Antismokers often speak of smoking as an “epidemic”. But it seems to me that if we have an epidemic at all, it’s an epidemic of antismoking.
I’ve drawn up an outline graph (right) showing estimated UK smoking and antismoking prevalence over the past 100 years. In 1948, the London Hospitals study had 98% smoking prevalence, and the 1950 British Doctors study had 87% smoking prevalence. So I’ve set prevalence at a conservative 80% in 1945, which has since gradually decayed to the current 20% prevalence. And I’ve guessed that in 1900, smoking prevalence was about what it is now – 20% – and that this doubled in WW1, fell back between the wars, and then rose to 80% in WW2. I’m supposing that smoking prevalence was driven by WW1 stress on military personnel, and that in WW2 by stress on blitzed civilians as well.
Whatever the exact shape of the smoking prevalence graph, it seems clear that there was very steep spike in smoking between 1915 and 1945.
The UK antismoking prevalence graph is very different. There seems to have been relatively little up until the London Hospitals study and the the British Doctors study around 1950. Antismoking sentiment thereafter keeps on gradually rising. Circa 1990 tobacco advertising was banned, and in 2007 indoor smoking was banned in public places, and the antismoking epidemic was in full flood.
My question is: why is it that antismoking prevalence has peaked 70 years after peak smoking prevalence? For if there ever was a “smoking epidemic”, it reached its peak 70 or more years ago.
My proposed explanation for this is that the Doll/Wynder/Godber/Brundtland class of antismokers were born during the 1915-1945 smoking “epidemic”, and it was the formative experience of their lives, and made them committed antismokers. They all worked assiduously for the rest of their lives to advance the antismoking cause, and they were all successful relatively late in their lives associating smoking with lung cancer (Richard Doll b. 1912, Ernst Wynder b. 1922), magnifying the dangers of passive smoking (George Godber b. 1908), and introducing the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (Gro Harlem Brundtland b. 1939).
They also succeeded in spawning a second generation of antismokers, largely by exaggerating the dangers of smoking. The new post-war generation of antismokers had not experienced peak smoking prevalence, but they had been subjected to decades of antismoking propaganda from the first-generation antismokers, which they had completely absorbed.
Most of the first generation of antismokers are now dead. And so the original driving forces are now gone. But the antismoking epidemic they started has now reached levels undreamt by Richard Doll or Ernst Wynder (both of whom disassociated themselves from the passive smoking scare). It has become a predatory, socially divisive, and economically destructive monster. If it is not suppressed soon, it will suppress all human life and civilisation.
And the current antismoking epidemic is therefore likely to prove to be a formative experience for a nascent new generation of anti-antismokers. Many of the readers of this blog will fall into that category. And if history repeats itself, they will spend the next 50 years tirelessly working to undo all the work done by Doll, Wynder, Godber, and Brundtland (as well as Glantz, Banzhaf, Repace, et al). These antismokers will all have been thoroughly discredited and demonised by about 2050, and we (those of us who are still alive) will witness the Final Solution to the Antismoker Problem.
Unless of course anti-antismoking itself becomes as predatory and destructive as antismoking hysteria has now become.
Frank Davis 
If history is any predictor of future history,its already on its way out the anti-smoking movement itself. We must look at where the movement is today and where it gets any new legislation passed.
In areas that are owned and in control of by the anti-smoking political hacks themselves.
In all things they have their birth,their life and their death……………….
Anti-smokings life was simply to get smoking prohibiton laws in place. After that they went into to downward spiral as their demands became INSANITY,THEIR CLAIMS OF HARM BEYOND any realm Hollywood sci-fi writers could even create…………
Insanity breeds Insanity until even the Insane no longer believe or even blindly follow.
They’ve passed their Life now they die as all things do.
“THEIR CLAIMS OF HARM BEYOND any realm Hollywood sci-fi writers could even create”
Is it coincidence that, shortly after their claims went from just plain weird to beyond weird, IOW when they launched the second-hand smoke scare back in the mid-70s, the spoof-SF movie “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” (1978) came out?
The scriptwriters simply picked another plant out of the nightshade family (Solanaceae)!
