Taking the fight to Labour
Saturday, September 20, 2008 
If Labour MPs won't come to the Forest/Free Society event in Manchester on Tuesday, we'll go to them. The advertisement above appears in the current issue of the New Statesman. The NS is hosting two parties at the Labour conference in Manchester and we have been told that copies of the magazine will be widely available.
If you can't quite make it out, the copy is a quote from an article on The Free Society website by Eamonn Butler, director of the Adam Smith Institute. It reads:
"I don't smoke and I don't care much for smoking, 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."
Full article HERE.
Reader Comments (11)
Simon,
Sorry, I haven't had a chance to read your blog today, so this is unrelated. However, was shown this today:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2008/sep/20/healthandwellbeing1
I think you should have a word with Dr Tom Smith on behalf of Forest... I'm going to send him an email or two too... think everyone else should send him an email giving him their thoughts on the 17% reduction in heart attacks in Scotland.
I've sent one (bit wordy and will probably be ignored as rudeness seems to be the norm these days but ...)
Dr Smith
Re: your Guardian article on 20th September where you stated: "No one could argue against a link between the two (passive smoking and heart attack drops in Scotland)".
Unfortunately, you couldn't be more wrong. There are plenty who can argue, and with solid scientific and statistical data to back up their reasoning.
An expert in the field of junk statistics in this matter, Chris Snowdon, presents a thorough debunking of the study, conducted by Jill Pell, to which you refer. The full text is contained in the link, which I believe you should read in the interests of impartiality, presuming you wish to be impartial of course, but to quote just one part:
"Pell and her team picked their own timeframe, excluded four crucial months, used a selective sample group and studied a different medical condition to the one studied in the paper that it was attempting to verify. By so doing, they exaggerated a pre-existing downward trend in acute coronary syndrome and arbitraily attributed it to a piece of legislation.
This is not science. Using the same techniques I can 'prove' that the Scottish smoking ban led to an increase in skin cancer incidence and a rise in oil prices."
http://www.velvetgloveironfist.com/index.php?page_id=58
The 17% claim regarding heart attack reduction in Scotland following the smoking ban was also thoroughly discredited by the BBC, with a renowned statistician remarking:
"As for the flurry of excitable headlines, what appeared to be hard medical evidence now looks more like over-hasty and over-confident research, coupled with wishful political thinking and uncritical journalism."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7093356.stm
The Times also picked up on this and named the study as one of its "Worst Junk Stats of 2007":
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article3085272.ece
The Spectator have also disagreed and argued against:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/print/the-magazine/features/313756/has-the-smoking-ban-reduced-heart-attacks.thtml
... and even renowned anti-smoking campaigner Michael Siegel has raised significant objections as he believes this non-scientific nonsense is actively harming the Tobacco Control movement (see his blog posts on 13th & 27th September)
http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com/2007_09_01_archive.html
These are just a small sample, a Google search brings up quite a number of respected publications who have also seen through the junk epidemiology behind this political lobbying that poses as scientific fact. So, it would seem that there really ARE very many people who can argue very eloquently against a link between the two, contrary to your statement.
It is also interesting to note that a similar claim about a drop in heart attack rates in Wales following their ban was even more ludicrous as the link below from the BBC shows. So much so that the BBC & The Times, amongst others, didn't fall for it as they presumably realised they had been duped by the previous 'science by press release' and didn't want to be caught out again. As the article below quite correctly observes:
"It's the kind of logic that ought to wilt with embarrassment. In the event, no one even blushed."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7592579.stm
The 'Heart Attack Miracle' tactic is a common ploy by those with a vested interest in tobacco control and really doesn't do anyone any good at all. Each time it is used, wherever in the World, it is quite easily disproved, but the headlines are gained and a myth is propagated and spread by those who fail to investigate further. Sadly, each ever wild claim purely diminishes the credibility of those spreading the lies and could potentially be damaging the public's health by focussing on a pet hate rather than trying to find the real, and not imagined, cause of ailments.
