Most of the studies are from researchers who are actively looking for risks and who write up their work in a way that emphasises the “potential” harm. They generally fail to provide adequate context by referring to typical readings among active vapers, let alone active smokers, and they rarely refer to the safe thresholds of the substances they are examining (the 2021 study by Amalia et al is one of very few exceptions). That is because the levels recorded are generally considered safe by regulators in workplaces and outdoors (which is where the regulations tend to be applied). Unable to show that the measurements are unsafe or abnormal, the researchers focus instead on an increase in one substance - usually cotinine - and imply that any increase above the baseline must be hazardous.
It should be noted that these are the studies mentioned by organisations such as the WHO who want vaping banned indoors. Weak as it is, they presumably think that it is the best evidence to support their position, but other evidence is available. For example, when the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services sampled the air in a vape shop (where e-cigarette use was obviously heavy in a confined space) it found that all chemicals in the air were below the occupational exposure limit. It expressed concerns about detectable levels of two chemicals (diacetyl and 2,3-pentanedione), but both of these are banned for use in e-cigarette fluids in the UK (and EU).
Similar studies have found that even in very high exposure conditions in a small, non-ventilated vape shop, nicotine concentrations in the air were undetectable and those chemicals that were detectable were at very low (and legal) levels.
A systematic review of the evidence found “no evidence of potential for exposures of e-cigarette users to contaminants that are associated with risk to health at a level that would warrant attention if it were an involuntary workplace exposures” and “no evidence that vaping produces inhalable exposures to contaminants of the aerosol that would warrant health concerns by the standards that are used to ensure safety of workplaces.” And that is to the users of e-cigarettes! “Exposures of bystanders are likely to be orders of magnitude less, and thus pose no apparent concern.”
Public Health England said in 2016 that “there is no evidence of harm to bystanders from exposure to e-cigarette vapour and the risks to their health are likely to be extremely low.” They also said that “e-cigarette use is not covered by smokefree legislation and should not routinely be included in the requirements of an organisation’s smokefree policy”. Why? Because there is no risk to bystanders and vaping bans discourage smoking cessation.
As Prof Peter Hajek, Director of the Tobacco Dependence Research Unit at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) says:
“While health risks of e-cigarettes to vapers themselves have been estimated at up to 5% of health risks of smoking, health risks to bystanders are most likely reduced by a much bigger margin, and most likely altogether. This is because e-cigarettes release no chemicals into the environment themselves, only what users exhale, and such exhalation has so far not been shown to generate any toxicants at levels that could conceivably affect the health of bystanders.”
There has been a concerted effort by anti-vaping academics to find evidence that ‘secondhand vapour’ is harmful to bystanders. Despite using a variety of methods, they have come up empty-handed, with the partial exception of a few studies that have looked at air quality in unrealistic laboratory conditions. The levels of chemicals measured in the atmosphere and in the bodies of people ‘exposed’ to vaping in everyday situations are not only vastly lower when compared to tobacco smoke, but are lower when compared to everyday activities such as cooking and are consistently below the safe level for indoor and outdoor air quality.
Wednesday, 11 March 2026
Secondhand vaping: the studies
Tuesday, 10 March 2026
Chris Whitty vs fat jabs
Speaking at the Medical Journalists’ Association annual lecture last week, the Chief Medical Officer Professor Sir Chris Whitty took at pop at “fat jabs” such as Mounjaro and Ozempic. Thrashing away at a strawman of his own construction, he asked: “Does anyone in this group believe that the correct answer is to allow obesity to rise because of pretty aggressive marketing of obesogenic foods to children and then stick them on GLP-1 agonists at the age of 18?”
“Just relying on the drugs seems to me the wrong answer,” he said. To which we might ask, who is just relying on the drugs? Not the public, most of whom manage to avoid “living with obesity” by controlling their appetite and doing a spot of exercise, and certainly not the politicians, who have saddled Britain with the most extensive set of anti-obesity policies anywhere in the world.