Film critic Leonard Maltin wrote that this movie “cracks its one joke and then beats it to death for another 85 minutes” but the ‘killer tobacco’ joke has been going on for six decades!
why is it that antismoking prevalence has peaked 70 years after peak smoking prevalence?
The Antismoking Epidemic is linked far more closely to the lung cancer epidemic than to tobacco use, witness this excerpt from a piece by Dr. Geoffrey Myddleton “The Cigarette – Enemy or Red Herring?” that Rose linked to last Saturday:
“In England and Wales male lung cancer deaths have risen from 15 per million in 1918 to 1,018 per million in 1968, an increase of 6,687 per cent. Cigarette smoking in 1918 was 4.2 lbs per adult male, and 7.1 lbs in 1968, a rise of 69 %. Tobacco smoking of all kinds was the same in both years – 8.8 lbs. The idea that this 68-fold increase in lung cancer deaths, coming to over 460,000 in the 50 years, can have been caused merely by one smoker in three switching from pipe to cigarettes, is utterly absurd.”
http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/ybf68d00/pdf
I’m glad you note that Wynder trashed the whole shs business because he did. Agree too that the Repace/ Banzaf/ Glantz gen grew up in a majority smoking world and just hated it. I also think they hated their own smoking parents and their anti- smokerism is a twisted form of payback.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure that an anti- anti gen is aborning. By now there are too few smokers, and too few of those are interested or informed enough to fight back. There might be the first flutters of an anti- nanny state gen, but then as long as they can smoke pot and get free contraceptives, they may not make too much of a fuss and meanwhile the bans, the propaganda, and the cultural stigma against smokers continues apace. What they know is that smokers are booted off campus, don’t get hired, have a hard time finding an apartment, a bar, a hotel room, and likely that the sexy girls — maybe even guys?– on match.com are probably specifying ” nonsmoker” if they don’t simply take it for granted that nobody smokes.
Not quite non- sequitur: I sat for a while smoking in a non- public park between appointments today. A fairly attractive 40’ish woman was walking by on a nearby path and smoking. I presume she either thought it was a smoker-free park or that she’d attract hand- wavers, but at any rate, seeing my smoke she came over and sat down. She then unsolicitedly confided that she really smoked very little and never smoked in the street so as not to offend others and because it exposed her “shame” . To which I responded Oh for God’s sake, told there was nothing to be ashamed of, not to let crazy phobics define her and if she wanted to know how crazy they were, she should go home and google third hand smoke which might help her realize that secondhand smoke was just as much crap.. The idea that it WAS crap had never occurred to her and when she left, she thanked me for making her ” feel better.” I tell this because for the most part, that’s who we’re talking about when we talk about Smokers.
To few smokers……………That truly depends on where you live in my neck of the woods as much as 50% of a given county can be smokers. Within 10 miles of me theres at least 10,000 acres of tobacco growing in fields right now. Just up the road theres 15 tobacco barns 5 stories tall capable of holding over a million pounds of tobacco at one time in each of them……………Tobacco isn’t going anywhere its always been a cash crop and always will be. Like any product its a commodity that’s use goes up and down no matter what the climate may be.
Frank, re smoking rates in the UK. I ran into this source about a month ago. It goes back to the 1970’s.
Apparently the “Tobacco Research Council” (funded by tobacco companies) commissioned “Research Services Limited” to perform surveys of the UK public’s smoking habits. They also gathered historical information, some of it dating back to the 19th century. The result is 100 + pages, mostly of numbers.
I don’t know quite what to make of it, so I’ll pass it on to brighter minds.
Below is a sample.
http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/opd92a99
For anyone interested, there’s lots more in the Legacy Library. Do an advanced search for “research services” (entire file) plus “statistics of smoking” (title, and note OF, not ON).
Last night I caught the second episode of “The Men Who Made Us Spend” which looks at how fear has been used to make us buy stuff! (It is available on BBC i-Player – http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p01zxm9b )
According to the programme (well, my interpretation) the phenomenal rise in health/cleanliness ‘freakery’ is directly related to the way certain products are advertised. For example, anti bacterial soap is actually no better than regular soap, but Carex is now the biggest soap brand in the UK. (Pfizer comes under the microscope as well.) As the programme relates, the advertisers were accentuating our fear of death/illness.
