Sugar is not evil, but hysterical, authoritarian journalists are

Those of you who don't have a subscription to The Times will be dismayed to hear that the nation's erstwhile newspaper of record is capable of publishing the same hastily knocked off, empty-headed, knee-jerk garbage as the rest of the media. I offer some choice cuts from Sarah Vine's article about sugar—titled 'Sugar is not evil — but marketing it to appeal to juvenile minds is'—as incontrovertible evidence.

... Of course sugar, per se, is not evil; but the overpromotion and overconsumption of it is. In Britain, every corner shop and supermarket is packed with the stuff. What’s worse, everything about the presentation and marketing of high-sugar foods is designed to appeal to the juvenile mind. Get them hooked young, and you’ll have loyal customers for life. And even if that life turns out to be foreshortened by obesity-related illness, no matter. Plenty more bringing up the rear.

All this talk of hooking 'em young and replacing those who die with fresh recruits beings to mind the rhetoric about the tobacco industry. Sure enough, Vine is quick to draw parallels. In fact, she reckons that those who make sweeties are even more depraved.

If the tobacco or alcohol lobby behaved in such a way, we would be justifiably horrified. But even those who make and sell alcopops to teenagers wouldn’t have the brass neck to push their products on primary school children. 

Could that be because they're completely different products, as evidenced by the fact that tobacco and alcohol can only be sold to those aged 18 or over? Vine is too busy playing the "think of the children" card to make such trivial distinctions. Not just the "think of the children" card, but also the "think of the parents" card.

Parents can only do so much. I can influence what my daughter eats at home, but in a few years she’ll be off to secondary school, and then who knows how many corner shops will enjoy her patronage on her way home? 

It's a chilling thought. If lured into a corner shop by the sugar industry and its unscrupulous allies, this poor teenager could be exposed not only to Curly Wurlies, but also to Kit Kats and Lion bars. Before she knows it, she could be experimenting with midget gems and liquorice all sorts. Clearly, what is needed here is government intervention and lots of it.

If sugar was more expensive, sweets would once again become what they ought to be: treats, to be consumed occasionally; and not, as they currently are, cheap and readily available empty calories that the young all too often eat in place of real food.

Yes, the government should make penny chews cost 2p, thereby completely pricing young people out of the market.

Dare to suggest such a thing to the food lobby, however, and they become as hysterical as a group of toddlers in a Haribo factory.

As opposed to your own calm and rational reaction to a press release from a single issue pressure group?

And when, yesterday, more than 60 organisations, including the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, backed a recommendation by the food and farming charity, Sustain, for a tax on fizzy drinks in the next Budget, they really threw their toys out of their prams.

Did they really? This is the statement released by the British Soft Drinks Association. Which part of it is the hysterical, toy-throwing bit? The bit where they say obesity is "a serious and complex problem" or the bit where they say they "recognise our industry has a role to play in the fight against obesity"?

Their response reminded me of the head of the National Rifle Association, Wayne LaPierre, when he said that “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun”.

Tobacco, alcohol and now guns! Any other bogeyman you want to throw into the mix? Crack dealers, perhaps? Human traffickers? Paedos?

Seriously though, what was said that was hysterical?

They issued dire warnings, predicting “a disastrous impact” if the Government were to acquiesce, adding that it would affect: “the poorest families hardest at a time when they can least afford it”.

Oh, you must mean when the British Soft Drinks Association said "Putting up taxes even further will put pressure on people’s purses at a time when they can ill afford it." Yeah, that was real inflammatory stuff. You know what it reminded me of? That guy from the National Rifle Association saying he wanted to put armed guards in every school in America.

What nonsense. Last time I checked, tap water in Britain was still free and potable. No one is going to go thirsty if the price of a can of Coke doubles.

No one's saying that people are going to go thirsty—that's a straw man you just built. What people are saying is that indirect taxes on price inelastic goods are regressive. Do you know why? (The clue's in the elasticity part.) Because people are not going to stop drinking Coke and start drinking nothing but water.