Thursday, 5 March 2026
People are different. Get used to it.
Most social scientists pay lip service to the old adage about correlation not equalling causation, but the temptation to find a deeper meaning in statistical relationships can be hard to resist. In Australia, which is becoming a centre of excellence for human stupidity, an anti-vaping program was recently launched on the basis that: “Studies have shown that engaging in unsafe sex, other substance abuse, drink driving, texting while driving and driving without a seatbelt are associated with increased e-cigarette use among youth”. I dare say they are, but a campaign to reduce unsafe sex by clamping down on e-cigarettes (which, incidentally, are already illegal in Australia) is as doomed to failure as a campaign to reduce drownings by clamping down on ice cream sales.
Tuesday, 3 March 2026
On the Matt Forde podcast
It was my great pleasure to appear on Matt Forde's Political Party podcast last week. You can listen to it here. Here's his blurb for it...
What is lifestyle economics and why does it matter?
The IEA's Christopher Snowdon is a fun-loving political thinker and explains his opposition to puritanism, why we should have more freedom and what that would mean for our policies on smoking, alcohol, gambling and the very existence of the NHS.
Also... what are ultra-processed foods and are they necessarily bad?
Monday, 2 March 2026
Britain's black market in tobacco is too big to ignore
Figures published last week show that legal tobacco sales fell by 52% in the United Kingdom between 2021 and 2025. The volume of manufactured cigarettes sold dropped by 46%, from 23.4 billion sticks to 12.6 billion sticks, while the volume of rolling tobacco fell by 59%, from 8.6 million kilograms to 3.6 million kilograms.
The decline in legal rolling tobacco sales is particularly significant because loose tobacco has been subject to the heaviest tax rises in recent years, with the duty rate doubling since 2020. Rolling tobacco is often the last resort for low income smokers before they turn to the black market.
Converting kilograms of rolling tobacco into sticks, we find that a total of 19.8 billion cigarettes were sold legally in the UK in 2025, less than half the figure recorded in 2021 (40.6 billion).1 This decline is far greater than any estimate of the decline in the smoking rate. These estimates vary. According to the Opinion & Lifestyle Survey, the smoking rate among people aged 16 or older in Great Britain fell from 12.7% to 9.1% between 2021 and 2024. According to the Annual Population Survey, the rate among people aged 18 or older in the United Kingdom fell from 12.3% to 10.5% in the same period. Neither survey has an estimate for 2025 yet, but the monthly Smoking Toolkit Study suggests that the rate of daily cigarette smoking in England was 10.6% in 2025, only modestly less than in 2021 when the rate was 11.4%.
If the Smoking Toolkit Study is correct then overall tobacco consumption has barely changed since 2021 and it is a mathematical certainty that at least 50% of the market is illicit. If the other estimates are correct, the illicit share is still much larger than the official estimate of 13% from HMRC.
I may return to the question of why estimates of smoking prevalence are so different and why HMRC's estimate is so wrong in the future. For now, read my analysis of the latest data on the IEA Insider Substack.
Thursday, 26 February 2026
Restless people
The BBC has been unearthing cases of people behaving unusually after taking a drug for Restless Legs Syndrome. Since reporting the story of one woman who “began leaving her house in the early hours of the morning to cruise for sex” and would “flash her chest at any man she could find” after taking Ropinirole, the Beeb has received messages from hundreds from people who claim to have suddenly developed a taste for reckless hedonism after being prescribed the medication.
“I think I’m obsessed with sex,” says Michael (not his real name), whom the BBC says has “now slept with about 20 men and women, despite being married. Previously, he never cheated on his wife or had any homosexual encounters”. Other alleged victims of the drug say that they lost tens of thousands of pounds on gambling (“at the time I didn’t know it was no fault of my own”) and on shopping (“I knew that the behaviour wasn’t me, but I couldn’t control it”). One man “felt compelled to go on three-day long fishing trips every single week” and “found himself shopping compulsively for clothes, despite never previously having any interest in fashion”.
Read more about this odd phenomenon at The Critic.
