Respect your elders

From The Times...

Ageing, you might think, comes with its own inherent long-term health risks - death, for one thing.

There is a 'but' coming here, isn't there? What could it be, this fate worse than death?

But a new study, funded by Age UK, has warned that too many over 65s are bingeing on alcohol and should be set lower safe drinking limits.

Yes, it's another government-funded charity commissioning research to fuel the nanny state.

A team of academics from Newcastle and Sunderland Universities have published a paper which looked into why elderly people are drinking at hazardous or harmful levels. The study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, found that many older people do not recognise they are heavy drinkers because they do not see themselves as dependent on the bottle.

The academics interviewed focus groups with 53 men and women aged 65 to 90. The aim was to find out the reasons why so many of people in that age group continue to drink to unhealthy levels, and to reveal their attitudes to alcohol.

And what were the findings?

The answer it seemed was simple, they did not care.

Right, that's that sorted then. End the article and turn the page. There is nothing more to say. They like drinking and they don't care if it's unhealthy. Case closed.

And when advised it would be better for them to drink less questioned the health practitioners.

Ha, ha! Good for them.

One woman drank a bottle of wine every day, about 63 units a week, but said she did not have a problem because it did not have a big effect on her.

“If somebody found me in the corner drunk that would probably shock me into stopping but that has never happened,” she said.

You tell them, dear.

Others who were interviewed talked of having “skinfuls”, or five or six pints, and thought there was no problem with that because they did not suffer any immediate adverse effects that they linked to drinking.

Quite right too. Their lives, their choice. Is it too much to ask for people who are in their 70s and 80s to be treated like adults?

Apparently it is...

Dr Graeme Wilson, at the Institute of Health and Society, Newcastle University, who led the study, said: “Many older people are drinking to a level that is having a long-term impact on their health, even if the damage they are doing is not always immediately apparent.”

And when, prey, are these "long-term" effects finally going to hit them? When they're 100? 120? 150? Is it any wonder these elderly people "do not care"?

Previous studies have shown that older drinking is a worsening problem.

No, they haven't. They've shown a rise in drinking amongst old people. That's only a problem if you believe that older people drinking is problematic per se. I think it's wonderful that pensioners have the disposable income to be able to afford pleasures in life such as drinking.

In England, 28 per cent of men and 14 per cent of women over 65 now drink alcohol more than five times per week.

They did a few years ago. Rates have been dropping more recently, as they have amongst every age group. The latest data is here, shown under the subheading 'Decline in frequent drinking and heavy drinking'.

As the Office for National Statistics explains, older people drink little but often. In other words, responsibly.

It was noted earlier that older people tend to drink more frequently than younger people. However, among both men and women, those aged 65 and over were significantly less likely than respondents in other age groups to have exceeded 4/3 units of alcohol on at least one day.

...Similar patterns were evident for heavy drinking (exceeding 8/6 units) older people were less likely to drink heavily than younger people: 6% of men aged 65 and over had drunk heavily on at least one day during the previous week, compared with 19% of men aged 45 to 64, 24% of men aged 25 to 44 and 22% of men aged 16 to 24. Among women the estimates for the corresponding age groups were 2%, 12%, 16% and 18%.

Very heavy drinking (exceeding 12/9 units) was most prevalent in the 16 to 24 and 25 to 44 age groups. In the 16 to 24 age group, 13% of men and 12% of women drank more than 12/9 units, and 13% of men and 9% of women did so in the 25 to 44 group. In the 45 to 64 and 65 and over groups the estimates were 9% of men and 6% of women and 2% of men and 1% of women respectively.

You can see why The Times (or, more likely, the press release handed to The Times) chose to focus on frequency of drinking rather than quantity drunk. The number of pensioners who drink heavily is tiny. (See The View from Cullingworth for more lies from the state-funded temperance lobby.)

And so far public health messages about harmful drinking have not been as effective for the older age group as they have for the younger.

Older people saw drinking alcohol as a positive way to relax and be sociable with friends and family.

To the re-education camps with them! Don't let them back out until they see alcohol as an addictive carcinogenic drug for which there is no safe level of use.

Chronic pain, loneliness and bereavement were identified as likely to lead to heavier drinking in later life.

Fair enough, surely? If, God forbid, I live to ninety and some pipsqueak of a health researcher tells me to cut down on my drinking, I shall poke them in the eye with my walking stick. The biggest risk factor for virtually all diseases is age. For those who are elderly, every other risk factor fades into insignificance (which, perhaps, is why Leonard Cohen plans to start smoking when he's 80). It is no wonder that they "do not care" about the trivial health risks of drinking a bottle of wine a day. Rather it is a wonder that they don't drink more.