The only people who would experience hardship would be the drinks manufacturers, who have been coining it for decades. 

Businesses turning a profit? Boo!

The Government should seriously consider these recommendations, not just for the good of the public purse, but also for the health of the nation.

And I should seriously consider cancelling my subscription to The Times, not just for the good of my bank account, but also for the good of my blood pressure.

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Fizzy drink taxes

I debated fizzy drink taxes on Five Live last night with Tam Fry of the National Obesity Forum. Last time I debated with Mr Fry he was very keen indeed on taxing soft drinks, but he now seems to be against it.

Listen here from 52 minutes in.

I also have a blog post up at the IEA discussing the motivations of the various organisations who want to set up a whole new layer of bureaucracy with this tax.

The soda tax being mooted will simply turn a £6 billion cost into a £7 billion cost. Sustain do not even suggest that the £1 billion raised should go to the NHS. Instead, they want the money to go to organisations that will raise awareness of obesity - organisations like Sustain, for example. They also want to set up a new quango to implement and monitor the extensive bureaucracy that will be involved.

This is pure public choice theory in action: concentrated interest groups extracting rents from a large population in order to enlarge their own bureaucracy and enhance their own power and prestige. It comes as no surprise to find that Sustain is largely dependent on handouts from the state (mainly from the Greater London Authority and the National Lottery), as are dozens of the other groups who have joined the campaign.

Please read the whole thing.

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So long, suckers!

You know how some of the big pub chains, such as Greene King and Enterprise Inns, have declared their support for minimum pricing because they think it will bring people into pubs to make up for those who were driven away by the smoking ban?

For some reason they think that if people are forced to pay £1.10 for a can of beer instead of 80p, then they'll say "what the hell, I might as well go to the pub and pay £3.90".

This is an optimistic way of looking at the issue, to say the least. A more likely scenario is that minimum pricing will mean drinkers have less money to spend once they've bought their off licence alcohol and will therefore have less to spend in the pub.

Well, guess what? It looks like that's what's going to happen.

Introducing a minimum price of 45p per unit will deter four in 10 customers from pubs, according to a new poll by YouGov

Oh dear. I guess the temperance lobby isn't the publican's friend after all. Who knew?

The survey commissioned by drinks firm SABMiller questioned 1,261 people who had had an alcoholic drink in the last week.

It found that minimum pricing will have the biggest impact on those struggling to keep up with their outgoings, with 56% saying they are most likely to drink less in the pub.

However, it's not all bad news...

Of those who said they will drink less at home, 0.36% said they will drink more at the pub.

Sounds like they won't have a problem finding a seat.

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"Irresponsible, ill-informed, and lazy journalism"

If you haven't seen this already, sorry to land it on you on a Monday...

E-cigarettes 'can cause more harm than smoking,' experts say

They are billed as a healthier alternative to smoking, yet experts now warn that electronic cigarettes may be more damaging than the habit they replace.

Who are these experts who defy sense and science by saying such inflammatory, irresponsible and downright dangerous things? Susannah Butler of the Mail on Sunday—for it is she—does not tell us. She only gives us a four word quote from someone in Germany...

This can cause ‘acute respiratory system irritation’, claims Dr Elisabeth Pott, director of the Federal Centre of Health Education in Cologne, Germany, who has studied e-cigarettes.

That's an itchy throat to you or me. Much worse than all the harm that smoking can do, I'm sure you'll agree.

Clive Bates has quite rightly sent a complaint to the Press Complaints Commission...

Complaint regarding Mail on Sunday article 27 January 2013: E-cigarettes ‘can cause more harm than smoking’, experts say

1. The headline and premise of the story is completely inaccurate – there are no circumstances in which e-cigarettes cause more harm than smoking. In reality they are are almost harmless – probably at least 99% less risky than cigarette smoking. No expert would say this and none has.

