ASH: a little technical difficulty
Thursday, February 19, 2009 Having been forced to concede, in a letter to The Grocer (26 January 2009), that the introduction of a display ban in Iceland only "coincided" with a decline in youth smoking (ie there is no direct link), ASH has now made a further confession.
Responding to shadow health minister Mike Penning's post on ConservativeHome earlier this week, a note on ASH Daily News (17 February) states:
"ASH makes claims of causation with great care and for a number of technical reasons, including the fact that display bans were part of a range of interventions, it is not possible to definitely claim causation at this stage."
Read into this what you will, but it's pretty clear to me. For all their blustering, there is no evidence that display bans reduce youth smoking rates. Yet that, we are told, is the primary reason why government wants to introduce such a policy.
PS. Only ASH could refer to the truth as "technical reasons". How inconvenient!!
Reader Comments (8)
Without wishing to inadvertently blow mine or anyone else's trumpet, many individuals have taken the trouble to research the facts and can back them up with the URL or documents that prove what ASH is saying is wrong.
With forums like Forest the information is disseminated and ASH are left floundering.
I fail to believe ASH have turned over a new leaf on integrity.
I would love to be able to make a comment on Ash's 'little technical difficulty' but I'm afraid they've succeeded in blowing my brains at last.
I just cant get my head around the meaning of the words like 'causation with great care', 'technical reasons' and 'range of interventions'. In the name of jesus, what are they talking about.
Is there a law out there or some watch dog agency against the bastardisation of the english language?
Ann, you need the CPS's Lexicon of Contemporary Newspeak, 2008 edition. It helps with the translation. Link-addy is to pdf file:
http://www.cps.org.uk/cpsfile.asp?id=1060
Thanks Basil for that link. I'm glad to know that someone has copped on to the 'consultants' and govt spin doctors that use words of loose meaning and lack of clarity for their hidden agenda purposes.
Looks like we're heading towards Babel.
It's right and proper that ASH should be held accountable for everything that they say and do.
But wouldn't it be nice if Simon Clarke were to expect the same high standards of the tobacco industry?
But we all know that's never going to happen - they pay his rent, after all. So they get away with carrying on marketing their products to children and generally treating their customers with unmitigated contempt. And as far as Simon Clarke is concerned, that's just hunky-dory. After all, he's not a smoker, so why should he care?
With all due respect Mr Hammond, I never understand what people mean when they say that cigarettes are marketed to children. This is a product that, aside from having distinct pack designs, has no advertising in the UK: it also has half of the front of the pack taken up with a warning that essentially says, "Use this product and you will die!". And it's placed behind the shopkeeper with a person and four feet between you and the product. If all of that adds up to such effective advertising then I think you should tell some other companies about this magical way out of the current retail sales slump!
Alan, do you think you're actually telling us anything? Forest are open about their funding. Shame your lot aren't.
Mr. Hammond, if ASH were held accountable for everything they did or said, as you quite rightly say they should be, then they would be prosecuted for supplying fraudulant information to a Government in order to change a law. This is a serious criminal offence and one that should put them behind bars, where,as far as I'm concerned they should be.