Dr Katie Haighton, also at the Institute of Health and Society, Newcastle University, said: “Alcohol interventions are not working for older people for many reasons."

As I have said before, the 'public health' movement is really a longevity movement. It's supreme goal is extending life expectancy. It has no answer for those who are already very old, it has no answer for those who do not want to grow old and it has no answer for those who are bored of life or just don't care.

Why can't they just leave them be? All the usual 'public interest' arguments against drinking fall flat when it comes to pensioners. Does it make them less productive? No. Does it lead to violence in city centres? No. Will it make them die young? No.

So what's the solution to the stubborn refusal of pensioners to take lectures from a bunch of nagging whippersnappers?

“We also think the Government really needs to start looking at lowering the recommended limit for alcohol consumption in those over 65.”

Yeah, that'll make all the difference to people who find the existing guidelines laughable, who "question the health practitioners" and who "do not care" anyway.

I doubt even the 'public health' lobby believes that reducing the guidelines will have any effect on behaviour. The intention is to move the goalposts, as they have with obesity, in order to produce future research showing a worsening epidemic of elderly drinking. This, in turn, will lead to calls for yet higher taxes and more restrictions on advertising and availability.

And so it goes on.


UPDATE

More findings from the study, as reported in the Daily Mail...

Others said being given a free bus pass meant they could drink more...

Tee hee. Those unintended consequences, eh?

Katie Haighton, one of the study’s authors, said GPs were loath to intervene, with many not wanting to deprive patients of enjoyment later on in life.

I'm pleased to hear it, and not surprised. This confirms my long held view that rank and file GPs are usually sound and sensible. It's the psychologists, sociologists and epidemiologists of the oxymoronic 'public health' lobby you have to watch out for.

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Cheaper than popcorn

Back in May, I mentioned that the anti-alcohol campaign group Balance North East—a classic sock puppet, founded and funded entirely by the government—had been granted £1.4 million by local authorities to continue its fraudulent astro-turfing.

Balance North East's main activity is campaigning for minimum pricing, but it also does other things such as spending taxpayers money on drinking binges in cinemas.

Balance, the North East Alcohol Office, carried out a number of test purchases in cinemas across the region and found that in some chains, people were able to buy six pints at a time and take them into an early afternoon screening of Despicable Me 2 (U) – and they were also advised that they could purchase more during the film.

On another occasion, test purchasers were able to buy five pints of lager (5.1%) and take the drinks into a mid-afternoon screening of Monsters University (U). This equates to 14.5 units, which is more than the recommended weekly limit of 14 units for a woman.

It would be more than the guidelines for a woman if one woman drunk all five pints, but—as the plural in "test purchasers" indicates—there were at least two people buying these drinks and we have no idea about their gender. Suspiciously, Balance doesn't disclose how many of their state-funded muppets were sent along to this film. I suspect at least five or six.

Research into cinemas across all 12 local authorities also showed that the majority of cinemas visited have bars...

Good.

– and in some chains, alcohol is clearly displayed and can be purchased at the popcorn counter next to sweets, soft drinks and other refreshments.

So what? Is it illegal for cinemas to sell alcohol? No. Are they selling it to children? No. Is it illegal for alcohol to be "clearly displayed"? No. Is it illegal to drink in a cinema? No. So what in the name of Beelzebub's bathtub has this got to do with the government and its parasitic front groups?

Cinemas across the North East are allowing people to drink more than the equivalent of their weekly recommended unit...

That is also not a crime and nor should it be, not least because—as is well known—those "recommended" limits were plucked out of thin air.

...while watching the screening of family films...

Family films are dreadful. You need a stiff drink to watch one, especially if surrounded by the flotsam and jetsam of British youth during the summer holidays. Are Balance suggesting that alcohol should not be served unless the film has an 18 certificate? That certainly seems to be the implication.

...and selling alcohol for less than the price of popcorn

Since when did cinema popcorn, of all things, become the benchmark of good value? Give me strength.

If I was a taxpayer in the North East—as I used to be—I would share the view of this chap, who wrote to the Northern Echo about this mob three months ago.

I was interested to read that 12 hard-up North-East councils, presumably including Darlington, have found nearly £1.4 m each year for two years to fund Fresh and Balance, two public health campaign groups (Echo, May 8).

This works out at approximately £116,000 per authority per year. Yet these groups have only one office and eight employees. The mind boggles at what eight people are going to spend such a huge sum on [now we know—CJS].

I don’t remember it being part of any council’s remit to give ratepayers’ money to lobby groups, however well intentioned. As a Darlington ratepayer, perhaps our council could explain the rationale behind its decision, when it was voted for and where it suddenly found the money. Should pressure groups, however laudable, have their aims be funded by local ratepayers? Nice work if you can get it...

