Forest response to white paper on public health

12:30 ... Still waiting for the details of the Government white paper on public health. According to one BBC report, "Details on how the government aims to tackle individual problems, such as obesity, smoking and drinking, will not be spelt out in full until the new year." However Radio 4's World At One has just reported that tax on high strength beer is to go up, so there may be more detail to come.

Here is Forest's response, based on Health Secretary Andrew Lansley's comments earlier today:

NEWS RELEASE Tuesday 30 November, 2010

WHITE PAPER "A CHARTER FOR SOCIAL ENGINEERING" SAYS SMOKERS' GROUP

A consumer group has warned that the Department of Health white paper on public health could be a "charter for potentially oppressive social engineering".

Simon Clark, director of the smokers' group Forest, said: "Government has no business micro-managing people's lives. For all the talk about nudging, the white paper could be a charter for potentially oppressive social engineering.

"We know what happens when people refuse to be nudged. Campaigners demand more and more regulations and ministers are happy to indulge them.

"The white paper merely transfers that power to local councils.

"We are in danger of creating an immensely dull, zero risk society in which freedom of choice and personal responsibility are consigned to history."

Update: the Guardian has the story, and a quote from our press release, online: White paper hands responsibility for public health to local authorities.

In contrast the Telegraph's medical editor Rebecca Smith appears to have swallowed the Government's line without query: No more nanny state on health: Andrew Lansley

Update on Tuesday, November 30, 2010 by Simon Clark

13:45 ... Tobacco to be the subject of a 'Tobacco Control Plan' to be published in the New Year. Can't wait.

Update on Tuesday, November 30, 2010 by Simon Clark

14:05 ... Press release and white paper, Healthy Lives, Healthy People, now available on DH website.

In brief, "The White Paper sets out the Government’s long-term vision for the future of public health in England. The aim is to create a ‘wellness’ service (Public Health England) and to strengthen both national and local leadership".

What Government will and won’t do

The Government will take a less intrusive approach, staying out of people’s everyday lives wherever possible. This follows a model called the Nuffield Council of Bioethics Ladder of Interventions, which means that instead of reaching for choice-limiting regulations at every opportunity, the Government will employ a range of evidence based approaches to improve health.

The ladder increases in intrusiveness as follows:

* Do nothing or simply monitor the situation. Some behaviour trends are minor and fizzle out, so intervention isn’t needed.

* Provide information. Giving people the information and education to make a choice for themselves based on evidence.

* Enable choice. Give people a ‘nudge’ in the right direction so they can change their behaviour. For example, through access to public exercise facilities, cycle paths, or safe playgrounds.

* Change the default to help guide choice. Using positive ‘social norms’ is a way of encouraging this.

* Guide choice through incentives. A ‘points mean prizes’ approach, for example the more a child walks to school, they earn points for healthy prizes like an activity day.

* Disincentives, such as taxation or other price related action, to discourage people from smoking or drinking.

* Restrict choice, probably through regulation, such as raising the legal age for smoking or banning trans fats.

* Eliminate choice altogether. Rarely used, but most common examples include making seatbelts compulsory and making dangerous drugs illegal.

Local control, better health

Directors of Public Health will be employed by the Local Authority and be the ambassadors of health issues for the local population. In practice, this means that they will lead discussion about how the ring-fenced money is spent to improve health. This will include influencing investment decisions right across the Local Authority, with the goal of enhancing health and well-being.

Crucially, they will be able to make sure that public health is always considered when local authorities, GP consortia and the NHS make decisions.

To make sure that progress is made on issues like obesity and smoking, Public Health England will set a series of outcomes to measure whether people’s health actually improves.

Less intrusive? I think we'll be the judge of that ...

Nudge, nudge, wink, wink

Department of Health to publish public health white paper today ... Should give an indication of the direction the Coalition Government is taking us. Watch this space.

Update on Tuesday, November 30, 2010 by Simon Clark

Just been listening to Julian Le Grand, former senior policy advisor to Tony Blair now Professor of Social Policy at the London School of Economics, on the Today programme. Le Grand is an enthusiastic supporter of plain packaging and a display ban.

Le Grand is the man who suggested that smokers be forced to apply for and purchase a license to smoke, which he seemed to think was quite a libertarian idea, despite letting it slip that the forms should be as complicated as possible.

The good (Andrew Marr), the bad (Andrew Lansley) and the Widdy

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley was interviewed by Andrew Marr on Sunday AM this morning. In comparison to this dull grey career politician, how refreshing it was to hear also from Ann Widdecombe, reviewing the newspapers.

