A swift half with Madeline Grant

I recorded a new episode of the Swift Half with Snowdon this week. My guest was the fantastic Madeline Grant, sketch writer at the Telegraph. We talked about the COP26 snoozefest, James Bond, Mastermind and more. Check it out.

Share

Tweet

COVID statistics and the incompetent media

I was on GB News this morning with Tom Harwood to discuss some particularly useless TV coverage of the COVID-19 statistics. Have at it.

 

Share

Tweet

The UK's alcohol tax shake up

Rishi Sunak announced plans to shake up the alcohol duty system in his budget last week. I've written for CapX about what he wants to do, where it falls short and what it means for you, the hard-drinking British worker.

It was a pleasant surprise to be quoted by the Chancellor when he presented his Budget last week. In 2017, I wrote a short paper for the IEA titled A Rational Approach to Alcohol Taxation in which I said that the way we tax booze in Britain ‘defies common sense’. Rishi Sunak quoted these words, along with the view of the Institute of Fiscal Studies that the alcohol tax system is ‘a mess’.

And so it is. My argument in 2017 was that if we must tax alcohol, we should tax units of alcohol rather than taxing arbitrary volumes of fluid. I wrote:

‘A unit of alcohol is taxed at 27.7p if it happens to be in a glass of whisky but at just 7.8p if it is in a pint of cider. If the cider is strong, the tax is less than 7.8p, but if it is strong and fizzy the tax is 33.6p. Similarly, the tax on a unit of alcohol in a glass of wine amounts to 19.8p unless the wine is sparkling, in which case it is 25.4p.’

These peculiarities have arisen over several centuries thanks to special pleading from various interest groups and, in more recent decades, EU legislation. The alternative I suggested was a straightforward Pigouvian tax. You work out the cost of alcohol’s negative externalities (i.e. the cost imposed on people other than the drinker) and tax each unit of alcohol at a rate that adds up to that cost. At current rates of consumption, I estimated this to be 9p per unit, significantly less than the average rate of tax on alcohol but more than the lowest rate.

The Government intends to move things in this direction. The tax system will be simplified. Alcohol will effectively be taxed by the unit, although the rate will vary between beer, wine, cider and spirits. The tax rate will be the same across each category except for very strong or very weak versions of the drink. The rate will also be slightly lower in pubs.

Read on...

Share

Tweet

Covid Horseshoe Theory

I've written a piece for the New Statesman about the people threatening us with lockdown if we don't accept 'modest' restrictions. These restrictions are, in fact, more draconian than anything enforced since the war with the sole exceptions of lockdowns themselves. Moreover, a scenario in which another lockdown is necessary is highly unlikely. 

Devi Sridhar, the doyenne of Zero Covid, told the New Statesman last October: “The longer we delay the decision to go into lockdown, the longer it is going to last.” Now she is saying that if the government doesn’t introduce vaccine passports and mandatory mask-wearing, “we will be pushed into a Plan C this winter that will look a lot like lockdown.” To be clear, Sridhar says in her most recent New Statesman interview that “lockdown happens when the NHS is basically collapsing”, so it looks like she believes the NHS is going to collapse despite all the vaccinations and booster shots. “Waiting and watching just doesn’t work with Covid,” she says, “as we have learned repeatedly over the past 22 months.” But are the last ten months really comparable with the 12 before them? Cases are falling in England and this is the fifth time they have been on a downward trajectory since “Freedom Day” in July. This didn’t happen without lockdowns last year. Moreover, the number of new cases is lower than it was on Freedom Day. If the government didn’t go to Plan B in July, why should it go there now?

One answer is hospital capacity, but while the number of people with Covid in English hospitals has risen from around 5,000 at the end of July to 7,000 today, it is a far cry from the 14,000 last November, let alone the peak of 34,000 recorded in January. A quarter of these people are not even being primarily treated for Covid-19 and there are fewer people with Covid in mechanical ventilation beds than there were at the end of August. It is almost certain that the NHS will be in crisis this winter, as it is every year, but it will not be the public’s fault. We cannot make a habit of staying home to protect the NHS.

