Urgh, California

With Britain vying for pole position in the tobacco control freak race with its zany plain packaging/display ban proposals, reigning champion California is having to raise its game. Can it rise to the challenge? Of course it can...

Smoking on open patios and balconies will be prohibited for the 18,500 apartment and condominium residents in Laguna Woods if the City Council on Wednesday gives final approval to an amendment to the city's smoking ordinance.

Yes, that's an outdoor smoking ban on your own private property. And even that doesn't go far enough for the illiberal goof-balls of this clown state.

The council also considered prohibiting smoking inside homes unless all windows and doors of the units are closed, but tabled that provision for further study.

"We are not yet ready to regulate smoking within houses," said Mayor Pro Tem Cynthia Conners.

Don't mistake that for 'we don't want to' or 'we would never'. They're just not ready yet. The baby steps of prohibition have got them this far, so why start taking bigger strides now? There's plenty of time for smoking bans in the home, don't you worry.

Meanwhile, up the coast in Santa Cruz...

The Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 Tuesday to require retailers to obtain a license to sell tobacco, joining dozens of other communities statewide.

The excuse urgent justification for this policy is to reduce youth access to cigarettes.

The county says a recent survey demonstrated county retailers' poor compliance with laws prohibiting sales to those under 18. "It shocked everybody," said Bob Kennedy, the county's environmental health director.

It would be interesting to learn where this shocking study came from and who funded it but, I guess we should all be thankful that this licensing system is going to stop retailers selling cigarettes to kids, um, somehow. How exactly will that work again?

The new license applies to all of the county's 104 retailers who sell cigarettes, and will cost $318 annually.

So you can't sell cigarettes to kids unless you can scrape together $318 a year? That should stop 'em.

That $318 is the whole point, of course. It won't stop shop-keepers selling tobacco to under-18s but it will penalise tobacconists in the hope that some of them will say 'screw it' and stop selling cigarettes. Places that don't sell many cigarettes will do that, for sure, and prohibition takes one step closer.

The whole point of the exercise is to make selling cigarettes less profitable and make buying cigarettes more inconvenient. That's why it's been on the anti-smokers' agenda for some time. It's got sweet nuthin' to go with youth access which, as ever, needs to be addressed with enforcement. Speaking of which...

The county hopes to run at least one compliance check on businesses per year, with first-time violators facing a 60-day suspension of tobacco sales.

Those who are cited four times over five years can lose their tobacco licenses.

If stopping kids buying tobacco was really these people's concern, they'd be doing all this already. They don't need to charge store-owners several hundred dollars a year for a junk license before they start enforcing the law. Or is the State of California seriously claiming that it doesn't already get enough money from cigarette taxes and the Master Settlement Agreement to afford doing a measly one check a year?

And finally, back down the coast in Los Angeles, Bernard Parks is doing his stuff. Parks is a supremely stupid man with totalitarian tendencies who believes that "secondhand smoke is the number one cause of preventable health disease in America". He also believes that "inhaling secondhand smoke is more harmful than actually smoking". If this is the kind of bumpkin that gets elected (and re-elected) in California these days, then it's no wonder the State has become a bankrupt citadel of intolerance.

Parks' previously efforts to turn LA into a bully state include an outdoor smoking ban in the city's streets and he has now turned his beady eyes—as they all do sooner or later—to food. As the video from Reason shows below, he's going to ban restaurants he doesn't like. The fact that LA residents obviously do like them doesn't enter into it.

With San Francisco banning Happy Meals and New York putting a tax on soda (thanks to Michael Bloomberg, another smoking ban obsessive who took the 'next logical step'), this is only the start of the war on food. For the time being, Bernie Parks is only going after the fast food joints. As they might say in nearby Lacuna Woods: "We are not yet ready to regulate eating within houses."