Ann Widdecombe: You know, I could absolutely weep. We have a Conservative administration and all I'm reading in the papers today is about the intervention of the state. The state is going to set a minimum price for alcohol. The state is going to prescribe the colour of cigarettes. And now we've got the state actually saying to emplyers, in a time of recession, you must provide paid breaks, paid facilities, a spcial fridge for expressed milk and goodness knows what else, for women returning to work who decides, on their responsibility presumably, to have a child.

Compare that to the following dialogue between Lansley and Andrew Marr (and hats off to Marr for playing devil's advocate):

Andrew Marr: Is it true that you ant to remove the packaging from cigarette packets and make them all one one colour?

Andrew Lansley: One of the things we are going to oook at is whether there is a case for plain packaging of cigarettes because, remember, we\re taken steps in the past as a parliament as a government to try to reduce the level of smoking but it is very persistent. I mean, for example, we have a level of smoking that leads to around 80,000 deaths a year. We have to treat smoking as a major public health issue. We have to reduce the xtent to which young people start smoking, and one of the issues is the extent to which display of cigarettes and brands does draw young people into smoking in the first place.

AM: So how will this work in practice? Would you therefore not have any Benson & Hedges or Marlboro or Camel, or whatever it is, adverts at all at the point of sale? Would you have packets that all looked the same?

AL: This is an issue we're going to consult on. Essentially, yes, they would be packets that all looked the same. They would have the name of the brand on it but no other brand identification.

AM: Why is this your job? Why is it the job of government to decide whether people should or should not smoke?

AL: Because 80,000 lives a year are lost.

AM: But people know the risks, they can make judgements for themselves.

AL: Well, why did we ban smoking in public places, because actually we don't want people to have harm ...

AM: That's a secondary smoking issue ...

AL: Yes, secondary smoking is important too but also what we have to make sure is that young people don't start smoking and we have to treat tobacco as the serious public health issue it is and try to make sure, and this is a kind of behavioural philosophy, if young people are in a situation where brands and tobacco is being pushed to them in their local supermarkets and stores they are more likely to start smoking.

AM: But if one packet is gold and another red I don't see that is going to make people more likely to smoke.

AL: Well, actually, I think the evidence, we'll see see how the evidence emerges. Australia, for example, are [sic] going dow the path of plain packaging. We'll see what the evidence looks like.

PS. Headline courtesy of Ann Widdecombe on Strictly Come Dancing last night.

Tobacco: a litmus test for the media in a free society

In 1988, more than a decade before I began working for Forest, I wrote a 115-page report that analysed over 300 articles in five national newspapers (The Times, Financial Times, Daily Telegraph, Guardian and Independent) from October 1984 to March 1988.

The report was called Smoke Out: How The Quality Press Covers The Smoking Debate. This week I found a copy in, where else, a box at the back of my garage. The blurb on the cover reads:

Smoking has never been illegal in this country and it is a matter for genuine debate whether the arguments against it on health grounds should outweigh the financial arguments in its favour, or whether smokers' rights to indulge in a personal habit should override non-smokers' preference for clean air.

The smoking debate tests the media in several ways. First there is the wide range of arguments, for and against. Then there is the political battle running alongside the medical debate. The most important parties to the controversy have their own special interests that taint their objectivity.

Most important, the media must strike a balance between exaggeration and understatement. They must shun sensationalism without sacrificing their story. Both critics and supporters of smoking are anxious to use the media to promote their cause; good journalists should make sure they are not being used.

Some people might question whether - in the smoking debate - 'balance' and impartiality is that important. The answer, quite simply, is 'Yes'. Standards of journalism matter in a free society, and if they abandoned when dealing with an unpopular subject like the tobacco industry then they will not be maintained in other more mainstream areas of debate.

It is always the hard cases and unpopular causes that best serve as a litmus test for media standards. If the quality press fails to inform its readership to the best of its ability it is no better than the tabloids that, so often, it derides.

I suspect that many of you will be wearily familiar with my analysis which found systematic bias and concluded with these words:

It is clear that standards of journalism have fallen well short of what is required for the fair coverage of a controversial issue. Analytical, non-partisan articles are extremely rare. Particularly disturbing is the extent to which the smoking 'debate' has been conducted via a series of 'news' reports, the majority of which are simply the result of a press release or a story handed directly to the journalist or news desk concerned.

