Comparing apples to oranges: Analysing the 17% reduction in Scotland’s heart attack admissions following the smoking ban
31/07/2008 Tobacco Analysis Blog
Michael Siegel examines the validity of a recent study released in New England Journal of Medicine reporting that the smoking ban in Scotland resulted in a 17% decline in hospital admissions for acute coronary syndrome. Siegel suggests that the evidence does not add up as the data comes from different data sources, like comparing apples to oranges.
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Cigarettes and celluloid: a dubious link
21/07/2008 Spiked Online
Patrick Basham and John Luik argue that the calls to ban smoking in films are based on dubious research. The writers propose, “Youth smoking has suffered from over 25 years of bad research and simplistic policy prescriptions from the anti-tobacco movement.”
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Being anti-smoking is fine, but the BMA's proposal to censor 'pro-smoking' films is ludicrous
09/07/2008 Guardian, Comment is Free
Is the British Medical Association paying attention? Marcel Berlins writes: “I don't accept the concept of the "pro-smoking" film, but I point out that such a warped criterion, as interpreted by anti-smoking zealots, would deny to under-18s the majority of the world's greatest films. Would such censorship stop children taking up cigarettes or continuing to smoke? Most unlikely.”
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The BMA: censorious, busybody killjoys
08/07/2008 Spiked Online
Tim Black argues that the British Medical Association, always demanding restrictions on smoking, drinking and other fun activities, has got too big for its boots.
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The crazy world of England’s smoking ban
03/07/2008 Spiked Online
Rob Lyons begins: “It was getting late. A few beers had been sunk, and only the stragglers remained: the time of night when strangers start randomly talking to one another. And so it was that a hairy bicycle courier sat down beside me and offered me a cigarette. As I absentmindedly lit up, the jaws of my companions dropped.”
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The fag end of advocacy research
03/07/2008 Spiked Online
Patrick Basham and John Luik argue that claims about a steep decline in heart attacks following England’s smoking ban are an illusion.
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Unhappy birthday for the smoking ban
04/07/2008 The Publican
“For a start it seems I'm wasting my time here because, according to CGA Strategy, the majority (64%) of you publicans support the ban. And a similar number "would not overturn the ban" even if they had the power to do so. Is that what you really believe?” asks Pete Robinson, as he questions the dubious statistics everyone’s buzzing about allegedly proving the smoking ban’s success.
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On liberty
25/06/2008 Guardian
“A libertarian crowd of pro-smokers gathered to mourn the first anniversary of the smoking ban next Tuesday,” writes Michael White. “They were mourning rather noisily, with lots to eat and drink (plus a band) at Boisdale, a smart, slightly louche restaurant behind London's Victoria Station. I dropped in on the way home because I have a soft spot for libertarian causes, though I usually jump off the train of libertarian logic before it hits the buffers.”
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If I feel like having a cigarette, why shouldn’t I?
06/06/2008 The Independent
“I am going to start stockpiling cigarettes,” says Joan Bakewell. “I feel the need to have a small cache hidden around the house. I shall distribute them in out-of-the-way places in different rooms. I don't think it's appropriate to start putting them under the floorboards just yet. But the time may come... By the way, I'm a non-smoker!”
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I have a basic human right to look at fag packets
04/06/2008 The Spectator
Claire Fox, director of think tank the Institute of Ideas, says that plans to ‘denormalise’ smoking by removing cigarettes from display infantilises adults and imposes upon us a dubious official version of what is ‘normal’.
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Witch-hunting smokers out of polite society
04/06/2008 Spiked!
"Even after their ban on smoking in public places," writes deputy editor Rob Lyons, "[anti-smoking campaigners] continue to come up with new ways to restrict smoking or access to cigarettes, and are always looking for other ‘vulnerable’ groups of ‘addicts’ to meddle with. Well, when you’re an unpopular government in desperate need of a purpose, any crusade will do."