All of this began to take hold in the early 90’s and possibly provides an explanation for the exponential rise in anti-smoking prevalence as shown in your graph by producing a fertile ground for people’s fears of death.
I’d recommend you watch the episode and, although it doesn’t mention smoking, it presents an interesting case for the reasons behind the rise of people being so ‘health’ conscious!
There seems to be a lot less B.O. about than there was in the ’70s, so the continual badgering by the admen paid off in that sense (of smell).
Maybe the fear was an irrational one (aren’t most of them?) whereby the fearer feared being anything less than meadow fresh with a hint of citrus.
I never buy antibacterial stuff, which is possibly why I have never had a serious illness caused by bacteria. I grew up before its widespread use, so my body knows how to make antibodies and also, I benefit from the good bacteria because they haven’t been lined up and shot with a spray bottle, but are you saying the products don’t work – or do you mean the ‘normal’ mass-produced products are also antibacterial?
As for the antismoking. There’s more going on. There’s a crusade against smokers/smoking and as we know, it has nothing to do with health. The UN’s FCTC has made it a global phenomenon and in the UK the government funds ASH and enacts bans and invents new ‘dangers’ and messes with packaging and makes ‘doctors’ try to bully patients into ‘smoking cessation’ products and courses, because they’re under orders and the practice makes money out of ‘quitters’. The P.T.B. have deliberately dehumanised smokers and it rubs off on more people, so that even smokers, like Harley’s woman in the park, are apologetic and try to hide themselves and aren’t even aware that there’s a wider agenda and a whole lot of fake ‘science’.
P.S. Hollywood has been blamed for a rise in women smoking. Don’t know any stats.
“Hollywood has been blamed for a rise in women smoking”
That is because a rise in women smoking has been blamed for the never-ending increase in women lung cancer. In those countries (UK, Benelux, US) where rates for men have decreased, figures that show a decline in male smoking will be used instead. They’re never short of ‘divining signs to satisfy the hoax’.
or do you mean the ‘normal’ mass-produced products are also antibacterial?
Oh yes! – the normal soap is just as anti bacterial as the ‘anti bacterial’ brand!
My main point was that the advertisers ability to focus on people’s fears of ill-health/death with resounding success in extra sales for themselves must surely have been used by the anti smoking fraternity to make their message more appealing and effective…as described in Frank’s graph in the main post!
According to the programme (well, my interpretation) the phenomenal rise in health/cleanliness ‘freakery’ is directly related to the way certain products are advertised. […] As the programme relates, the advertisers were accentuating our fear of death/illness.[…]
In my view this plays only a minor role in order to increase demand on superfluous products to buy. At the bottom of all this is this government sponsored health fearmongering and advertisers + companies profit.
All of this began to take hold in the early 90’s and possibly provides an explanation for the exponential rise in anti-smoking prevalence as shown in your graph by producing a fertile ground for people’s fears of death.
Actually, it began much earlier. I do remember overhearing a man telling another that “…. and then, they (whoever the man meant I had missed!) want to ban smoking. This isn’t going to happen!!!”
This was in 1975, Germany. To me, banning smoking was a ridiculous idea!
“They” were lobbying back then, mostly in the US.
Some industries just jumped onto the anti-smokers’ bandwagon, pulled by gullible politicians.
Quite often I think that all politicians are selfimportant shallow and gullible failures when it comes to a proper job.
The point I was trying to make (albeit somewhat inelegantly) is that the advertisers (of other products) were targeting people’s deepest fears (death and illness) which added to the overall health consciousness that is around us now making anti smoking an easier sell.
Also, I’m sure that the anti smokers took heed of the lessons to more effectively promote their message!
“Barbecues are a precarious enough social occasion when they occur in the privacy of a back garden, with smoke and chatter billowing across fences, potentially inciting the ire of neighbours.
In communal spaces like parks – where one ratepayer’s carefree al fresco culinary get-together is another’s smoke-belching, grass-scorching, noisy, litter-strewn, anti-social nuisance – the capacity for confrontation and awkwardness is even greater.
