Challenging the Tobacco Products Directive

Totally Wicked, the British e-cigarette company, is challenging the EU's Tobacco Products Directive's regulation of e-cigarettes. 

I use a pretty standard second generation e-cigarette which will banned for various reasons, all of them stupid. It has a tank capacity of more than 2 ml. It's refillable. The bottles of fluid I buy are larger than 10 ml. I vape a fairly obscure fluid which will be almost certainly taken off the market because it won't make financial sense to keep it on. I tend to vape 20mg/ml of nicotine, which puts me at the very limit of what will be permissable, but it won't be enough for many people.

In short, the TPD bans e-cigarettes that people like—the ones which work. It's bad news for liberty and bad news for health. Totally Wicked is challenging it on the basis that "the TPD represents a disproportionate impediment to the free movement of goods and the free provisions of services, places electronic cigarettes at an unjustified competitive disadvantage to tobacco products, fails to comply with the general EU principle of equality, and breaches the fundamental rights of electronic cigarette manufacturers and users."

I wish them well. Find out more here.

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An uncanny chain of events

World Health Organisation, 1999:*

"Three major pharmaceutical companies have joined this partnership: Glaxo Wellcome, Novartis, and Pharmacia & Upjohn. They all manufacture treatment products against tobacco dependence... And I am happy to welcome other stakeholders - and that includes industry - to join us - because investing in health yields high returns."

Information Daily, 2013:

Despite electronic cigarettes still being in their international infancy, they are now thought to be the UK's most popular smoking cessation aid with 1.3 million users.

According to the latest available figures, over 25 per cent of attempts to stop smoking in the UK are now supported by e-cigarettes, overtaking longstanding cessation aids such as throat sprays, patches and nicotine gum.

BBC, 2014:

The Smoking Toolkit Study, which covers England, has found that electronic cigarettes are overtaking the use of nicotine products such as patches and gum as an aid to quitting smoking.

The Guardian, 2014:

E-cigarettes are more effective than nicotine patches and gum in helping people to quit smoking, according to a study that challenges the negative views of some public health experts.

... Pharmaceutical companies such as GSK and Pfizer, which make smoking cessation drugs, are among the opponents of e-cigarettes. "They are losing sales hand over fist to e-cigarettes and are incentivised to make it appear they are not effective," said West.

BBC, 2014:

The World Health Organization says there should be a ban on the use of e-cigarettes indoors and that sales to children should stop. 

In a report the health body says there must be no more claims that the devices can help smokers quit - until there is firm evidence to support this.

WHO experts warn the products might pose a threat to adolescents and the foetuses of pregnant women.

World Health Organisation, 2014:

The countries agreed on a set of goals in line with the WHO recommendations. These seek to prevent non-smokers and young people ever starting to use ENDS; to protect bystanders from ENDS’ emissions; to minimize the potential health risks posed by ENDS and to challenge unproven health claims used to market these products. To achieve their goals, the countries said that they would deploy any regulatory measures they see fit to limit the use of ENDS or ban their use altogether.

World Health Organisation, 2015:

Ecigarette use in UK fell in '14 amid concerns over health effects and doubts whether they match the real experience http://t.co/ptrPSMbRBf
— WHO FCTC (@FCTCofficial) February 5, 2015

Job done. I hope Big Pharma has the courtesy to leave a tip.


* Oddly, the WHO have taken this speech off their website, but it can still be viewed here.

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Tiresome fake charities

From the BBC...

Campaigners want tougher regulation of alcohol adverts

Campaigners wanting tougher regulation! Whatever next?

Who are these campaigners, I wonder.

Alcohol Focus Scotland, Alcohol Concern, Balance North East and Drink Wise called for alcohol advertising to be restricted to factual information in adult press, cinema advertising only to be allowed for 18 certificate films, and the phased removal of alcohol sponsorships.

In the longer term, they want a ban on alcohol advertising and sponsorship.

Let's take a look at this merry band of grassroots activists...

Alcohol Focus Scotland
A primarily state-funded fake charity which relieves the taxpayer of several hundred thousand pounds a year via the Scottish parliament.