It is true that if the recent rise in hospitalisations continues throughout the winter, Covid will put the NHS under intolerable pressure. But there is no reason to think it will. Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer, is fond of saying that epidemics are either doubling or halving. Since July, Covid in the UK has done neither. Rates have gone up and down in defiance of Sage’s projections, for reasons that nobody fully understands. The logical conclusion to be drawn from Whitty’s motto is that we no longer have an epidemic – rather, we have an endemic virus that everybody will catch sooner or later, possibly more than once. If the summer and autumn surges help to “flatten the curve” over winter, we may look back on them as a blessing in disguise.

It's free so do read it all.

 

Share

Tweet

The other COP

I'll be speaking at this tonight at 7pm (UK time)...

COP9 and the Future of Harm Reduction

When: November 2, 2021

Time: 2 pm (EDT) / 7 pm (London time)

Please register with the RSVP link:

https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07eiqhq71s503031db&oseq=&c=&ch=

Property Rights Alliance with the Institute of Economic Affairs and New Zealand Taxpayers Union will host a timely discussion on harm reduction, consumer choice, and freedom. Featuring:

Christopher Snowdon, Head of Lifestyle Economics, Institute of Economic Affairs; Louis Houlbrooke, Campaigns Manager, New Zealand Taxpayers Union; Tim Andrews, Director of Consumer Issues, Americans for Tax Reform; and moderated by Lorenzo Montanari.

COP9 starts next Monday, will be held online only and nobody will be able to watch it apart from a select group of true believers. The WHO has released its list of groups that have applied to attend. The International Network of Nicotine Consumer Organisations (INNCO) and the New Nicotine Alliance (NNA) have both been denied access. ASH Finland have also been blacklisted. God knows what they've done to annoy the WHO.

While you're here, read the letter from 100 public health experts telling the WHO to drop its prohibitionist stance on safer nicotine products.

You can watch the discussion below live or later.

Share

Tweet

Last Orders with Charlie Peters

There's a new episode of Last Orders and it's another cracker. Our guest is journalist Charlie Peters. So good to be recording these in person again.

Listen here or subscribe.

Share

Tweet

Contemptible misinformation about vaping in the Daily Mail

After the government announced the possibility of e-cigarettes being available on prescription (which has always been an option anyway), journalists went looking for anti-vaping voices to give an alternative viewpoint. As usual, the 'public health' dinosaurs Martin McKee and Simon Capewell were invited to spout their nonsense. Both feature heavily in this Sunday Times article. 

Capewell got an entire op-ed to himself in the Daily Mail. Almost every word of it is untrue. 

Sajid Javid's announcement that the Department of Health is paving the way for e-cigarettes to be prescribed on the NHS in England is deeply worrying.

Yes, there are still 6.1million smokers in England, and while smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death we must redouble our efforts to tackle this problem.

But as a scientist who has spent 30 years in public health research, particularly in regard to heart disease, smoking and diet, I can assure the Health Secretary that e-cigarettes are not the answer.

Worse, they will generate a raft of other health problems.

No evidence for this 'raft of other health problems' is given. He doesn't even say what he reckons they are.

When vaping first took off seven years ago, I was open to the idea that it might help reduce smoking.

They took off earlier than 2014, although that was when alleged experts like Capewell and McKee finally started paying attention to one of the biggest public health innovations of the century. Anybody who remembers their interventions at the time will find it very hard to believe that Capewell was open to any ideas other than banning them.

But with mounting evidence of the harms vaping can cause, I have become increasingly worried by the unquestioning enthusiasm on the part of some public health bodies whose first duty is to protect us.

Where is this 'mounting evidence'? Alas, he doesn't say because it doesn't exist.

Following a 2016 report by the World Health Organisation about the health risks e-cigarettes pose, countries including China and India banned or severely restricted their sale.

Two countries that happen to have state-owned tobacco monopolies. Fancy that!