Tuesday, 24 February 2026
Fight the vaping ban
The New Nicotine Alliance has produced a simple, accurate and easy-to-read summary of why the proposed vaping ban is an appalling idea. You can read it on a webpage or as a PDF.
Please take a few moments to complete the official consultation by visiting the government website here and sharing your views. When you fill out the form, you might find it helpful to focus on how vaping has helped you or others stay away from combustible tobacco. Do not be put off by questions which ask for new evidence, your lived experience is evidence in its own right, so please feel free to tell your stories.
You can also mention that current scientific evidence shows no material harm to bystanders, as explained in our briefing.
Your contribution does not need to be long or overly technical to be effective. It simply needs to be an honest reflection of why a public ban would be counterproductive to health goals. By speaking up now, we can help protect the progress the UK has made in reducing smoking rates. Thank you for your continued support and for taking the time to make your voice count in this important discussion.
Friday, 20 February 2026
Travel advice for vapers
Christopher Snowdon, head of lifestyle economics at the Institute of Economic Affairs and editor of the Nanny State Index, which ranks countries by how much they interfere with people’s lifestyle choices, said: “The World Health Organisation’s campaign against vaping has been influential, especially in low- and middle-income countries.
“Bans on vaping and e-cigarette flavours, as well as e-cigarette taxes, have been steadily growing for years and it is important for travellers to be aware of what the rules are.”
Snowdon explained that this is particularly true of countries where the government owns or holds a stake in tobacco companies. Along Asia’s backpacking routes, Thailand and Vietnam have state-owned monopolies of the tobacco industries and heavily enforce anti-vaping laws, particularly in tourist areas. Visitors to Thailand face up to 10 years’ imprisonment for possession of vapes.
Prison sentences will soon also be on the cards for vapers in Hong Kong. The region already prohibits the import and sale of e-cigarettes, but a further ban on carrying vapes is due to be introduced on April 30.
“Vapers also need to be aware that they could be heavily fined for bringing an e-cigarette into Australia,” said Snowdon. The country banned vapes for recreational use, and devices containing liquid nicotine can now only be purchased from a pharmacy, with a prescription.
There are exceptions to this tide of vaping regulation, though. Highly conservative Saudi Arabia – despite forbidding alcohol – has surprisingly lax laws on it. Meanwhile, Norway plans to legalise e-cigarettes this coming July. But with the vaping crackdown picking up speed and legislation in regular flux, Snowdon warns that travellers should always check what the latest rules are before booking a trip.
“Caution is advised,” he said. “If all else fails, vapers can always go back to smoking for the duration of their holiday...”
Thursday, 19 February 2026
Could this anti-smoking sockpuppet be a victim of its own success?
According to the Charity Commission, the prohibitionist astro-turf group Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) relieved taxpayers of £245,000 in 2024/25. Donations from the general public brought in a miserable £4,607.
This racket has been going on for more than fifty years now and is surely due to come to an end. ASH's grifters are currently trying to gold-plate the Tobacco and Vapes Bill with ludicrous ideas such as individual warnings on cigarettes and banning filters, but since prohibition now has cross-party support, it is hard to see what purpose ASH serves.
ASH themselves seem to recognise this. In their 'Statement of Risk', they openly ponder why the government needs to keep funding an extremist pressure group to lobby itself when anti-smoking extremism is now the norm amongst the political class.
My article featuring ASH and other government sock puppets is still outside the paywall for now: Bootlegging Baptists: the logic of paternalistic collective action.
Wednesday, 18 February 2026
Spurious correlation news
The "gateway" theory of vaping is based on the observation that teenagers who have ever vaped are more likely to smoke than teenagers who have never vaped. I have often pointed out that teenagers who have ever vaped are more likely to have done lots of things that never-vaping teenagers have done, because they are different people. That doesn't mean that one behaviour causes another.
Since marijuana has never killed anyone, supporters of the war on drugs resort to claims about it being a gateway to heroin. E-cigarettes have never killed anyone either and so anti-nicotine extremists resort to claims about vaping leading to smoking.