Alcohol Concern
An overwhelmingly state-funded fake charity that received £222,298 from the Department for Education and £225,626 from the Welsh Assembly in 2012/13, in addition to a quarter of a million pounds received from providing 'consultancy and training' to various arms of the state. It was recently given another £500,000 from Public Health England (to do what exactly?)

Balance North East
A wholly state-owned and state-funded astroturf group that gets £680,000 a year from the taxpayer.

Drink Wise
A wholly state-owned and state-funded quango created by NHS North West. Financial accounts not available.

And that's it.

Frankly I'm disappointed. Britain leads the world in handing over people's cash to parasitic lobby groups to campaign against freedom and the best they can come up with is a ban on advertising? It's like they're not even trying. Come on, fake charities, let's see some imagination! Anyone can copy what anti-smoking groups said twenty years ago. You've got millions of pounds of public money without having to demonstrate a shred of public support, surely you can come up with something more original?

It's not just that an alcohol advertising ban is not supported by the evidence. It's not just that since France banned alcohol advertising "there's now a real trend among French youths to drink more regularly, usually at weekends; to drink more; to drink outside, in the streets; and to drink in order to get smashed". It's just that a campaign against alcohol advertising is so dull and predictable. People work hard for this money, damn it. We're writing big cheques for you and this is all you've got? The only supporter you've got on your press release is Gerard Hastings, for god's sake. He can't make his swivel-eyed anti-capitalism sound even vaguely reasonable. Surely you can find somebody with a bit more credibility. How about using Alistair Campbell again? Okay, he's not very trustworthy, but beggars can't be choosers.

And what's this when it's at home?

"This research shows just how many of our children are being exposed to alcohol marketing, with an even bigger impact being made on those children with an interest in sport.

"Children get bombarded with pro-drinking messages...

Children, children, children. Yeah, we get it, but three times in two sentences? After the whole plain packaging thing, disingenuous references to children are so passé. And the word "bombarded" in relation to advertising is getting really tired. How about using "pounded" for a while? Or "blitzkrieged"?

Pull your socks up, guys. Just because governments of all parties have inexplicably thrown massive sums of money at you for years doesn't mean you can rest on your laurels. The next time I hear one of your state-funded pseudo-charities being interviewed on a state-funded radio station I want some blue sky thinking. Don't forget who pays your wages.

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Yet more evidence of failure in Australia

Tim Worstall is not alone in suspecting that British campaigners for plain packaging are in such a rush because they can't risk waiting for solid evidence to come out of Australia.

The reason they’re leaping up and down and screaming now, Now! NOW! is that the evidence of the effectiveness of the idea is now coming in. And it simply doesn’t work: it does not do what it is claimed it should do. Regardless of what you think about the desirability of curtailing commercial freedom in the cause of reducing smoking rates, plain packaging simply doesn’t reduce smoking rates.

Australia's nationwide smoking prevalence survey only takes place every three years and shows a steady decline, as seen in most developed countries.

Almost incredibly, this survey is cited by campaigners as proof that plain packaging 'works'. They say that smoking rates in 2013 were the lowest on record and that plain packaging is responsible. Obviously, smoking rates were also the lowest on record in 2010, 2007, 2004 etc. in the absence of plain packaging. Smoking rates are also the lowest on record in the UK in the absence of plain packaging. Not only is it a daft argument, it also ignores the evidence of smoking rates amongst 12-17 year olds from the same survey.

There is an obvious problem with this survey insofar as plain packaging is concerned. The policy was introduced in December 2012 and the survey only has figures for 2010 and 2013. What we really need is a comparison between 2012 and 2013 and for that we have to look at the surveys from individual states.

Last year, I mentioned the evidence from New South Wales - the most heavily populated state - which shows that smoking prevalence was slightly lower in 2013 (16.4%) than in 2012, but was still higher than it had been in 2011 (14.7%). Taken together, as I said at the time, the surveys show "seven years of essentially static smoking rates from 2006 to 2013, at a time when graphic health warnings, display bans, plain packaging and banning smoking in pubs, in cars and outdoors were all introduced with great fanfare."

I also mentioned that South Australia's health minister had complained about an "increase in the state’s smoking rates" since plain packaging came in. 