Alarmingly, the journalist is often prepared to accept such 'news' at face value. On relatively few occasions does he quote those who might be expected to hold opposing views. Since much of what passes for 'news' in the smoking debate is generated by those attacking smoking, the result is a 'debate' that is woefully one-sided in favour of the health lobby.

Sadly, nothing has changed. In the last fortnight there have been three significant smoking-related stories - smoking during pregnancy may make children career criminals, UK government considers plain packaging, and, two days ago, passive smoking kills 600,000 people worldwide every year.

The tobacco lobby was completely ignored for the two 'health' stories. On plain packaging both Forest and the Tobacco Manufacturers Association were quoted by several newspapers but, speaking for Forest, we had to push hard to get our views in print. With the exception of BBC News, no journalist approached us, we had to go to them.

Joe Jackson: how can we tackle the passive smoking 'fraud'?

Joe Jackson (featured, above, on a Forest poster) has responded to my previous post about the journalist who asked me whether I should be doing something "more worthwhile" with my life. Joe writes:

Simon, you are indeed doing something very worthwhile, but I would like to offer a lone voice of qualified support or at least understanding, to the lady journalist in question.

I, like you and many others, am angry about many things the antismoking movement has accomplished: trampling on property rights, bullying and stigmatising people, causing social division, ruining businesses, etc etc. But the thing is, I would not feel nearly so strongly if I did not fundamentally believe that the risks of smoking are greatly exaggerated and the risks of SHS are non-existent. The trouble is, many, even most, people believe those things, and they can't entirely be blamed; they want to believe the 'experts' and the 'authorities' whose business it is to 'know'. And from their point of view, it is hard to understand why some of us are wasting energy making such a fuss about some supposed 'right' to poison ourselves and others with a toxic substance.

People DO care about civil liberties, etc, but not so much compared to dying of lung cancer. I'm not telling you anything you don't know, but I think sometimes it's good to remind ourselves of the real nature and magnitude of what we're up against. The problem is not that people don't grasp the various libertarian or business issues, it's that they feel fundamentally that Smoking=Death. Thus it can't really be defended even if 'our' side does have some valid points in theory.

That is why, although I will be the first to applaud if, for instance we get the UK ban amended to allow smoking rooms, I don't think we are ever going to start really turning the tide until something can be done to change this perception. How it's to be done, I only wish I knew. I remain baffled, for instance, that the myth of SHS is allowed to continue to flourish without meaningful protest from anyone with serious money or clout. Can't something be done about this latest piece of fiction about SHS from the WHO? Can't we, Forest, F2C, etc, pool our resources and send a petition to the government asking them to stop indulging such nonsense, since it is bringing science and medicine into disrepute? It might not change anything but at least it would demonstrate that people are waking up to the fraud. OK, I wish I had a better idea - does anyone else?

Download The Smoking Issue by Joe Jackson (2005).

And the big question is ...

I was interviewed yesterday by a charming freelance journalist. We sat outside a pub close to Broadcasting House in central London and discussed plain packaging and the war on tobacco.

She was fair, friendly and very professional and we had a good exchange of views. I sensed however that she was a strong anti-smoker.

When we had finished and were walking back towards Oxford Circus she confirmed my suspicions.

"I hope you don't mind me saying this," she said, "but shouldn't you be doing something more worthwhile with your life?"

Snowdon on the Moral Maze

On Monday evening I took a call from the BBC Radio 4 programme Moral Maze. They were looking for someone to take part in a live debate in a central London studio between 7.30 and 8.40pm on Wednesday 24 November (tonight).

They wanted, they explained, to explore certain moral and ethical issues around plain packaging. What is the Government's role? Should the Government be getting involved? Is it a question of freedom of choice or nudge?

I thought about it for a few minutes. A couple of telephone calls later it was settled.

And so tonight, at 8.00pm, Chris Snowdon, author of Velvet Glove Iron Fist and The Spirit Level Delusion, will be grilled by two of the programme's resident team of experts.

Full details HERE. Recommended.

Update on Wednesday, November 24, 2010 by Simon Clark

Listened in the car as I was driving home. I thought Chris did really well. Good to hear James Delingpole too. The real star of the show, though, was Michael Portillo. I was a huge fan of his in the Nineties before he lost his way politically, but after listening to him tonight all is forgiven!!

I thought too that Michael Buerk's introduction was as fair and balanced as it could have been - good enough, in fact, to reproduce here if I could get a transcript.