In both cases, correlations can be found, but it is fairly obvious that they are not causal. Teenagers who vape are more likely to smoke, but they are also more likely to ride motorcycles, watch X-rated movies and have unsafe sex. They are also more likely to smoke cannabis, for that matter, but that doesn’t mean that vaping leads to any of these behaviours, nor would they be less likely to engage in them if vaping didn’t exist.
Indeed, one of the studies in the Soneji review found that e-cigarette users were not only more likely to smoke cigarettes but were more likely to smoke marijuana (Unger et al. 2016). It would not be surprising to find that they are also more likely to drink alcohol and have unprotected sex, but it would be a stretch to claim that these risky activities are somehow caused by their earlier experiments with vaping.
Teenagers who like the idea of drinking non-alcoholic beer are presumably more likely to be interested in drinking real beer in the same way that risk-taking teenagers who are drawn to vaping, motorcycling and unprotected sex are more likely to be interested in smoking and illegal drugs. This is known as a ‘common liability’ and it could produce a statistical correlation between non-alcoholic beer consumption and actual beer consumption, but it would not be serious evidence of cause and effect, i.e. a ‘gateway’.
Emergency medicine expert Professor Brian Burns said the anti-vaping program was vital to help curb vaping among youth given it was a gateway to cigarette smoking and high-risk behaviours.
“Studies have shown that engaging in unsafe sex, other substance abuse, drink driving, texting while driving and driving without a seatbelt are associated with increased e-cigarette use among youth,” he said.
“Sensation seeking – the desire to experience novel sensations and the willingness to take risks is also associated with e-cigarette use. These activities can result in severe physical injury and harm.”
Impact Assessment for vape ban doesn't assess the impact
Vapers going back to smoking is by far the most likely consequence of the vaping ban, especially since it will be accompanied by a tax on e-cigarettes that will double the cost of vaping, and the possibility of a ban on various flavours. And for what? DHSC admit in the Impact Assessment that “we cannot conclusively say whether these policy options will impact smoking, heated tobacco product, or vaping prevalence or consumption, and therefore whether there will be an improvement on health.” It puts the cost of the various new restrictions at £531.8 million, mostly from businesses having to put up new signs and train employees, while the benefits are priced at £0 because DHSC have no idea what the consequences will be. I never thought I’d say this about a government department, but you have to admire their honesty.
In the Government of Canada regulatory impact analysis statement for the Tobacco and Vaping Products Act it was assumed that the mortality and morbidity risks associated with vaping are 20% of the mortality and morbidity impacts of cigarettes. This assumption was developed with members of an expert panel composed of five academics in tobacco control.
Taking the evidence that each person who does not take up smoking gains 1.0 QALY, we could therefore estimate the number of lifeyears gained for each young person that does not take up vaping to be 0.2, or £14,000 in monetary terms. Additionally, taking the evidence that each person who quits smoking is equivalent to 0.74 QALYs, we could therefore estimate the number of life years gained for each person that quits vaping to be 0.148, or £10,000 in monetary terms.
Tuesday, 17 February 2026
The rise and fall of British gambling
Most people know that the number of drinkers and smokers is in decline in the UK, but you might be surprised to hear that the same is true of gamblers. For the first time since the early 1990s, gamblers are in the minority with only 48% of English adults engaging in any gambling activity in the past year.
This is largely because the National Lottery has become less popular. Only 31% of adults in England bought a lottery ticket in 2024, down from 65% in 1999. But fewer people are participating in non-lottery gambling too. As the graph below shows, participation in non-lottery gambling has been in decline for well over a decade. These games are now played by a smaller proportion of the population than in the early 1990s.