2. There is no fact or argument in the article to support the headline or its main premise. This is simply asserted by the by the journalist in the first sentence of the article, and in the headline. The fact that e-cigarettes ‘can cause acute respiratory system irritation’ in some users is barely relevant. An ‘irritation’ is a minor issue compared to cancer, heart disease and emphysema caused by smoking. It is these chronic conditions that do the most harm. Most e-cigarette users don’t experience this irritation and no figures are given on how many people are afflicted by this irritation or how severely. So even the one health impact that is mentioned is asserted without any quantification or sense of its seriousness. It certainly is not described in a way that justifies the headline or premise of the article. Inflammation and irritation of the respiratory tract is common in smokers (smokers’ cough) – as well as cancer, heart disease etc.

3. No experts are quoted in the article saying e-cigarettes ‘can cause more harm than smoking’ – yet this quote is used in the headline and is unattributed. No experts have said this because it is not true. The article doesn’t even support its own (false) premise.

4. There is implicit misleading scaremongering about ‘the chemical propylene glycol’ (why mention it otherwise?). In reality this is a largely benign substance used as a food additive and in medicines.

A grossly inaccurate story like this could have real impacts on human welfare if it discourages people from switching from smoking cigarettes to e-cigarettes. It is also unfairly damaging to numerous small businesses trying to grow the market for a much safer alternative to smoking. This is particularly irresponsible, ill-informed, and lazy journalism.

Well said. It's good to see that a director of ASH is so concerned about people's health that he took time out on a Sunday to respond to dangerously misleading journalism. Shame it's one who resigned ten years ago.

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Gambling addiction soars?

From the Independent on Sunday...

Addiction soars as online gambling hits £2bn mark

As the online business business approaches the £2bn mark and bookies seek to lure in new punters, the number of Britons at risk of becoming addicted is growing rapidly.

Two claims are being made here: firstly, that the online gambling market is worth £2 billion and secondly—presumably as a result—gambling addiction has "soared". Both these claims are reasserted in the first line, except cause and effect are switched around and the future tense comes into play.

A huge increase in gambling addicts will make Britain's obsession with online betting a £2bn business.

So, what's the evidence for this?

New evidence reveals that the number of people in danger of becoming problem gamblers has reached nearly a million, while hardcore addicts have doubled in six years to almost 500,000.

Strange, because the British Gambling Prevalence Survey hasn't been published since 2010 and there won't be another one because the government has cut its funding. I discussed the results of these three surveys (1999, 2007, 2010) in my IEA report about casinos.

Despite predictions in the popular press that two per cent of the population would be “addicted” to gambling by 2007, the figure remained at around 0.6 per cent of the population between 1999 and 2007. Evidence from the the past five years is more equivocal, with one of the internationally recognised measures of problem gambling finding no statistically significant rise in prevalence between 2007 and 2010 (PGSI) and the other finding a rise from 0.6 per cent to 0.9 per cent that was on the margin of statistical significance (DSM-IV).

In terms of numbers, the British Gambling Prevalence Survey says:

This equates to somewhere between 342,000 and 593,000 adults according to the DSM-IV and between 254,000 and 507,000 adults according to the PGSI.

Assuming that the Independent on Sunday means "problem gamblers" when it uses the tabloid term "hardcore addicts", both sources allow the possibility that the figure is "half a million". The British Gambling Prevalence Survey has settled on a very rough estimate of 451,000.

But this is from a report published three years ago. The Independent on Sunday tells us there is "new evidence" that "hardcore addicts have doubled in six years to almost 500,000". Where is it?

Halfway down the page, after a load of editorialising about how ghastly the 2005 Gambling Act was, we finally get to it...