Around the world this summer, civic leaders are grappling with a shared dilemma. In the New York borough of Brooklyn, there are calls to ban grilling in Prospect Park in an effort to rid it of “toxic fumes”.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-28230370
“potentially inciting the ire of neighbours”.
“an effort to rid it of “toxic fumes”.”
Where do they find these people?
Guess where Kentuckys Nazis are heading to start off this years anti-smoking drive!
The Political BAR-B-CUE at the Funny Farm my nickname for it!
Its where traditionally Kentuckys politicians go to start off political campaigns and agenda driven dribble. Anybody that’s anyone goes every year……….
Anti-Smoking Campaign Gears Up for 2015 Push
Anti-smoking advocates are gearing up for another push to pass a statewide smoking ban with a statewide tour leading up to August’s Fancy Farm political picnic.
………………..
I followed them at a couple of their stops 2 years ago…………….
Truly in Kentucky the ban movement is dead and its time Louisville and Bowling green along with Lexington quickly moved to REPEAL those unlawful laws from the books and disband their anti-smoking goon squads that cost the taxpayers money to operate, all for the insignificant act of smoking in a privately owned property! Its the owners choise not prohibitionists in governments job.
We aren’t children and the government does not own the people,the people own the government and its high time they kicked people like Susan Westrom and a few others in her click on the health board out of office and replaced them with people who believe in freedom and the rights of Individuals and Property owners to be safe in their right and their property from government intervention!
Its obvious too that political will for smoking bans has lost all political support as even non-smokers across the nation and in the world are against these draconian laws.
The last time these prohibitionists cruised the state NOBODY SHOWED UP AT THEIR SO CALLED STOPS! They had to bring their own hoorah squad for the cameras……………….
…potentially inciting the ire of neighbours.
In the 80s, I had a semi in West London, near Ladbroke Grove, where I would regularly have BBQs and friends round. My neighbour, a thoroughly unpleasant, bigoted killjoy, on realising I was doing a BBQ, would light his garden brazier and throw plastic and rubber in it, in an attempt to stink me out.
I now realise that he must have been an anti-smoker. He displayed all the nastiness, all the bullying tendencies and all the self-righteousness so amply manifested in the Tobacco Control lobby. He fitted the profile perfectly.
Off topic. I don’t normally post links to British media stories because I figure Frank will already have seen them. This one, however, was too good to resist. It’s about the danger of smoke from barbeques in public parks. (There’s a “toxic fumes” link to a New York Daily News story about people demanding a ban on barbeques in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park.) All of which proves that the current population of the US and the UK contain more than a few seriously deranged hypochondriacs.
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28230370
And I see Yvonne posted this before I did.
Mike those BBQ stories are the perfect place to fight by comparison to the smoking bans.
Barbecues poison the air with toxins and could cause cancer, research suggests.
A study by the French environmental campaigning group Robin des Bois found that a typical two-hour barbecue can release the same level of dioxins as up to 220,000 cigarettes.
Dioxins are a group of chemicals known to increase the likelihood of cancer.
The figures were based on grilling four large steaks, four turkey cuts and eight large sausages.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3106039.stm
Never let an opportunity pass to strike at the Nazis
Hospital smoking affecting patients
Tuesday 22 July 2014
SMOKERS who defy a hospital ban have been warned they are making dialysis patients ill after lighting up outside the renal unit at Raigmore Hospital, Inverness.
Patients complain that the fumes are making them sick and more unwell. Security staff are now reminding people of the no-smoking policy.
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/health/hospital-smoking-affecting-patients.24817682?utm_source=www.heraldscotland.com&utm_medium=RSS%20Feed&utm_campaign=Scottish%20Health%20News
I posted this but it wont ever get published
The anti-smoking nazis PSYCHOSIS has been studied and found non-harmful and they can seek treatment!
Toxicol Rev. 2003;22(4):235-46.
Idiopathic environmental intolerance: Part 1: A causation analysis applying Bradford Hill’s criteria to the toxicogenic theory.
Staudenmayer H, Binkley KE, Leznoff A, Phillips S.