Monday, 16 February 2026
Save vaping
The most notorious — and risible — part of the Tobacco and Vapes Bill is the generational ban on tobacco sales which will effectively raise the smoking age by a year every year. This will do nothing for people who have been smoking for decades and whose health is most at risk. But the Bill also gives unlimited “Henry VIII powers” to the Health Secretary to regulate e-cigarette flavours, packaging and advertising, as well as controlling where people can legally vape. The government has said that it plans to use these powers as soon as it gets them and since the Health Secretary is Wes “tonne of bricks” Streeting, it is unlikely to use them wisely.
This is where the Tobacco and Vapes Bill stops being merely stupid and illiberal and becomes counter-productive even on its own terms. There is strong evidence from other countries that bans on vape flavours, e-cigarette advertising and other anti-vaping policies lead to increased cigarette sales and higher smoking rates. Since cigarettes and e-cigarettes are direct substitutes for one another, this is hardly surprising. Vape taxes undoubtedly have the effect of boosting the smoking rate and yet a punitive tax on e-cigarettes will be introduced in October. All this is happening at a time when the black market in tobacco is exploding and the de facto price of a pack of cigarettes is five pounds.
I am genuinely puzzled why the government is picking a fight over this, especially when their main political threat is Reform. Do they even know themselves? The way it has been announced makes it seem like they’re almost embarrassed about it. Are they hoping to do it without anyone noticing (it will not require primary legislation once the Tobacco and Vapes Bill becomes law). There are more than five million vapers in the UK and I hope they/we put up one hell of a fight.
Tuesday, 10 February 2026
Scottish client journalism
Last week a reporter from the Sunday Post contacted Forest to say she was working on a feature ‘marking the anniversary of Scotland’s smoke-free legislation and its long-term public health impact’.
‘As part of the piece,’ she wrote, ‘I’m reporting on expert claims that improved respiratory health following the smoking ban may have helped reduce the severity of respiratory outcomes during the Covid-19 pandemic.
‘I’d welcome a response from Forest to include balance in the article.’
Doctor Rachel O’Donnell, Associate Professor at the University of Stirling’s Institute for Social Marketing and Health (ISMH), said that Covid outcomes could have been worse without the smoking ban legislation.
She said: “It’s not an unreasonable leap to suggest that as a nation we might well have seen a different scenario in terms of the respiratory impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic without the smoke-free legislation. I think we could have seen a different picture.”
Friday, 6 February 2026
Economic nationalism in 'public health'
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.
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.
Tuesday, 13 January 2026
Me on the Tom Nelson podcast
I did the Tom Nelson podcast last week. We discussed a range of issues including vaping, nicotine, obesity, prohibition and more. Check it out.
Monday, 12 January 2026
Clive Bates on Substack
You are a critic of Michael Bloomberg’s role in tobacco policy, why?
The New York financial services billionaire and philanthropist, Michael Bloomberg, spends hundreds of millions of dollars in this field and serves as a WHO ambassador for non-communicable diseases. Yet his policy instincts are those of an out-of-touch elitist, beset by a range of obvious, harmful, unintended consequences. He remains totally unaccountable for the consequences of his actions and interactions with governments through his giant complex of well-funded activists, academics, PR professionals, and officials. He is surrounded by people who refuse to engage with evidence suggesting he is doing more harm than good. Nowhere is this more evident than in low- and middle-income countries, where his staff and money can make a significant impact with little resistance. Though they like to pretend to be independent academics, journalists or civil society organisations, Bloomberg’s complex of organisations serves the ambitions and policy preferences of one overconfident, unaccountable billionaire and his prohibition agenda. It is the most counterproductive use of philanthropic money in the whole of public health, and it needs to stop before even more people are killed by philanthropic negligence.
Friday, 9 January 2026
Anti-alcohol plot backfires in the USA
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform does not pull its punches. Its report - A Study Fraight with Bias - concludes that ICCPUD’s Alcohol Intake and Health (AIH) study was a politically motivated waste of money that violated federal law.
Thursday, 8 January 2026
Lowering the drink-drive limit
Lacking anything else to do, the Labour government is planning to lower the drink-drive limit. England and Wales have a higher limit than most European countries and fewer drink-related road accidents per capita than nearly all of them. We also know from Scotland that lowering the limit won't have any effect on road safety but will damage the pub trade.
