DH deceit exposed - again
Friday, September 11, 2009 
Thanks to Chris Snowdon (left), author of Velvet Glove, Iron Fist, for bringing a report in yesterday's Guardian to my attention. It doesn't make happy reading for the Department of Health. "The government," says the paper, "has been accused of misleading parliament over the cost for retailers of implementing the controversial tobacco display ban."
The paper, no friend of Big Tobacco (or smokers, come to that), reports that:
Internal documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that officials at the Department of Health (DoH) were warned by manufacturers that they had dramatically underestimated how much it would cost retailers to modify their shops to comply with the ban.
The display ban is part of the health bill, which is due to come before parliament in October. Under the proposals, cigarettes would still be available to buy but would be placed out of sight. Customers who wanted to purchase them would be given a list of products for sale ...
Lord Darzi, the health minister, told the House of Lords this year that shops would pay as little as £120 each to install sliding screens in their premises. In a Lords debate in March, the government minister Baroness Thornton said that the cost "could be as little as £120".
The figure was also quoted in government briefing notes sent to peers in the Lords who oppose the display ban. The Conservative party and the Liberal Democrats are both likely to vote against it.
But according to the internal documents, which have been posted on the DoH website, the £120 figure was calculated in January this year after a quote had been obtained from a Canadian manufacturer, 4 Solutions Display. When Phil Beder, the company's vice-president, was made aware of the figure being quoted, he wrote to the DoH and to Ash – an anti-smoking pressure group, which had also quoted the figure in its literature – to ask that it be withdrawn.
Full report HERE.
As it happens, this isn't a new story. Chris exposed the scandal in a report, The Dark Market, which was published on his website last month. He introduced it as follows:
On May 6 2009, the House of Lords debated and approved a Bill that made it a crime to display tobacco products on open view in British shops (thus creating 'the dark market').
One aspect of the debate was the cost to shop-keepers of re-fitting their premises to comply with the law. In December 2008, the government estimated that it would cost the average shop £1,000 to do so. With a vote pending in the House of Lords, it was in the interest of the anti-smoking lobby to convince peers that the cost would be considerably less than that.
This is the story of how they went about it, made possible by the Freedom of Information Act, under which dozens of previously unseen Department of Health e-mails have been made public.
Click HERE to read the full report.
Simon Clark
Following publication of the indispensable Velvet Glove, Iron Fist in June, Chris has launched a blog of the same name. Covering health and liberty in general, it will focus on smoking, alcohol and food in particular. Chris is an outstanding writer and I have no hesitation in recommending it. Click HERE.
If you haven't read the book Chris will be selling (and signing) copies at the Forest stand within The Freedom Zone at the Conservative conference in Manchester (5-6 October). Copies are also available via his website HERE.
Reader Comments (21)
Congratulations to Chris for his merticulous research, I think ASH, Department Of Health and Labour have been caught with their trousers down. His book Velvet Glove, Iron Fist a History Of Anti Smoking is truely breathtaking in its detail.
On page 243 he quotes the then head of ASH Clive (Belgium beer) Bates speaking in 1998. "No one is seriously talking about a complete ban on smoking in pubs and restaurants."
When the Californian smoking ban came in 1998 and Ireland in 2004 I sincerely thought it just would not happen here. How wrong I was. I have been shell shocked since 2007 and from being a mildly self opinionated smoker, I have become a polemic for smokers rights. From 2007 to now we, so far have not stopped losing, e.g. tobacco display bans and be in no doubt ASH and the Department Of Health will be pushing for more restrictions.
It appears I am not alone in being motivated to reverse the tide. I think the pro choice movement has attracted some erudite and articulate people who can challenge most if not all the misleading propoganda that spews forth from ASH et al.
It is a great credit to Taking Liberties and other pro choice blogs that there are focal points for us to exchange information and ideas.
I hope we can turn the tide.
Chris's blog is a must read every morning by moi, not excluding this blog, of course.
A new F2C forum member from Australia has set up a website and has put FOREST on his links page: http://www.smokersrights.com.au/main/page_links.html and I'm sure we all wish this fledgeling site all the best in it's fight for justice from the nanny state mentality.
Dave Atherton said:
"It is a great credit to Taking Liberties and other pro choice blogs that there are focal points for us to exchange information and ideas."
In total agreement Dave.
Caught lying again, "ASH,Labour", tut tut.
Did'nt your parents warn you about lying and the embarrising consequences when you are caught out.
I wrote to Chris Snowdon to personally applaud his research and article. What he exposed was absolutely scandalous and I have no doubt that the revealed corruption would have been carried by every newspaper in the land had 'smoking' not been a kind of 'hands off' issue. As I said to Chris, his article would have made a brilliant splash in Private Eye, who so excellently expose such things as tax avoidance, expense scams and hypocrisy but are oddly quiet about the anti-smoking scandals
Call me cynical, but they say that this refit is going to put some small shops out of business --- and I'm sure the moralistic Guardian is as worried as other newspapers that this would mean less places to sell their product at a time when newspapers sales are falling dramatically.