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More laws based on prejudice and propaganda
04/06/2008 The Free Society
"I don't smoke and I don't care much for smoking," writes Eamonn Butler of the Adam Smith Institute, "but I'm outraged that the UK government plans to ban the display of tobacco products in shops. Which other of our 'unhealthy' pleasures will be driven under the counter next? Sweets? Crisps? Fizzy drinks? When you give political zealots so much power, you never know quite where it will end up."
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I’m smokin’
30/05/2008 The Guardian
Cath Elliott started smoking when she was young, and she believes the Health Secretary’s new plan to demonise smokers will only encourage Britain’s youth to buy 20 cigarettes at a time rather than 10. “But come on,” she writes, “does Alan Johnson really believe that smuggling cigarettes out of the shop hidden in brown paper is going to put anyone off? Or is it just going to make smoking look even more cool and subversive than it did when I was a child?”
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Smoking the Next Forbidden Fruit
25/05/2008 Scotland on Sunday
Forcing shopkeepers to hide cigarettes under the counter will achieve nothing more than creating a new generation of smokers obsessed with the objects of illicit desire, Dani Garavelli writes in the Scotland on Sunday.
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A cruel and unusual ban
24/05/2008 Spiked!
The ban on smoking in psychiatric institutions, writes Ken McLaughlin, means their patients are the only people in Britain forbidden from smoking ‘in their own homes’.
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Mission: save our village pub
17/05/2008 Daily Telegraph
Vicki Woods writes a poignant piece lamenting the untimely death of her village pub, citing the smoking ban as the final nail in its proverbial coffin. Though the place now looks “ghastly… like a half-demolished council estate”, she heads down the abandoned pub determined to enjoy its garden, where for once the blokes can smoke their Hamlets in peace. There she hatches a plan to keep the spirit of the pub alive, campaigning in the community for which it stands.
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Pete Robinson outs Nu-Labour as the killers of pub culture
09/05/2008 The Publican
Who’s afraid of nanny state Nu-Labour? Pete Robinson is. He points to the government’s innate mistrust of pubs as places where perfect strangers can meet to discuss their distaste for the incumbent regime. Robinson also celebrates the election of new mayor of London Boris Johnson, who was the only mainstream politician to speak out against the smoking ban.
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Simon Gray’s ashtray still runneth over
24/04/2008 Times Online
Playwright Simon Gray is interviewed for the forthcoming release of his latest work, The Last Cigarette, a deeply moving memoir exploring his life-long love affair with smoking. Recently diagnosed with lung cancer, Gray ponders whether he should have led a more ascetic life, but ultimately he says without his vices “I might not have had anything to write about”. His lifestyle has certainly lent itself to good material, for he has received acclaim for Butley, Unnatural Pursuits, Quartermaine's Terms, Cell Mates, and The Smoking Diaries, from which he garnered a wider fan base. He muses about one day giving up smoking, or rather, inevitably coming up to that one last cigarette.
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Fagged Off with Nanny State
20/04/2008 Sunday Times
India Knight writes in her weekly column: “It truly amazes me that we are free to give ourselves cirrhosis of the liver 24 hours a day from teenagehood upwards; that we are free to eat any amount of toxic, obesity-causing carcinogenic nastiness - at vast future cost to the health service - and to feed it to our children so that they have double chins by the time they’re six; but that as free, adult human beings we are not able to light up in public because nanny says it’s naughty.”
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Psst… fancy 20 Silk Cut under the counter?
02/04/2008 Mail on Sunday
In the government’s latest assault on smokers, shops and newsagents may soon be forced to sell cigarettes from under the counter. Richard Littlejohn rails against ministerial “health fascists” in his editorial piece, as he writes “These people never stop dreaming up new ways to bully and inconvenience the rest of us. So small shopkeepers will have to behave like purveyors of hardcore pornography when it comes to selling cigarettes.”
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Live and let live
02/04/2008 The Scotsman
“Who’ll be next once smokers are made social outcasts?” asks Neil Rafferty, spokesman for Forest the smoking lobby group. Since the advent of Scotland’s smoking ban, Rafferty claims that Scottish smokers have been faced with the denormalisation of smoking in the Government’s attempt to turn smokers into social lepers. What will they denormalise next?