The Gambling Commission, set up under the Act to regulate gambling, carried out its most recent national survey in 2010. In addition to the 450,000 problem gamblers in the UK – up more than 200,000 since 2007, with an average debt of £17,500 each – the British Gambling Prevalence Survey (BGPS) found that another 900,000 people were at "moderate risk" of becoming problem gamblers, while 2.7 million more displayed "some risk factors".

Right. So the "new evidence" is a report that came out in 2010. It doesn't say that addiction has "soared" and it doesn't say the number of "hardcore addicts have doubled" (because the 2007 report never said there were 200,000 problem gamblers). What it says is this (PDF)...

DSM-IV problem gambling prevalence was higher in 2010 (0.9%) than in 2007 and 1999 (0.6% for both years). This equates to around 451,000 adults aged 16 and over in Britain. The increase was significant at the 5% level. However, the p-value was 0.049, showing that this increase is at the margins of statistical significance. Some caution should be taken interpreting this result as there may be some other underlying factor affecting estimates between survey years. Where possible, differences between the responding samples were taken into account and the result remained significant at the 5% level (p=0.046). Further surveys are needed to examine if this is evidence of an upward trend in problem gambling prevalence or simply random fluctuation in the data.

Not quite the terrifying picture painted by the tabloids, is it? The 2010 study also found that the proportion of adults in the UK who played online casino games, online bingo and/or online betting rose from 6 per cent to 7 per cent between 2007 and 2010. Again, hardly the last days of Rome, is it?

But you've got to love this line about the 2005 Gambling Act...

As with 24-hour drinking, few predicted the consequences.

No one correctly predicted the consequences, perhaps. I recall lots of people, including the Independent on Sunday, waxing hysterical about how we would become "a nation of gambling addicts" in the same way that virtually the whole of Fleet street confidently predicted that the Licensing Act ('24-hour drinking' in tabloid-speak) would lead to a massive rise in alcohol consumption and alcohol-related violence. None of it happened, but let's not allow the facts to get in the way of good story.

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The fat and the poor

This week, lots of outraged people—mainly on the political left—got themselves in a tizzy when public health minister Anna Soubry pointed out that childhood obesity rates are disproportionately high amongst low income groups.

This fact has been taken as read for many years. In all the time I've been writing about these issues, I don't recall anyone in public health having challenged it. But because a Tory pointed it out, various "debunkers" leapt on the "gaffe" and tried to show that it was baseless prejudice.

At the New Statesman, Alex Andreou called it a "big fat lie" while the Joseph Rowntree Foundation put up a response titled 'Most obese people are not poor'. Both relied on the straw man claim that Soubry had said that most, or even all, obese people were poor. In fact, she had said that "that's where the propensity lies."

And she's right. The BBC's health reporter Nick Triggle did his best to muddy the waters, laughably describing the evidence as "hardly categorical" even while showing a graph that displayed an obvious correlation and a perfect dose-response relationship (see below).

Why the controversy? Soubry's greatest crime was to not use the most politically correct language. She used the word "poor" instead of "deprived" or "underprivileged". As Tam Fry of the National Obesity Forum said:

"It was the tone of what she said. It was arrogant and condescending."

As for the facts, he conceded:

"Yes it is true that the lower down the social scale you go the more likely people are to be obese."

On Twitter, big boned Labour MP Diane Abbott tried to whip up the mob. She reckons that pointing out the well known association between poverty and obesity amounts to "blaming the victim".

This is the same Diane Abbott who wrote in 2011:

Studies about the predictors of obesity in the UK have shown that the poorest are most likely to be obese.

I don't see fat people as "victims", nor do I feel the need to "blame" anyone for something that is none of my business. Even if I did, the incomes of those involved would have nothing to do with it.

Abbott, on the other hand, wants us to blame the food industry for making people like her grossly overweight. She won't take responsibility for herself and she doesn't expect anyone else to. As a state socialist, she holds institutions accountable for all human outcomes and believes that the only solutions lie in a more coercive government. Terrifyingly, this woman could be Britain's next health minister.

