable lie, as this study (amongst many others) makes clear.

Rob Lyons at Spiked has written about this astonishing attempt to turn defence into attack so I don't have to....

You’ve got to admire the folks at Action on Smoking and Health (ASH). Not for their puritanical, tobacco-hating monomania, of course, but for their sheer chutzpah. This is an organisation that should have brass balls on its logo. ASH’s latest effort at ignoring the facts is so brazen that even former Iraqi government spokesman Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf, aka ‘Comical Ali’, would have to doff his beret in respect.

Do read the rest.