We now have the data to support this. The survey from South Australia does indeed show that smoking prevalence rose from 16.7% to 19.4% between 2012 and 2013.

In addition, we also have data from Queensland which show that smoking prevalence was 14.3% in 2012 but had risen to 15.8% in 2013. This is consistent with the "sharp increase in the prevalence of smoking among Queenslanders aged between 25 and 34 years old over the past two years" that Cancer Council Queensland reported last year.

And in Western Australia smoking prevalence also rose, albeit marginally, from 12.7% in 2012 to 13.0% in 2013.

The interesting aspect of the states' evidence is that they all show a lower smoking rate in 2013 than in 2010—in line with the national survey—but in none of these four states was the 2013 figure the lowest on record. They had all had a lower smoking rate before plain packaging was introduced (in 2011 in NSW and in 2012 in the rest).

The other Australian states, including Tasmania and Victoria, have not yet published figures for 2013, but the data from New South Wales, South Australia, Western Australia and Queensland covers the majority of the population. There is a margin of error in all smoking prevalence estimates, of course, but the evidence above does not provide the slightest indication that plain packaging led to a fall in smoking prevalence after December 2012. On the contrary, it is consistent with there being a rise.

Contrast this empirical evidence with the claim that there has been "a massive decline in smoking prevalence in Australia following introduction of standardised packaging" (Deborah Arnott, ASH), or that a "dramatic decline in smoking rates has coincided with the introduction of plain-packaging laws" (Sydney Morning Herald) and you can see that there is no limit to the amount of garbage that anti-smoking campaigners will spout.

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David Nutt is wrong about alcohol in so many ways

David Nutt wrote an article for the Spectator Coffe House last week which contains a factual error in virtually every line. For example, alcohol is not the cheapest it has been "since the gin-epidemic of the 1700s", as he claims. France has not "priced out cheap alcohol" and its rate of liver cirrhosis is not "a third of ours". Minimum pricing would not "save the ‘responsible’ drinker significant amounts of money"—even the Sheffield modellers don't claim that. An average bottle of wine wouldn't be £3.50 under a 50p per unit system—it would be £4.50. And is nonsense to say that "the only people drinking alcohol that costs less than 50p per unit are those that contribute the most costs of alcohol harm to our society"—at least two-thirds of all alcohol is sold below 50p per unit.

Nutt talks so much utter drivel about alcohol that it makes you wonder whether you can trust what he says about anything. Dick Puddlecote has fisked his Spectator article to within an inch of its life and I recommend you read his post. However, I would like to emphasise two points.

Firstly, Nutt claims that "the cost of alcohol misuse in the UK is around £30 billion per year —about £1000 per tax-payer." This is wrong on so many levels. Most fundamentally, the £30 billion figure has been pulled out of thin air. Google it and you will find that the only webpage that contains this claim is Nutt's Spectator article. British drinkers spent £30 billion a year on alcohol, so perhaps that's what Nutt is referring to. If so, it a mistake that would shame a schoolboy.

The most commonly cited 'cost to the UK' figure is £21 billion, which is the high-end estimate from a 2003 Cabinet Office study. Not only is it the most commonly cited figure, it is also the most misrepresented figure. As I have explained in great detail elsewhere, most of these costs are not costs to taxpayers (eg. lost productivity) and some of them are only alcohol-related in the broadest sense (eg. expenditure on burglar alarms). It would be completely wrong to convert it to "£1000 per tax-payer" even if there were only 30 million taxpayers, which there aren't (I can only assume that Nutt thinks that income tax is the only tax).

In short, Nutt makes up his own figure, pretends it is something it is not, wrongly applies it to taxpayers and then gets the number of taxpayers wrong.

Secondly, Nutt cites the 'Canadian experience' as real world evidence that minimum pricing works:

'Real life experience in a province in Canada showed that introduced [sic] minimum pricing recently found a 10% increase in minimum unit price led to a 30% reduction in alcohol deaths.'