All this hand-wringing about "stigmatisation" and "victim blaming" is so much guff when you consider the campaign of "denormalisation" that has been waged against smokers and is gradually being waged against the fat. For a striking example of the latter, I recommend you read this new paper by the bioetheticist Daniel Callahan. He calls for a campaign of public shaming to complement other anti-obesity measures.

I believe only the government’s power to tax, to regulate, and on occasion to come close to mild coercion would be sufficient to make a difference.

... It will be imperative, first, to persuade them that they ought to want a good diet and exercise for themselves and for their neighbor and, second, that excessive weight and outright obesity are not socially acceptable any longer. They need as well to be mobilized as citizens to support a more invasive role for government. Obesity is in great part a reflection of the kind of culture we have, one that is permissive about how people take care of their bodies and accepts many if not most of the features of our society that contribute to the problem. There has to be a popular uprising when so many aspects of our common lives, individually and institutionally, must be changed more or less simultaneously. Safe and slow incrementalism that strives never to stigmatize obesity has not and cannot do the necessary work.

You can guess where he draws his ideas from...

When I was first drawn to think about obesity, I could not help thinking about the success of the anti-smoking campaign of recent decades. That campaign went simultaneously after the supply side (the tobacco industry) and the demand side (individual smokers). As a smoker, I was at first criticized for my nasty habit and eventually, along with all the others, sent outside to smoke, and my cigarette taxes were constantly raised. The force of being shamed and beat upon socially was as persuasive for me to stop smoking as the threats to my health.

All the usual propaganda can be found in this article, including the old "we have to expect liberty to be sacrificed when we're fighting a war" trope.

They no less need to understand that, whatever they may think about the power and excess of government, it is inescapable in this case, as much as with national defense.

Yes, we're all smokers now. If you can stomach it, go read the whole thing.

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More great "evidence" that plain packaging works

Oh Lordy, has any barrel ever been scraped like this? The following headline comes from the Times of India which, for reasons that will soon be apparent, was one of the only news outlets to bother with tobacco control's latest piece of brilliantly inventive "science".

Plain packaging of tobacco cuts smoking

Cool. What's the evidence for that?

Experts believe that plain packaging of tobacco products would cut smoking, a new study has found.

And why is that?

Because Australia, the first country to implement plain packaging, only did so in December of last year there is no quantifiable evidence as of yet. 

Quite so.

Therefore, scientists have used the next best option, the expertise of internationally-renowned tobacco control specialists from around the world.

Ha ha! The next best option is asking the opinion of campaigners for plain packaging?! How very droll.

For the study, 33 tobacco control experts from the UK (14), Australasia (12) and North America (7) were recruited. Professionals in these regions were targeted because these countries are currently considering (or have recently implemented) plain packaging for tobacco products. They were then interviewed about how plain packaging – packaging without brand imagery or promotional text and using standardised formatting – might impact the rates of smoking in adults and children.

Please tell me you're not going to do what I think you're going to do.

The experts estimated that plain packaging would reduce the number of adult smokers by one percentage point (on average) two years after the introduction of plain packaging.

Oh God. I can't bear to watch.

More impressively, they believe that generic packaging would reduce the percentage of children trying smoking by three percentage points (on average) two years after plain packaging is introduced.

Hey, that is impressive. If the people who advocate the policy think it will work, what more proof could we ask for?

Professor Theresa Marteau, Director of the University of Cambridge’s Behaviour and Health Research Unit, who led the study, said...

Stop calling it a study! It's a small survey of your mates' partisan opinions.

“Currently, approximately 10 million adults in Britain smoke. A one percentage point decline – from 21% of the population to 20% – would equate to 500,000 people who will not suffer the health effects of smoking.”

There you have it. Plain packaging will make half a million people stop smoking. The science is settled.

I'm starting to feel embarrassed on these people's behalf.

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