Source
Behavioral Medicine, Multi-Disciplinary Toxicology, Treatment and Research Center, Denver, Colorado 80222, USA. hstaudenmayer@comcast.net
Abstract
Idiopathic environmental intolerance (IEI) is a descriptor for a phenomenon that has many names including environmental illness, multiple chemical sensitivity and chemical intolerance. Toxicogenic and psychogenic theories have been proposed to explain IEI. This paper presents a causality analysis of the toxicogenic theory using Bradford Hill’s nine criteria (strength, consistency, specificity, temporality, biological gradient, biological plausibility, coherence, experimental intervention and analogy) and an additional criteria (reversibility) and reviews critically the scientific literature on the topic. The results of this analysis indicate that the toxicogenic theory fails all of these criteria. There is no convincing evidence to support the fundamental postulate that IEI has a toxic aetiology; the hypothesised biological processes and mechanisms are implausible.
…
Blowback over smoking
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Posted: Tuesday, July 22, 2014 1:30 am
By J.D. Mullane
A series of searing scoldings saturates my crowded correspondence from readers displeased with my criticism of an area hospital that won’t hire smokers.
“You stink, like smokers,” said a disgusted woman. It was downhill from there. The blowback was so swift and severe, you might think I had joked that soccer is a sport for whiny underwear models.
As a former two-packs-a-day smoker, I don’t defend smoking; I just don’t get hyper-emotional over it. One guy seethed: “You gotta be kidding me, man. If it wasn’t for that (expletive deleted) paper, I don’t know where you’d be working. You’re really, really a horrible person. You really are. I really do hope that one day I bump into you somewhere. Just to give you a piece of my mind.”
Over smoking?
He called back, leaving another message. The source of his beef was clear:
“When it comes to talking about the president, stop criticizing him. Remember, it’s Bush that put us where we’re at … so please try to remember that and stop getting on Obama, because … he got dropped all this (expletive deleted) from the worst president we ever had.”
Historians may decide Bush was the worst president, but a recent poll of Americans puts Barack Obama at the top, five points above Bush. That’s gotta smart for hope ‘n changers, especially those who believe smokers as unworthy of employment.
Ironic, too, since Obama is a smoker. Or was. Reports conflict. My guess is that after he departs office, the tell-all books will come and we will discover the White House press kept mum, not publishing photos of him smoking aboard Air Force One and such, the way they hid FDR’s wheelchair and JFK’s bimbo dalliances.
A libertarian defended the hospital’s policy: “I don’t welcome restrictions (on hiring smokers), especially with too much government intrusion. But I impart good reason why not hiring smokers should be (considered) everywhere. I worked at a branch of a worldwide (European) company. It was a busy office with the president and three vice presidents. I and another woman worked for all four executives. The woman smoked. She had to leave that office every 20 minutes for a cigarette. The president was also a smoker, but no one dared object (when) he smoked in his office with the door closed. There were six phone lines to be answered, and work for all four executives (had) to be processed. There were times when I felt like Lucy on the chocolate production line. Eventually, for reasons not related to smoking, she was relieved of her position and a new woman was hired. Another smoker. The pattern re-emerged with her as well. I never complained, but eventually her absence from the office was noticed and she was also replaced.
“It is unfair to other workers when smokers take so many breaks. An unnecessary burden is placed upon employees when others are feeding their (nicotine) addiction.”
A boss sets the tone in every office, and the tone in yours was smokers are welcome. It is not a crime. Tobacco is legal. By the way, you worked for a European company, but in Europe everyone smokes everywhere. There is no American-style hysteria over there about smoking.
There were a few who agreed with my take, like this: “Good one. Soon they will want a weigh-in for heavy people.”
The most shamed and picked-on class of people are the obese. It won’t be long before carrying a few extra pounds will be the difference between getting the job call or not. It won’t stop there. Eventually, religion and political views will be used by employers as to who is hired.
These already are de facto to determine who is hired and tenured in American colleges. Ask the chair of any sociology or psychology department how many conservatives or openly observant Catholics, evangelical Christians or Jews are on staff. You will hear crickets.
