The smoking ban miracle revisited

Remember this, from 2013?

The number of children admitted to hospital with symptoms of asthma has fallen since the ban on smoking in enclosed public places came into effect, a study has found.  

Research shows there was a 12.3% fall in admissions in the first year after the law was introduced in July 2007, and these have continued to drop in subsequent years, suggesting that any benefits of the legislation have been sustained.

The claim was a lie and the study was junk science, as I showed at the time. Stanton Glantz was one of the authors. Nuff said.

It was followed shortly afterwards by this equally false claim...

The smoking ban in public places has been linked to 1,900 fewer emergency hospital admissions for asthma patients every year, researchers have found. The ban, which came into force in England in July 2007, has been associated with an annual 5% drop in adult admissions, they said.

Anyone who bothered to look at routine hospital data could see that none of this was true. There was no downward trend in admissions for children or adults.

Emily Humphreys, head of policy and public affairs at the charity Asthma UK, said: "Eight out of 10 people with asthma tell us that other people's smoke makes their asthma worse. 

"That's why we campaigned for the smoke-free laws and are delighted to see evidence of the benefits these are having on the millions of people with asthma in England.

But reality has a way of intruding on the carefully constructed fictions of the nanny state industry. Two years earlier, in 2011, Asthma UK had noted that the number of emergency admissions for asthma among young people had ‘remained unchanged for a decade’.

Today, the same organisation released figures showing that...

Asthma deaths in England and Wales 'highest in a decade'

Deaths from asthma in England and Wales are the highest they have been in more than a decade, according to analysis of official data.

Sadly, they are much higher than they were in 2007 when the smoking ban came into effect.

Yet another big win for ‘public health’.