Quite.

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Empty casinos don't need ambulances

Stanton Glantz—junk science's gift that keeps on giving—has produced another study purporting to show a decline in acute illnesses after a smoking ban. This time, however, he's not looking just at heart attacks but at ambulance calls as a whole. So that's every serious bar room fight, every case of alcohol poisoning, every road accident and, yes, every heart attack.

His claim is that ambulance calls fell by 20 per cent in Colorado after casinos were forced to ban smoking in January 2008 and he has no doubt as to why this was...

"The research shows strong evidence of a significant drop in ambulance calls due to less secondhand smoke exposure,” Glantz said.

In fact, secondhand smoke was never measured, nor is there any record of why the ambulances were called. In keeping with his notorious Helena heart miracle, Glantz looked only at one small, rural community (Gilpin County) rather than the whole of Colorado. If he had looked at the whole state, it would have provided a much larger sample and would have allowed less scope for cherry-picking.

Did ambulance calls really fall by 20 per cent? Although I would never trust any of Glantz's figures until I've seen the raw data with my own eyes, he provides a graph which suggests that a decline did indeed occur (the casino smoking ban is shown by the middle red line; the line to the right of it shows when casino hours were extended in 2009). Note that these are ambulances going to and from the casinos themselves, not the whole area.

But here's another graph. It was published by the Denver Post after the smoking ban had been in place for six months. It shows revenue in the Colorado casino industry which, as it says, was "languishing in its worst downturn ever" in 2008.

The story of what happened to these casinos after the smoking ban was enacted is predictable enough. This is from June 2008...

Colorado's mountain casinos are mired in their worst downturn ever, walloped by a smoking ban, high gas prices and a tightening economy that has cut into discretionary spending.

While other states with commercial casinos, such as Nevada and New Jersey, are also struggling, Colorado's 10.7 percent revenue drop during the first four months of 2008 is the second-largest in the nation, according to an analysis by The Denver Post.

"We might've had a few blips before, but nothing like this," said Marc Murphy, co-general manager of Bronco Billy's Casino in Cripple Creek.

...Murphy said he believes 75 percent of the current downturn is attributable to the statewide smoking ban that extended to casinos Jan. 1.

Lower revenues in the casino business can only be the result of fewer people coming in and/or people staying for shorter periods of time.

Golden resident Jane Painter said, between puffs, that she cut her trips from twice a week to once every couple of weeks because of the smoking ban.

"It's not so much fun anymore," said Painter, 68.

Inside the casino, Denver resident Paul Williams, 48, said his trips have dropped from twice a week to three times a month.

Not only did revenues fall but four casinos went out of business altogether.

Colorado has three fewer casinos operating this year, since four have shut down, while a new one recently opened in Cripple Creek.

The rapid decline of the Colorado casino industry has been well documented. There is no doubt that things went down quickly and sharply. For example...

Thanks to smoking bans initiated in early 2008, Colorado and Illinois have sustained major dips in gambling revenue, according to experts on a panel Wednesday at the Global Gaming Expo.

Gaming-tax collections in the Centennial State were off as much as 25.4 percent in the second quarter year over year in some jurisdictions, and as much as 53 percent in the third quarter year over year once you throw in the effects of a new, graduated tax, said Lois Rice, executive director of the Colorado Gaming Association.

And...

Colorado casinos took the second-largest revenue hit in the industry in 2008 with a 12.3 percent drop, according to a new report by the American Gaming Association.

Only Illinois suffered a bigger drop with a 20.9 percent decline. The American Gaming Association attributed the states’ struggles, in part, to smoking bans that took effect last year.

...For 2008, Colorado casinos posted revenue of $715.9 million, down from $816.1 million. They generated $88.4 million in tax revenue for the state, down 23.4 percent from $115.4 million in 2007.

Things got so bad that the government agreed to help them out.

Colorado regulators are giving tax relief to some casinos hurt by revenue declines ranging in the double digits after smoking was banned.

The Colorado Limited Gaming Control Commission approved the new formula Thursday. Casinos that have revenue between $4 million and $15 million a year will pay less next year.

...Casino revenue has declined every month this year in wake of a smoking ban that took effect in January.

Of course, it is impossible to completely disentangle the effect of the smoking ban from other factors, such as the recession, but exact quantification is not necessary to demonstrate the fatal problem with Glantz's latest study. It is only necessary to show that casinos in Colorado saw a large decline in attendance at exactly the same time that the smoking ban came into effect. That such a drop-off occurred is beyond dispute. If you've got fewer people in the casino, obviously you're going to have fewer people needing ambulances.