Conformity of thought, lifestyle and belief is required in our neo-progressive era.
http://www.burlingtoncountytimes.com/news/columnists/jd-mullane/blowback-over-smoking/article_db5fd3cf-f348-52bd-ace1-51ae1dcc97e1.html
The proposed beach ban, which would also apply to all state parks, is designed as an expansion of
the 2005 New Jersey Smoke-Free Air Act, which prohibits smoking in indoor public spaces and workplaces. Advocates say the ban will help deglamorize smoking in the eyes of youngsters, improve the health of those exposed to secondhand smoke, and reduce littering and water pollution.
But it’s also viewed as an unwarranted infringement on the rights of private citizens who say they’ve been unfairly demonized. Smokers’ rights proponents say the health effects of secondhand smoke have been greatly exaggerated and that bans have hurt businesses such as restaurants and bars.
“It went too far when they banned smoking in restaurants and bars. We’re beyond too far. We’re into lunacy,” says Audrey Silk, founder of the New York City-based Smokers Against Smoker Harassment (CLASH). “None of this has anything to do with the protection of others. The whole secondhand smoke argument was created as a tool to manage smokers — not smoke.”
http://www.nj.com/inside-jersey/index.ssf/2014/07/slow_burn_smokers_likely_to_see_rights_extinguished_on_all_jersey_beaches.html
More likely the reason they became anti-smokers (unlike the vast majority of their peer group) is because there was a career opportunity. It was offered by the oligarchy with their hands on the nation’s tax dollars. This oligarchy is as fascist as their supposed enemies. They believe that individuals are the property of the state (meaning themselves). They want to control everybody’s personal lives, so they created a system of fraudulent pseudo-science to manufacture pretexts for them to do so. And nothing is more worthless than imagining that all you have to do is sit back and wait for mysterious cycles of history to fix everything for you.
Who is waiting for history to fix the problem………….That’s why we are at it everyday.
If human nature was changeable history would never repeat……………Human nature doesn’t change we all still want what we want and we will have it. People will always try and control others as they always have and people will fight back to regain their freedom.
Political movements always die………………anti-smoking is no different.
Besides Carol governments most lucrative and constant revenue is tobacco revenues.
Why did prohibition end.
Loss of revenues,enforcement costs etc etc. It doesn’t take long for even politicians to already know the claimed medical costs are all BS to start with. There is no savings from quit hotlines or quitting. All there is, is lost revenues to bootleggers selling a product at a cheaper cost.
Thursday, November 21, 2013
Australia: Tobacco Control and Bootlegger Paradise
Australia is the darling of anti-tobacco extremists. They tout that country as the model for draconian cigarette regulation and taxation. Australia imposed mandatory plain packaging last December, and exorbitant excise taxes have raised the price of a pack of cigarettes to 16 Australian dollars (AUD).
A new report (here) from KPMG tracks the effect of these policies on smoking prevalence and consumption. The unintended consequences remind one of America’s Prohibition Era fiasco.
KPMG compares Australia’s exorbitant per-pack prices with those of other countries in the region (all in AUD), including Cambodia (1.12), Vietnam (1.08), Indonesia (1.43), Thailand (3.07) and Papua New Guinea (5.37). It comes as no surprise that these differences have created a huge illicit market in Australia, accounting for about 13% of all cigarette consumption.
The Aussie black market offers smokers an array of smuggled products. Counterfeit cigarettes are inferior products manufactured offshore and packaged to resemble popular brands. KPMG also identifies a type of contraband cigarette called “illicit white” which is produced specifically for smuggling. One such brand, Manchester, is so popular that it has a market share of 1.3%. In 2012, Manchester was only found in Sydney and Melbourne; this year it was available in 13 of the 16 cities surveyed by KPMG.
I discussed earlier this year how prohibitive policies and prices in New York (population 20 million) have cost the state a quarter billion dollars that wound up in criminal hands (here). In Australia (population 23 million), the toll is larger: KPMG estimates that the government has lost $1 billion in excise taxes to the black market.
In their popular book Freakonomics Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner argue that “Morality…represents the way that people would like the world to work – whereas economics represents how it actually does work.” (emphasis in original)
Australia’s treatment of smoking as a moral issue has resulted in Prohibition-Era tobacco policies and real-world economic consequences.