England is out on a dangerous limb. Officials here have fallen for the exaggerated claims of the pro-vaping lobby, and are ignoring the health risks. The main claim, that e-cigarettes are a major aid to quitting, is wrong.

Randomised controlled trial, observational studies and ecological studies have consistently found vaping to be more effective than cold turkey, placebos and nicotine replacement therapy. A striking finding is that vaping is effective even when smokers do not intend to quit.

If that were true, why would the multi-national tobacco corporations be pushing vaping so hard? 

Because they sell e-cigarettes, obviously.

'E-cigs' are a means of attracting new cigarette smokers, as I will explain.

But he doesn't explain. Instead he says...

E-cigarettes are in fact one of the least effective quitting tools, accounting for only about 10 per cent of long-term quitters in the UK.

Most people who quit did so before e-cigarettes were on the market. It's not complicated. 

Many of those who try to quit smoking via vaping continue to use both e-cigarettes and lit cigarettes. This is a big win-win for tobacco firms. Most of the UK's 3million vapers who still smoke have no plans to quit.

There aren't three million vapers who still smoke. There are three million vapers. Two thirds of them are ex-smokers.

Next let's address the industry claim that e-cigarettes are 95 per cent less harmful than lit cigarettes, a figure based on no solid evidence whatsoever as far as I am aware. Yet this spurious figure was picked up by PHE. 

It's not an 'industry claim'. This is a scurrilous lie propagated by Capewell and McKee. The 95% figure was independently arrived at by both Public Health England and the Royal College of Physicians as the most conservative estimate of harm. It should be updated to 99.5% or whatever the science suggests is most plausible.   

More robust evidence estimates that, at best, e-cigarettes are 50 per cent less harmful. 

Complete nonsense. I've never heard this figure mentioned even by anti-vaping lunatics in the USA. As ever, no reference is provided for it. If e-cigs were 50% as harmful as smoking, they would be killing tens of thousands of people every year. In fact, they have never been credibly implicated as the cause of death of a single person in the UK, to my knowledge.

Champions of e-cigarettes say there is 'no evidence' of long-term harm. In fact, there is plenty of evidence.

They don't say that. They say that e-cigarettes are much, much safer than smoking. Cranks like Capewell respond by saying that we don't know the longterm effects, which is trivially true since they haven't been around for long enough. Now Capewell is saying that we do have evidence on the longterm effects. How? What are they?

Alas, Capewell once again fails to elaborate.

Nicotine is highly addictive while the superheating of the 100-plus flavourings used in e-cigs to disguise the taste of nicotine and produce vapour can generate harmful chemicals, many of which are found in lit-cigarette smoke.

As a user of unflavoured vape juice, I can assure you that nicotine doesn't really taste of anything. I don't know what 'superheating' is supposed to mean, but the 'chemicals' are heated at a much lower temperature than tobacco in cigarettes and - crucially - there is no combustion and therefore no smoke. There is plenty of toxicological evidence that strongly suggests that this makes the risks orders of magnitude lower than those of smoking, all of which Capewell ignores and has probably never bothered to read.

Research shows that e-cigarettes can be even more addictive than lit cigarettes which is why the use of youth-focused flavourings such as bubblegum is so appalling.

On the contrary, evidence shows that e-cigarettes are less addictive than 'lit cigarettes'.

Nicotine poses a particular risk for the young because it disrupts the development of crucial brain connections.

People have been using nicotine for centuries without this brain damage being observed. It was never raised an issue with smoking among young people or older people. Insofar as nicotine 'disrupts' 'brain connections' it doesn't seem to do so in a way that causes any problems.

Personally I doubt very much that e-cig manufacturers will be submitting their products any time soon for UK medical approval. 

That is probably true. It took the whole length of an article for Capewell to say something that isn't a lie, but he got there in the end. A stopped clock and all that.

I know this is an opinion piece in a newspaper, not a journal article, but shouldn't it have been subject to some fact-checking before it was published?

Share

Tweet