As Oxford research Kitty Little has argued:
"Since the effect of the anti-smoking campaign has been to prevent the genuine cause from being publicly acknowledged, there is a very real sense in which we could say that the main reason for those 30,000 deaths a year from lung cancer is the anti-smoking campaign itself".
http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/diesel_lung_cancer.html
So, to sum up, the answer to the question posed to you in your Guardian article "I don't smoke. My husband smokes in the house but says there's no real evidence that secondhand smoke causes harm.", should arguably been that there is considerable doubt and that studies such as those you have highlighted should be taken with a healthy portion of cynicism and not as some irrevocable proof of the harm of passive smoking.
I would hope that you may reconsider your statement that "no one could argue against ..." and perhaps edit it to say "people are queueing round the block to argue against ...", however, prior experience leads me to believe that you are of a certain mindset and only accept studies with which your point of view agrees.
I sincerely hope I am wrong.
Best Regards
Martin Cullip :-)
I actually meant to comment on this bit but got side-tracked!
"If Labour MPs won't come to the Forest/Free Society event in Manchester on Tuesday, we'll go to them"
I'd say that if Labour MPs won't come to the Forest/Free Society event they may as well kiss any chance of a resurgence in the polls prior to any GE goodbye.
I seem to remember private comments by Labour MPs recognising that "The Smoking Ban is a real problem". It's not by ignoring problems that they go away in politics. They will have to act fast or they will have no chance of regaining the millions of smoker votes by 2010.
Martin, a brilliant email to Dr Smith, well done indeed.
Yes well done Martin: I know myself and at least three other people have written to Dr Smith too.
I suspect that Labour is not open to reason over the smoking ban and I think there are many other grounds for being wary of them in the current climate.
This is even better, no less than from Amanda Sandford of ASH in a letter to the New Scientist on the 1st December 2007, and I quote:
" * 01 December 2007
* From New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
* Deborah Arnott, London, UK
Your editorial and article highlight the dangers of exaggerating the health impact of exposure to second-hand smoke (10 November, p 3 and p 8). ASH (UK) endorses your conclusion that bad science can never be justified. ASH, unlike some organisations, has never asserted that a single 30-minute exposure to second-hand smoke is enough to trigger a heart attack, and we are not aware of any UK health advocates who have done so. What we do say, based on a growing body of evidence, is that repeated exposure to second-hand smoke can damage coronary arteries, which in turn can trigger heart disease.
As a matter of course, we aim to ensure that our work is evidence-based and we would never deliberately distort science to justify a particular campaign."
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg19626320.100
Also Amanda and ASH can also be quoted on this:
"When I interviewed her in 2004, Amanda Sandford of Ash acknowledged unintentionally that much secondary smoking science is unscientific. She said: "A lot of the studies that have been done on passive smoking produce results that are not statistically significant according to conventional analysis."
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/passive-smoking-is-there-convincing-evidence-that-its-harmful-476472.html
I happened upon Dr Tim Smith's column in The Guardian magazine on Saturday. I, too, sent him an e-mail to correct him
As it happens, I have recently received all the Scottish data for acute coronary syndrome between Jan 2004 and Dec 2007 using a FOI request. Written up below, it is clear that there was no impact from the smoking ban:
Scottish miracle: The Final Verdict
There was a debate about a week ago, where people were saying that they would send 'dog ends' in prepaid envelopes to ASH and CRUK. I received a begging letter today from CRUK, but I only sent back the begging part where I stated that I would not help them again until they stopped funding ASH.
I didn't put my name and address on the form, but now wish I did to see if I got a reply.
Excellent post, Martin !
Time to write another e-mail to the British Heart Foundation - one of the most gullible bodies on the planet (sadly).
Has anyone received a reply to their email? I haven't, though I must admit my email wasn't quite as eloquent and considerate as Martin's above... Still that'll teach him for showing me anti-smoking propaganda before I've had my morning coffee and cigarette! ;)
What a load of selfish garbage this organisation is. Please feel free to smoke, to kill yourself slowly, to poison your kids' lungs and to ruin the air of anyone around you.
Nothing makes me smile more to see you addicts huddled around your gas heater (far too kind and a waste of gas) shivering away. I've got an idea - why not stop then you can enjoy your lives (whatever years the carbon monoxide leaves you with) - no you can't - you are weak and pathetic individuals.
You go on about rights - what about the rights of artistes, staff and other unfortunate people who have the strength not to be addicted??
I wish you were denied treatment along with other drug addicts, then you would naturally die off and the world could be a happier place without you lot stinking of fags and whining.