Allen Carr: blast from the past
Tuesday, May 29, 2007 
The Independent gave away a two-part booklet by quit smoking guru Allen Carr at the weekend. We can expect a lot more stop smoking articles in the coming weeks because, as we all know, millions of smokers are going to quit (not!) when the smoking ban comes in.
Anyway, it reminded me of my one and only meeting with Carr (left), in Manchester, in January 2004. We were appearing on BBC One's Heaven and Earth Show and after some initial frostiness (on his part) we got on OK. He was quite different from the smooth-talking salesman I had imagined. He was like an elderly, slightly curmudgeonly, relative. Although he had given up his 100-a-day habit 20 years earlier, he was still addicted to smoking, albeit in a different way. Apart from their house in Malaga, which they clearly adored, he and his wife found it difficult to talk about anything else, on and off screen.
Interestingly, Allen Carr was opposed to banning smoking in the workplace. Far from helping people quit, he argued, it makes things worse because heavy smokers have such a craving for nicotine that when they finish work they 'binge smoke', rapidly devouring one cigarette after another.
He was also fiercely independent. He had no time for Big Tobacco but was equally critical of Big Pharma and groups such as ASH. Last year, before he died, aged 72, he wrote a letter to Tony Blair in which he claimed that his cessation clinics enjoyed a success rate of 53% after 12 months. The fee, he wrote, is £220, and if smokers don’t quit, it costs nothing. In contrast:
It costs the taxpayer more than £400 to treat a smoker at the NHS Stop Smoking Clinics which use nicotine products. According to ASH they achieve a success rate of 20% after 12 months; ie a FAILURE rate of 80%. Your government, aided by the medical establishment, the NHS, ASH and QUIT, under the powerful influence of the pharmaceutical industry, is pouring hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money each year into the pockets of the pharmaceutical companies which are, in effect, competing with the tobacco industry to supply the nicotine addicted market and perpetuate nicotine addiction.
Full letter HERE.
Smoking
Reader Comments (7)
Exactly. This will only be a source of confusion or surprise to those who are still living under the fairy tale notion that the State is your friend and is there to help you. It is there to reward the friends of those who have the power and to punish their enemies. It is merely a coincidence when these things benefit anyone who is not a part of the ruling class.
You've got to admit that the Hypocrisyectomy was a complete success though.
Big Pharma: "Dont use their nicotine. Use ours! It is equally addicting!"
Big Pharma: "Our products arent lethal! Forget Thalidomide, forget Vioxx, forget Zyban! Thats ancient history!"
Big Pharma: "Forget Allen Carr's more successful method! We cant make any money out of THAT!"
And so on and so forth....
Exactly Colin
When Carr died, I heard an ASH rep on Radio 4, and she just kept repeating the point that his was a commercial operation designed to make him money. She turned the interview into an advert for NHS Stop-Smoking. She wouldn't acknowledge his success-rate ["not independently verified"], or respond to cross-questioning concerning the massive failure-rate of NHS SS. She stuck to the script, nu-labor style, and actually sounded most vitriolic towards the man whose death had just been announced.
There were suggestions from the presenter that what did for him were the years spent "passive smoking" with people smoking in his clinics. Obviously, she didn't have a problem with that.
I tried debating with the antis on the R4 PM blog, but ended up defending the usual "smokers are stupid/smelly/inconsiderate/murderers" pap. I was informed that I was obviously a stooge for Big Tobacco. I was told that there were More Important Issues I should direct my energies into. Sig Heil. So I illustrated how it was not in fact "stupid" to make one's own assessment of risk according to one's own research and live by that, but was, by definition, stupid to have such faith in a government-sponsored orthodoxy without even listening to counter-argument.
Despite some of them acknowledging that, well, maybe they hadn't been aware of, for example, the manner in which all those phoney "deaths from SHS" figures had been cooked up, and for which vested interests they had been created, it was declared by one-liner concensus that I had "lost" the "debate". Without any attempt at substantiation; I was a smoker, so I must be In The Wrong.
For the record, the one friend who wanted to give up cigarettes, who successfully used the Carr book and hasn't now smoked a cig in three years... is the most tobacco-tolerant non-smoker I know. Which, perhaps, illustrates why those who break the habit without breaking their own nicotine-addictions go on feeling envious towards those of us who will not be made to feel ashamed of our pleasure.
I read in todays Daily Mail that surgery will not be given to smokers. will they apply the same rule to alcoholics and drug abusers who repeatedly end up hospital for treatment.i know this to be true because i worked in a hospital for fuorteen years.
As for the litter problem go near any school and its disgusting they cant get pupils to clear up their mess
Well, I haven't used the NHS in 20 years, for anything. Yet whatever tax I've paid on tobacco in this country has been helping to prop the NHS up.
What say we, who have put more money into the NHS than the majority of non-smokers, and who are now being denied treatment, put in a claim for a massive refund?
That way, we can all get private medical insurance or pay for alternative therapies, the non-smoking public will realise what heros we've been as they see the NHS crumble into the ground and then they can either absorb the resulting tax deficit, or beg the government to treat smokers in a manner more befitting of their true contribution to the welfare of the majority.
I believe the resulting refund/deficit would be about £9 billion - is that correct?
Audrey Lewis wants to make sure that smoking is banned in house of commons.see how they lkie it (not a lot is my guess)