Action on Smoking and Health's former CEO Deborah Arnott famously insisted that...
"the 'domino theory' i.e. that once a measure has been applied to tobacco it will be applied to other products is patently false."
As a staunch denier of the slippery slope, it must have pained her when Consensus Action on Salt and Health was set up as a tribute act to her organisation, later followed by Action on Sugar.
Another new campaign group has recently been moulded in ASH's image. Action on Gambling is now a thing. Amongst their members are the Labour MP Beccy Cooper, whom I wrote about two weeks ago. Her bio reads:
As a public health doctor Beccy has been a leading proponent of stricter regulations on the tobacco industry – a skill set she is putting to work to curb the harm caused by gambling.
Even ASH have stopped pretending that the slippery slope isn't real. The webpage that gave us Arnott's immortal quote about the domino theory has been taken offline and their new CEO, Hazel Cheeseman, has some warm words for Action on Gambling...
We've gone beyond denying the slippery slope now, haven't we? We are now at the "Of course there's a slippery slope, what are you going to do about it?" stage.
ASH always denied being prohibitionists too, but we now know for a fact that they were lying.
So there's a slippery slope and it ends up with prohibition if we let them. This is no longer up for debate. The anti-gambling people will claim that they don't want to ban gambling and the anti-alcohol people will claim that they don't want to ban alcohol. They will say whatever they have to say to get public support, but they are explicitly following the anti-tobacco blueprint that ends with prohibition.
Don't get fooled again.
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