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Some stupid news and some rather good news

From the pages of the Daily Mail comes a reheated dollop of public health nonsense:

Fat tax 'is the best way to cut obesity': Treat junk food like cigarettes, argues the OECD

The OECD?! Who rattled their cage? There is, it seems, no one at any level of global government who is capable of keeping their nose out.

A ‘fat tax’ on unhealthy foods, restrictions on junk food advertising and better labelling are the most cost-effective ways to cut obesity, a study suggests.

Gee, that sounds familiar. Sounds like someone's been to a public health conference and now wants to repay their host for the free pen and folder.

It says the measures would give England’s 52 million population an extra 270,000 years of good health between them.

This is what Numberwatch calls the 'Trojan Number'...

The allusion is, of course, to the mythical stratagem whereby the Greeks infiltrated the city of Troy inside a giant wooden horse. The Trojan Number is thus one of several stratagems by which authors get their articles or propaganda into the media.

The most common type of Trojan Number is the one generated by taking one small figure from a dubious study and extrapolating it over a vast population. But in this case, even when you do that, the net benefit is feeble. 275,000 years spread across 52 million is only 1.895 days of extra "good health" per person. In effect, they want us to pay more tax on food for the rest of our lives so we can have the equivalent of an extra weekend of "good health" (whatever that means). Since most of us will tolerate a weekend of poor health for the sake of one good Friday night, this does not sound like a great exchange.

Even if we assume (as we surely must) that the benefit would be only to the quarter of the population who are (tenuously described as) 'obese', that is still only an extra week of good health per fatty. Could the OECD not find something better to do with its time than campaign for this piddling and almost certainly fictitious improvement in public health?

Government measures to change diet are supported in the study by experts at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the World Health Organisation.

None of whom are elected, and all of whom should keep their opinions to themselves.

A key proposal suggests treating foods high in fat, salt and sugar in the same way as tobacco, where advertising is restricted and price has been pushed up to discourage use.

You don't need me to remind you that public health spokesmen in days gone by swore on a stack of bibles that this kind of slippery-slope did not exist because cigarettes were a "unique hazard". So let's move on...

Researchers found that a combined approach of taxing unhealthy foods, subsidising healthy options, restricting food advertising and improving labelling was cheaper than simply treating those who develop heart disease or cancer as a result of an unhealthy diet.

The study in question is behind a pay-wall at The Lancet and I cannot vouch for whether the Daily Mail is accurately reporting its contents. But health reporting rarely strays far from the official press release and it certainly sounds like the kind of thing the British Medical Journal's ugly little brother would publish.

And they can both whistle dixie because, as The Guardian reports today...

Using the pricing of food or alcohol to change consumption has been ruled out.

Hurrah! And furthermore...

The Department of Health is putting the fast food companies McDonald's and KFC and processed food and drink manufacturers such as PepsiCo, Kellogg's, Unilever, Mars and Diageo at the heart of writing government policy on obesity, alcohol and diet-related disease, the Guardian has learned.

In your face, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development!

This Guardian 'exclusive' will doubtless make its readers choke on their breakfast muesli, and I'm not keen on having industry dictating policy myself, but in this instance I really can't see what McDonalds are going to suggest that will limit freedom or shaft consumers. And it gets better...

The alcohol responsibility deal network is chaired by the head of the lobby group the Wine and Spirit Trade Association.

Get in! This sounds almost too good to be true and, needless to say, the fake charities and temperance nuts are none too happy...

A member of the alcohol responsibility deal network, [Sir Ian] Gilmore said he had decided to co-operate, but he doubted whether there could be "a meaningful convergence between the interests of industry and public health since the priority of the drinks industry was to make money for shareholders while public health demanded a cut in consumption".

You're in no position to demand anything, my friend, and it's that kind of talk that has worn out the public's patience with you and your ilk.

Jeanette Longfield, head of the food campaign group Sustain, said: "This is the equivalent of putting the tobacco industry in charge of smoke-free spaces."

Alas, that won't be happening. Still, two out of three ain't bad.

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