World Atlas: More People Smoking Cigarettes than Ever
There are more people smoking now than ever before, despite health warnings and the rising price of cigarettes. In 1980, 4,453 billion cigarettes went up in smoke, which increased to 6,319 billion in 2010. By 2020, you can expect to find nearly seven billion cigarette ends littering the world.
Top of the charts in terms of nicotine addiction are Asia and Australia, which is where 57 percent of cigarettes are smoked today.
via NYC CLASH
Last updated: July 22, 2014 3:57 a.m.
Judge: FDA can’t use tobacco panel menthol report
MICHAEL FELBERBAUM | Associated Press
RICHMOND, Va. – The Food and Drug Administration can’t use an advisory panel’s 2011 report on menthol cigarettes because its members had conflicts of interest, a federal judge ruled Monday.
While the agency has since conducted an independent review on the public health impact of menthol cigarettes, the ruling could hinder the FDA’s ability to defend any future regulation of the minty smokes.
U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon in Washington ordered the FDA on Monday to reconstitute the tobacco panel and barred the agency from using its older report on menthol cigarettes.
Cigarette makers Lorillard Inc. and Reynolds American Inc. sued the agency in 2011, alleging conflicts of interest and bias by several members of the panel tasked with advising the FDA on tobacco-related issues.
They argued that the panel failed to meet the federal requirements that committee members should be fairly balanced and not inappropriately influenced by any special interest. The lawsuit specifically alleged that some committee members had conflicts of interest because they were paid expert witnesses in anti-tobacco lawsuits and had financial ties to pharmaceutical companies that make smoking-cessation products.
The agency, however, argued that the panel met federal standards and that the cigarette makers’ “alleged injuries are entirely speculative.”
In his order Monday, Leon said the FDA erred in determining that the members didn’t have conflicts of interest and therefore, the agency’s appointment of those members was “arbitrary and capricious,” and tainted both the panel and its work.
“Conflicts of interest – whether actual or perceived – undermine the public’s confidence in the agency’s decision-making process and render its final product suspect, at best,” he wrote.
Dr. Jonathan Samet is the only remaining member of the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee challenged in the lawsuit. Samet, director of the University of Southern California’s Institute for Global Health and former director of the Institute for Global Tobacco Control at Johns Hopkins University, serves as the panel’s chair. He did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.
Representatives with the FDA, Lorillard and Reynolds American did not immediately provide comment following the late Monday ruling.
In 2013, the FDA’s independent review concluded that menthol cigarettes likely pose a greater public health risk than regular cigarettes but did not make a recommendation on whether to limit or ban them. The agency’s evaluation concluded that there is little evidence to suggest that menthol cigarettes are more or less toxic or contribute to more disease risk to smokers than regular cigarettes. However, there is adequate data to suggest that menthol use is likely associated with increased smoking initiation by younger people and that menthol smokers have a harder time quitting, the review said.
The 2011 FDA advisory panel report, which was mandated under the 2009 law giving the agency the authority to regulate tobacco, made many of the same findings, and said that removing menthol cigarettes from the market would benefit public health.
A menthol ban or other restriction on the flavored cigarettes would fall heavily on Greensboro, North Carolina-based Lorillard, whose Newport brand is the top-selling menthol cigarette in the U.S., with more than 37 percent of the market. Last week, Winston-Salem, North Carolina-based Reynolds American, the maker of Camel cigarettes, announced plans to buy Lorillard for $25 billion, creating a powerhouse in menthol cigarettes, which are becoming a bigger part of the business.
http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20140722/NEWS10/140729851/1005/NEWS10
Carol looks like Sammet got his Click tossed into the gutter by a judge!
Dr. Jonathan Samet is the only remaining member of the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee challenged in the lawsuit. Samet, director of the University of Southern California’s Institute for Global Health and former director of the Institute for Global Tobacco Control at Johns Hopkins University, serves as the panel’s chair. He did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.
Paul Austin Audrey, all the anti-smoker mutts are whining and crying about this. You should check out Glantz’s blog where he’s defending his co-conspirator, Samet as ‘impecicable’?!!!!! Yeah, riiiiiight.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/111253694071/10152284203334072/?comment_id=10152284204624072¬if_t=like
My street just got mobbed by BHF fundraisers out in force, filled with confidence of a warm welcome.