At least he has a source this time. He is referring to a widely-reported study which claimed that increases in the minimum price of alcohol in British Columbia between 2005 and 2008 led to a fall in alcohol-related deaths. The study came from the pen of Tim Stockwell who just happens to be the world's leading advocate of minimum pricing. More to the point, the study is junk. There was never a 10 per cent hike in the minimum price and there was never a fall in alcohol deaths, let alone a "30 per cent reduction". The study does not tell us about "real life experience". It is largely based on a statistical model and its findings are completely at odds with the province's health data.

In 2013, the Centre for Addictions Research of BC [British Columbia] reported that:

A 2012 report from the same organisation showed that rates of hospitalisations for alcohol 'overdoses' rose from 4.4 per 100,000 in 2002 to 5.1 per 100,000 in 2009.

Between 2002 and 2011, the number of deaths directly attributed to alcohol in British Columbia rose from 315 to 443, with the largest annual death rates occurring after the minimum price rises of 2006.

Every piece of independent evidence contradicts the claim that minimum pricing has reduced alcohol-related health problems in British Columbia.

Since Nutt focuses on drinking amongst young people, it is also worth looking at Quebec, where minimum pricing is also in force (supported by brewers for self-interested reasons). It was recently reported that:

'The National Public Health Institute of Quebec (INSPQ) has released the results of a new study indicating that the number of youth between 12 and 35 years old who drink excessively increased 10% from 2000 to 2012. The number of youth 22 to 27 years old drinking excessively increased 22% over a 10-year time frame, which was the largest increase observed.'

Contrast this with the situation in Britain, where the number of 11-15 year olds who have drunk alcohol in the last week has plumetted from 26 per cent in 2001 to 12 per cent in 2012 (see graph below).

The facts are clear. Minimum pricing has had no measureable effect on alcohol consumption, underage drinking or alcohol-related mortality in Canadian provinces. Advocates such as David Nutt should stop referring to the 'Canadian experience'. Like almost everything in his article, it is rubbish.

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Cops, clubs and breathalysers

I've written a post for the IEA lifestyle blog about the proliferation of breathalysers at nightclubs.

Police in London have followed the lead of their counterparts in Norwich and Loughborough by forming a partnership with nightclub owners to breathalyse customers on the door. This initiative has been criticised for combining the infantilisation of the nanny state with the intrusiveness of Big Brother. And so it does, but few have commented on its most objectionable aspect, which is that it is a shameless piece of rent-seeking. It is a straightforward example of corporate interests working with the state to enrich themselves at the expense of their customers and competition.

Do read the rest.

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The voluntary ban

From The Guardian...

Bristol squares aim to stub out cigarettes with voluntary outdoor smoking ban

Two busy harbourside squares are to become the UK’s first major outdoor spaces to become smoking-free zones from Monday.

Millennium Square and Anchor Square in Bristol, which are popular family destinations and often host cultural events, are to be turned into voluntary cigarette-, cigar- and pipe-free areas.

No formal, enforceable ban will be imposed but 11 signs dotted around the squares will ask smokers not to light up and thank people for helping “keep Bristol smoke-free, healthy and clean”

Listen, you cretins, there's no such thing as a "voluntary ban". It's Orwellian gobbledegook. By their very nature, bans require submission, enforcement and punishment. Calling a ban voluntary makes about as much sense as calling an authoritarian a liberal.

Okay, that's a bad example, but you'd think tobacco control fanatics, of all people, would know what a ban is. Every policy they ever lobby for involves one.

It comes as no surprise to find that this little slice of health fascism is the brainchild of the 100 per cent taxpayer-funded front group Smokefree SouthWest.

Kate Knight, deputy director of the group, which is commissioned by 15 public health teams across the region, said the scheme would be “self-policing”.

Ha ha! Good luck with that. I hope the people of Bristol make a point of chain-smoking in these areas as soon as they find out that this pseudo-prohibition has been sprung on them.

Knight accepted that it would inconvenience some customers of the bars and restaurants in the squares. “But it only takes them about 20 seconds to walk out of the squares. We don’t want to make the lives of smokers hell.”

Really? In that case, Kate, you have about as much understanding of the consequences of your actions as you do of the meaning of words.

You go ahead and have your pretend ban, the people of Bristol can pretend to obey it, and we'll pretend you're not a parasitic, hateful, puritanical, freedom-hating arm of the government. 

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