Oh, and don't be too hard on the resident panellists who questioned Chris and James. Remember, the format of the programme calls for the expert witnesses to be cross-examined so you must expect some serious verbal jousting. Believe me, I've heard a lot worse.

Display ban: tobacco control moves the goalposts - again

Last week a study commissioned by Ireland's Office for Tobacco Control and the Irish Cancer Society claimed that the removal of tobacco display has been successful in reducing the awareness of smoking among young people.

Allied to the results of a second study, Evaluation of the removal of point-of-sale tobacco displays in Ireland published in Tobacco Control, the British Medical Association felt confident enough to announce that as a result of the display ban "fewer young people believed smoking was widespread among their peers". This of course was a prelude for the BMA to urge the Government to implement Labour's legislation to ban tobacco display in UK shops.

Thankfully, the Democracy Institute's Patrick Basham and John Luik have saved me the trouble of writing about these studies at greater length. Much of what needs to be said is included in the excellent article they have written for Spiked in which they point out that:

Until very recently, tobacco-control advocates campaigned for a display ban because it would lead to reduced youth smoking, full stop. But the evidence from various jurisdictions that have implemented a display ban suggests that smoking prevalence, especially among adolescents, is at best unaffected by such a ban. Indeed, there is evidence in some places that display bans have coincided with an increase in smoking.

Consequently, ban advocates are quietly and subtly moving the empirical goalposts. They are replacing youth smoking levels as the test of success with a measurement of how many young people perceive that their peers are smoking and then propagating a lower score as ‘evidence’ of the display ban’s effectiveness. It is an intellectually dubious tactic, but left unchallenged it may do the trick, politically. Hence, the new Tobacco Control article by McNeill et al finds, ‘The proportion of youths believing more than a fifth of children their age smoked decreased from 62 per cent to 48 per cent’.

Commenting on the BMA's response, Basham and Luik write:

Curiously, the BMA’s press release chose not to highlight the very same article’s finding that: ‘There were no short-term significant changes in prevalence among youths or adults.’ In other words, no one in Ireland has stopped smoking because of the ban: the policy is a failure.

Full article HERE.

See also: Is Ireland the new Canada of tobacco control?

Update on Wednesday, November 24, 2010 by Simon Clark

The following written answer has just been published by the Government in response to a question by Mike Wetherley MP concerning a report by the Institute of Economic Affairs, Canada's ruinous tobacco display ban: economic and public health lessons, July 2010:

Mike Weatherley MP (Conservative): To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make an assessment of the findings of the recent report by the Institute of Economic Affairs on the tobacco display ban in Canada; and if he will make a statement.

Anne Milton MP (Conservative, Public Health Minister): We are aware of the report by the Institute of Economic Affairs on the tobacco display ban in Canada. We are also aware of a number of other reports on the promotional role of tobacco displays, for example, Professor McNeil's reports evaluating the removal of tobacco promotional displays in Ireland on 1 July 2009 which were published on 19 November 2010. Departmental officials consider carefully all the evidence made available to them on tobacco control.

Thatcherism lives!

Here's another nugget discovered in a box at the back of my garage. Compiled by my old friend Brian Monteith and published in 1991, Thatcherism Lives! is a "collection of some of Margaret Thatcher's most important speeches between 1975 and 1991".

I mention it because today is the 20th anniversary of the announcement of Mrs Thatcher's intention to resign as prime minister and Thatcherism Lives! includes her bravura performance in the House on the afternoon of November 22, 1990, a few hours after she had announced her decision to resign.

Replying to a motion of no confidence in her government, Thatcher told Labour leader Neil Kinnock:

Eleven years ago we rescued Britain from the parlous state to which socialism had brought it. I remind the House that, under socialism, this country had come to such a pass that one of our most able and distinguished ambassadors felt compelled to write in a famous despatch, a copy of which found its way into the Economist, the following words:

"We talk of ourselves without shame as being one of the less prosperous countries of Europe. The prognosis for the foreseeable future," he said in 1979, was "discouraging."

Conservative government has changed all that. Once again Britain stands tall in the councils of Europe and of the world, and our policies have brought unparalleled prosperity to our citizens at home.

In the past decade we have given power back to the people on an unprecedented scale. We have given back control to the people over their own lives and over their own livelihood - over the decisions that matter most to them and their families. We have done it by curbing the monopoly power of trade unions to control, even to victimise, the individual worker ...