The one who knocked at my door got one.
I told him that I knew what part of the money raised goes to fund and that he would not be getting any from me.
Fags over family? Smoker’s choice sparks hate from loved ones
February 27, 2013
“Nearly a third of smokers surveyed admit their children or family hates them smoking and a quarter enjoy smoking less nowadays because they feel more guilty about it.”
“Our Associate Medical Director, Dr Mike Knapton, said: “These figures reveal the emotional burden smokers endure by feeling guilty about the impact their addiction has on family life and their finances.”
http://www.bhf.org.uk/media/news-from-the-bhf/no-smoking-day1.aspx
The British Heart Foundation’s anti-smoking campaign is nonsense
“So it was with expletive-flecked incredulity that I read BHF’s latest pronouncement – that smokers “cost British businesses £8.7bn a year in lost productivity”. The average smoker apparently takes four fag breaks a day of nearly 10 minutes each, according to research commissioned (for how much?) by the charity. Yeah, plus those shiftless smokers take nearly a whole sick day more a year than your non-smoking employees, sneers the BHF loftily to its new corporate mates. The whole thing has the tone of a CBI press release.
It’s nonsense anyway. Nobody’s productive 100% of the time. We gossip. We have cups of tea. We sometimes take a newspaper into the toilet, as my own anecdotal workplace research reveals.
Some people will say that anything is permissible in the drive to eradicate smoking, and they’re wrong. Of course we all accept that in these austere times charities will be more strident, more competitive, more intrusive. We’re used now to the idea of a charity following us into the bathroom: “Blimey mate you’re carrying a bit of weight, you want to watch that, no good for your heart is it?”
And into the garden: “Still smoking, I see. Oh you have children? Then you’re killing yourself and murdering them!” We’re used to charity sub-contractors accosting us on the street with their aggressive guilt-trippery.
But really, following us into work? Then ignoring us altogether and going straight to the boss’s office like some time-and-motion consultant, some quisling nark? Calling us an economic liability? That doesn’t seem very bloody charitable to me.”
http://www.theguardian.com/society/shortcuts/2014/mar/04/british-heart-foundation-anti-smoking-ads-cigarette-breaks
Smokers struck by dripping fat ad – 2004
“An anti-smoking advert showing fat dripping from the end of a cigarette hit home with smokers.
The British Heart Foundation (BHF) ran the advertisement on the internet, TV, billboards, pub beer mats and in newspapers in January.
A survey for the BHF has now shown 90% of smokers recognise the dripping fat image.
And 83% of people polled said it made them give further consideration to quitting the habit.
The adverts were intended to show smokers the effect that smoking can have on atheroma – the build up of fatty deposits in the arteries.”
“The TV commercial showed fatty deposits being squeezed from the artery of a 32-year-old smoker and depicted a group of smokers in a pub brushing fat dripping from their cigarettes off their clothes.”
http: //news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3579313.stm
And you can pay for your own zebrafish
Heart failure research to find cure using zebrafish
http: //www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12322819
But he said the research will require £50m in investment to make this a reality over the next 10 years. The charity hopes to raise the funds though donations.
I have a much better idea: BHF only needs to loose the anti-smokers.
My street just got mobbed by BHF fundraisers out in force, filled with confidence of a warm welcome.
The one who knocked at my door got one.
Thanks for the warning!!! I have noted an increase in the white “donation” bags (amongst others also from BHF) being pushed through my letterbox. Eagerly awaiting the BHF fundraiser flashmob!!!
This reminds me – After a particularly bad day I had to pick up a few things from a big company. I instantly spotted the CRUK begging tin and without thinking I muttered: “they are not getting a penny from me the lying little sh*ts”. I expected to be told off by the people around me. They didn’t tell me off, they smiled.
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Well, there is little doubt in my mind that the anti-smoking epidemic caused the obesity epidemic
and that the anti-smoking epidemic was caused mainly by the tobacco control industry and it’s allies.
http://alternativeanalysis.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/tobacco-control-will-make-you-fat.html
“If it is not suppressed soon, it will suppress all human life and civilisation.”
Only those unaware of all the implications and ramifications of this sinister phenomenon would call this an over-statement.
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