The worst people in the country are all in favour of this, namely the anti-motorists ("Just walk lol"), the pub gentrifiers ("I support my pub by going in every now and again for a lime soda") and the people who support every pointless restriction on liberty by saying "What's the fuss? All you have to do is obey the law."
But it is a pointless restriction on liberty. As I say in Spiked, it is the opposite of evidence-based policy. If you support unnecessary restrictions on liberty which damage businesses just so you can feel morally righteous, you are the problem.
Wednesday, 7 January 2026
Food advertising ban introduced - what's next?
It takes wilful blindness not to see that food is being dragged down the same slippery slope as tobacco, with a full advertising ban being the next step. Where is the food industry in all this? Where are the advertising platforms and TV companies? The Food and Drink Federation hasn’t put out a press release since mid-December and hasn’t tweeted for over a month. In an unbelievably tepid quote given to the BBC, it said that it was “committed to working in partnership with the government and others to help people make healthier choices” and claimed that its members’ products “now have a third of the salt and sugar and a quarter of the calories than they did ten years ago”. Whoopee. Where has that got them? With the most hostile business environment in the developed world, that’s where. And there is undoubtedly more to come. I don’t expect a trade association to call for the head of Wes Streeting but it could at least say that it is disappointed with the government and call for a ceasefire. Instead they essentially boasted about shrinkflation.
As for the broadcasters, they have spent years whipping up hysteria about food and are now sowing what they reaped. The boss of Channel 4 has said that the ad ban could cost her company £50 million a year. She should have thought about that before she commissioned all those Jamie Oliver documentaries. ITV has been no better with its scaremongering about “ultra-processed food”. These companies were perfectly placed to put out an alternative viewpoint and had years to do so, but they never did, even though it would have been justified in the name of balance.
Tuesday, 6 January 2026
The stakeholder state
We need to strip funding from all politically active NGOs, charities and pressure groups. We need a true bonfire of the quangos. We need to - for want of a better word - purge those “arm’s-length bodies” and government departments that have been “captured” by ideologues. Above all, we need to repeal or significantly amend a number of laws, including the Climate Change Act, the Equality Act, the Children and Families Act, the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act, the Town and Country Planning Act, the Employment Rights Act, and the Human Rights Act. We probably need to leave the European Convention on Human Rights. Much of this will be unpopular, and not just with the “stakeholder state”, because all this legislation sounds nice (governments never call a law ‘The Anti-Growth Act’ or ‘The Business Suffocation Act’). Some of these laws have only just been introduced.
The government - this government, the last government and the next government - is in a strait-jacket of well-meaning but badly drafted laws that have been exploited by activist judges and single-issue campaigners. There is no point complaining about the judges and the campaigners. The only way out of the woods is do the one thing that politicians can do and change the law.
Friday, 2 January 2026
Michael McFadden RIP
Michael went on to write another book about the coming prohibition of tobacco (TobakkoNacht – The Antismoking Endgame), but could mostly be found in forums and "below the line" in a Sisyphean struggle against online misinformation. He was kind enough to read an early draft of my book Velvet Glove, Iron Fist and provided many helpful comments, particularly with regards to the situation in his native USA. He continued pinging me occasional e-mails with encouraging words for the rest of his life.
Michael J. McFadden grew up in Brooklyn in the ’60s, studied Peace Studies and Peace Research at Manhattan College (BA) and the U of PA’s Wharton Graduate School, and then moved to being an activist/trainer in a nonviolence commune, canvassing door-to-door for an anti-nuke group, organizing bicycle activism, and eventually writing two books aimed at fighting the antismoking movement.
So how does a hippie peace/bicycle activist become a pro-smoking activist and writer?
The answer is that I’m NOT a “pro-smoking” anything: I’m a pro-freedom, pro-science, anti-overpowering-government-control, anti-manipulation-through-dishonest-propaganda activist and writer.
He'll be missed.