Could the press have finally woken up to this anti-smoking deceit now that it is, in fact, about to hit them in the pocket as well as the great British tax-payer?
You may be cynical Pat but it is a valid point. If people are forced to go to supermarkets to buy their cigarettes or can buy them illegally on street corners, they will buy a carton at a time. This means no daily trip to the newsagent and if you need to know what is going on in the world there is the internet or the news when you get home.
The anti smokers said the smoking ban would be good for pubs and we know what happened there so the corner shop is seriously at risk. Hopefully newspapers do see this danger as they would be a very powerful weapon in changing public opinion.
For the do-gooders and PC shopkeepers who have already converted in ireland and I've only seen one so far myself, the cost for the new blank screen is 1200euro.
O/T but just heard on the news that a lady has given up smoking - at the age of 102, having smoked for 95 years!
Would ASH's response still be a cretinous, "It's never too late to quit and Mrs X can now look forward to a longer, healthier life."? Quite possibly.
The Guardian should definitely be hidden from view; only being made available from a discrete list of propaganda-flavours.
It is a valid point that most small tobacconists are also newsagents.
When these establishments start to close in large numbers, where are the newspapers going to be sold? Very few people will make a special effort to go to a supermarket to buy newpapers, especially since everything is available on-line.
It is certainly true that if ever my local newsagent closes, I will certainly cancel my Telegraph subscription.
Dave.I like your 1998 mention of their Smoking Ban. The National Anthem contains the words, 'Land of the Free.' Typical of their hypocrisy - surely. They,like our HMG and the EEC criticize the anti - democracy of countries like Iraq.Iran, China and Russia to name but a few, and yet, they dictate to us how we should live our own lives. it reminds me of the saying about 'Kettle and Pot. One Euro Minister once told us that we have had peace in Europe for 40 years, How can we have had peace in Europe when the past 2 decades have been a total dictatorship of our lives. Europe is nothing but Poodle State of the USA. They sneeze and we wipe their noses.
Our HMG dictates to us we have make our incomes known to the State but politicians are obviously exempt.
Just when I was thinking every job and every business should be treated as a blessing along come even more restriction and laws to break them.
This is not a gov. anymore it is a wreaking machine, not one of the three 'main' parties are demanding an end to the destruction of our business, jobs, lives, freedoms and liberties.
Sack the lot and try a fringe party for a fresh start.
The Bible says that 'the truth shall set you free'. Have you seen the restrtictions, self denial and control in fundamental evangelical Christianity?
"The Bible says that 'the truth shall set you free...'.
Strangely enough, timbone, I was thinking along exactly the same lines yesterday. For totally different reasons. The evangelical church prides itself on living by every word in the bible. Born-again Christians forget that the bible did not exist during the life of Christ. It is a political document designed to create fear and oppression. As we understand it, Christ's teachings were quite the opposite - tolerance and love for all mankind.
I think I am physically incapable of telling a lie - sometimes I wish I weren't! My children are the same. I taught them that maxim "The truth shall set you free". because, in the long run, it just makes life easier and more pleasant.
Sadly, if our politicians used it now all it would set them free from is big fat salaries, expenses and pensions. .
"Blessed are the Meek - for they shall inherit the earth."
And a fine bloody job they're doing, too !
I would like to add my little comment thus:-
"Will nobody rid us off these meddlesome priests?" Henry VIII
Seems to me that the new religion is silent these days and their presence is felt in a Creeping Jesus sort of way.
And their name is sometimes revealed in the media and in our homes as .... QUANGOS.
Luke 18 (9) reports a parable aimed at those ‘who trust in themselves and despise others’. The story is very hard on the self-congratulating Pharisee who praises himself for his fasting twice a week, and his respectable life, and voices thanks that he is not like the despised ‘publican’ (tax collector) who hesitates at the door of the temple. Whenever I hear the words of some preaching health zealot, aimed at making decent, hard working people and their families feel bad about themselves, I think of that Pharisee. In the parable it was the outcast who, in the words of the text, was justified. Two thousand years ago and now: the issues are the same.
Norman -
As I've said before:
If only Jesus had been a pipe-smoker - how much happier we'd all be now !
Martin, I venture to say that wherever people are despised, Jesus would be with them and that would include the pub garden, today. I would welcome some original thinking from Christian leaders on this subject because self-righteousness (i.e. Pharisaism) of the 'healthist' variety is in the spirit of this age and seems to go unchallenged by the 'great and good.'
Norman -
Indeed !
And they're STILL stoning people to death in some parts of the World.
As for the C of E, it has now plainly become 'The Guardian' At Prayer.
Very sad.
But then 'Jesian' and 'Christian' have never REALLY been synonymous.............