Labour is against spreading those freedoms and choice to all our people. It is against us giving powers back to the people by privatising nationalised industries ... Labour wants to renationalise electricty, water and British Telecom. It wants to take power back to the state and back to into its own grasp - a fitful and debilitating grasp.

In response to complaints about more than two million unemployed and an inflation rate of 10.9 per cent, Thatcher responded:

Yes, 10.9 per cent inflation is much higher than it should be, but it is a lot lower than 26.9 per cent under the last Labour Government ...

Because individuals and families have more power and more choice, they have more opportunities to succeed - two million more jobs that in 1979, better rewards for hard work, income tax down from 33p in the pound to 25p in the pound and no surcharge on savings income ...

People on all levels of income are better off than they were in 1979 ... The extraordinary transformation of the private sector has created the wealth for better social services and better pensions ...

We are no longer the sick man of Europe - our output and investment grew faster during the 1980s than that of any of our major competitors. No longer a doubtful prospect, when American and Japanese companies invest in Europe, we are their first choice ...

Yes, in 1987 and 1988 the economy did expand too fast. There was too much borrowing, and inflation rose. That is why we had to take the tough, unpopular measures to bring the growth of money supply within target ...

Labour's policies are a vote of no confidence in the ability of British people to manage their own affairs. We have that confidence. Confidence in freedom and confidence in enterprise. That is what divides Conservatives from socialists.

Our stewardship of the public finances has been better than that of any government for nearly 50 years. It has enabled us to repay debt and cut taxes ...

During the past eleven years this Government has had a clear and unwavering vision of the future of Europe and Britain's role in it. It is a vision which stems from our deep-seated attachment to parliamentary democracy and commitment to economic liberty, enterprise, competition and a free market economy.

No government in Europe has fought more resolutely against subsidies, state aids to industry and protectionism; unnecessary regulations and bureaucracy and increasing unaccountable central power at the expense national parliaments ...

We have worked for our vision of a Europe which is free and open to the rest of the world, and above all to the countries of eastern Europe as they emerge from the shadows of socialism ... They deserve a Europe where there is too for their rediscovered sense of nationhood and a place to decide their own destiny after decades of repression ...

Ten years ago, the eastern part of Europe lay under totalitarian rule, its people knowing neither rights nor liberties. Today we have a Europe in which democracy, the rule of law and basic human rights are spreading ever more widely ...

These immense changes did not come about by chance. They have been achieved by strength and resolution in defence, and by a refusal ever to be intimidated. No-one in eastern Europe believes that their countries would be free had it not been for those western governments who were prepared to defend liberty, and who kept alive their hope that one day east Europe too would enjoy freedom.

But it was no thanks to the Labour party or to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament of which the Rt Hon Gentleman (Labour leader Neil Kinnock) is still a member. It is this Government who kept the nuclear weapons which ensured that we could never be blackmailed or threatened ...

Twice in my time as prime minister we have had to send our forces across the world to defend a small country against ruthless aggression: first to our own people in the Falklands and now to the borders of Kuwait.

To those who have never had to take such decisions, I say that they are taken with a heavy heart and in the knowledge of the manifold dangers, but with tremendous pride in the professionalism and courage of our armed forces.

There is something else which one feels. That is a sense of this country's destiny: the centuries of history and experience which ensure that, when principle have to be defended, when good has to be upheld and when evil has to be overcome, Britain will take up arms.

It is because we on this side have never flinched from difficult decisions that this House and this country can have confidence in this Government today.

I shall never forget the sadness I felt at Mrs Thatcher's departure from office, although I remember with pride the way she went, fighting to the end. ("I am enjoying this!")

Nothing lasts forever but to this day I remain a committed Thatcherite, not a Conservative. I knew what it meant to be a Thatcherite. I have no idea what the Conservative party under David Cameron stands for.

And therein lies a problem because where there is an intellectual vacuum ministers will pursue their own policies, sometimes for personal political gain (it makes them stand out from the crowd) or because they don't have the bottle to fight their own civil servants or well-funded lobby groups.

Thanks to Cameron's inability to articulate what the current Conservative party stands for there are no boundaries - and no need to justify policies in the light of the bigger picture because there isn't one, apart from clearing up the financial mess that Labour left behind.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

The Observer today reported that "The government is considering forcing tobacco companies to package their cigarettes in plain brown wrappers in a bid to de-glamorise smoking and stop young people taking up the habit". Other papers are now running the story online.

In the words of The Who's 'Won't Get Fooled Again', "Meet the new boss/Same as the old boss".