Incredibly, Glantz does not control for the fact that attendance dropped off after the smoking ban. Nowhere in the study does he acknowledge that the fall in ambulance calls from casinos coincided with "the worst downturn ever" in the local casino industry. How could he? Not only would it screw up his attempt to show that smoking bans reduce ambulance call outs, but it would also undermine his previous attempt to show that smoking bans don't harm the casino business. Oh, what a tangled web we weave.

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Jersey contemplates the 'next logical step'

Sigh. From the Beeb...

Smoking in homes and cars could be banned under proposals being discussed by Jersey's health department.

The move to extend the smoking ban has been suggested as a way of protecting children from secondary cigarette smoke.

Lighting up in parks, shopping areas and beaches could also be banned under the proposals, suggested in a report.

There isn't much point commenting on this. If you're the kind of fascist (and yes I will use that term, not least because of Jersey's inglorious past, because the shoe fits) who thinks people shouldn't be allowed to smoke in their own home, I doubt there is anything I could say that will bring you to your senses. Aside from being an outrageous assault on property rights and personal liberty, it is a law that could only be enforced by police forcing their way into people's homes or by children being encouraged to denounce their parents.

I was, however, interested in the justification given...

Martin Knight, senior public health officer, said the aim was to stop people taking up smoking in the first place.

He said: "There is evidence around role models and smoking, we know young people exposed to smoking behaviour are more likely to take up smoking themselves."

Quite extraordinary. This is the logical extension of the idea that smoking in movies should be banned because it sets a bad example. I mentioned this kind of mentality in my 2009 book Velvet Glove, Iron Fist...

To the anti-smokers, preventing children from seeing smokers with their own eyes is just another ‘logical step.’ If the portrayal of cigarette smoking in movies is to be censored then why not keep real smokers out of sight too? It is the extension of the idea that smoking is an ‘epidemic’; that it can literally be transmitted by contact with the afflicted. If smokers are, as Lennox Johnston once said, a “living advertisement for tobacco,” then they have no place in a society that prohibits the marketing of tobacco. Hiding them from view—and, above all, from the view of children—sends a powerful message of what is and is not socially acceptable. But if all this appears logical in the context of anti-smoking rhetoric, it is only because that logic has long-since become hopelessly twisted. Smoking is not an epidemic. Smokers do not carry disease. Lung cancer is not contagious. People are not advertisements.

If ASH is right in what it says, then the law should also prevent the eating of pizzas and the drinking of Coca-Cola in public, lest children see such unsanctioned behaviour as ‘normal.’ Such a proposal might seem far-fetched, but the history of anti-smoking shows us that yesterday’s satire frequently becomes tomorrow’s policy. In 2007, yet another ‘seminal study’ reported that “when an individual becomes obese, the chances that a friend of theirs will become obese increase by 57 percent.” One of its authors, Nicholas Christakis, said: “What we see here is that one person’s obesity can influence numerous others to whom he or she is connected both directly and indirectly. In other words, it’s not that obese or non-obese people simply find other similar people to hang out with. Rather, there is a direct, causal relationship.”

It's all getting rather scary, don't you think?

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Sweet little lies

Non-ironic reference to "Big Sugar"? Check.

Inevitable comparison with tobacco? Check.

Heavy reliance on Robert Lustig's eccentric theories? Check.

Blaming UK obesity on a product (high fructose corn syrup) that is virtually non-existent here? Check.

Call for sin taxes? Check.

It can only be an editorial in The Observer, Britain's [cough] liberal Sunday newspaper.

To see how this theory stands up against the facts, I invite you to study the graph below—spotted on the Cancer Research website by Simon Cooke—which shows a large decline in sugar consumption over the last forty years (black line).

The only type of food that has been consumed in greater quantities during the period of expanding waistlines is fruit. Fruit contains fructose, which Lustig says is "toxic".

So the lesson is, er, don't eat fruit.

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Prohibition versus Harm Reduction: the video

The video of the recent IEA panel discussion on e-cigarettes, snus, harm reduction and the Tobacco Products Directive is now online. Featuring Clive Bates, Rebecca Taylor MEP, Axel Klein, Katherine Devlin, Mark Littlewood and myself.

Watch it here.


This discussion came about as a result of a paper I wrote about e-cigarettes, snus and the alternative nicotine industry. It's full of little known facts and it's free to download, so please do so by clicking here.

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Do smoking breaks cost billions?

I've got a post up at the Lifestyle Economics blog that revisits Policy Exchange's 2010 'cost of smoking' report that claimed that smoking breaks cost society £2.9 billion. As a study published last month confirms, this is very unlikely to be true.

Do go read it.

(PS. If you're a blogger and you want to put the Lifestyle Economics blog on your sidebar, the RSS feed is http://www.iea.org.uk/lifestyle-economics/blog/rss)

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