PS. The BBC contacted me for Forest's response while I was watching my son play rugby near Leighton Buzzard. I was so cold standing in the middle of a field in Bedfordshire that I'm not sure I made much sense. Click HERE.

The Daily Mail has a very short quote from me HERE.

Update ... Email received this evening:

Just read an article on proposed plain packaging. Are ministers completely mad. This will encourage counterfeit products which will be sold cheaper, with no tax revenue, and cause a major health risk as there would be no control on quality. Tar nic values would be random. This policy would actually cause a bigger risk to public health. Someone should make this clear to the idiots in Westminster.

Dick Puddlecote is suitably outraged. And Liberal Vision isn't happy either.

See also Velvet Glove Iron Fist (sorry, Chris, just noticed that you quoted The Who too!) and Man Widdicombe.

Let's hope Conservative MPs get the message. We're not happy.

Victoria Coren: attitude towards smoking has become hysterical

"Smoking while pregnant turns your baby into a criminal. That preposterous idea was actually published, last week, by a large number of British news organisations," writes Victoria Coren in the Observer today.

Click HERE. You may like to comment.

Jools Holland loves pubs, hates people who tell us what (not) to do

Jools Holland was featured last week in Seven, the Sunday Telegraph's arts and culture supplement, in a column that invites well known people to list their "loves and hates". Two things that the musician and TV presenter professed to hating were the demise of the pub and people who interfere:

"I used to love going to a smoky pub with a piano and a landlady ... The whole world and his wife would be there. That's all gone now and landlords have been replaced with managers.

"I don't like it when people poke their noses into other people's business and say 'don't smoke' or 'don't eat too much'. Why don't they just go and have whatever they want to have, whenever they want to have it, and leave the rest of us to a cigarette and a pie?"

Bad day for an honest politician

Like the majority of people, I have a job. I haven't had a pay rise for two or three years but during that period (thanks to low interest rates) my mortgage payments have dropped from £800 to £150 - a month. Therefore, I am better off.

OK, he could have qualified his statement to take into account those people unfortunate enough to lose their jobs in the past couple of years, or those not yet on the property ladder and forced to rent, but what Conservative peer Lord Young had to say on the subject was essentially correct.

Today, however, he is being pilloried as a Tory toff and he has been forced by 10 Downing Street to apologise for his "insensitive and inaccurate" remarks.

Insensitive, perhaps (if you don't like the truth), but inaccurate? The Daily Mash, as ever, has the appropriate response HERE.

Update on Friday, November 19, 2010 by Simon Clark

When I heard this afternoon that Lord Young had resigned I began to think I might be alone in my opinion. Well, it seems that I'm not - Lord Young is right about post-recession Britain, says IEA think tank . See also What fact did Lord Young get wrong? (Iain Dale's Diary).

I accept, however, that some people have suffered in recent years and they include retired people living off the interest on their savings.

Lord Young's real gaffe was to remind people of the often lampooned expression "You've never had it so good". That was a far bigger mistake than the point he was trying to make.

Banned! Sadly, it's not only the Irish economy that's in trouble

Since the launch of Forest Eireann in August we have been slowly developing a media profile in Ireland. Spokesman John Mallon has been interviewed by nine Irish radio stations, some more than once, and he has been quoted in several local newspapers.

Today however we can reveal that the Irish Examiner, based in Cork (ironically John's home city), is refusing to publish any tobacco-related comments by Forest on its letters page and, by implication, any other section of the paper.

Confirmation that letters from Forest Eireann have been banned by the paper followed two telephone conversations between John and the letters editor. After the second conversation on Monday, John wrote to the letters editor expressing his disappointment at this interesting turn of events. In return he received the following response:

John, the editor says there is no way he going to allow his paper to be used in any way as a vehicle for a lobby - funded or not - that condones or promotes the consumption of a hazardous subject - legal or not. As a lifelong smoker I agree with him.

As I said yesterday, our columns are open to your views on any other issue provided it is from your home or (if relevant) work address ... just like every other contributor to the letters column. Regs. letters editor, Irish Examiner

John has the full story on the Forest Eireann blog HERE. He concludes, more in sorrow than in than anger:

It's saddening and maddening in equal measure. I began reading the Examiner all of 43 years ago and, coincidentally, I started smoking around that same time.

Now, because of my association with a legitimate lobby group that is long overdue in Ireland, they intend to censor my opinions. They also intend to deny Forest Eireann a platform for views that are shared by hundreds of thousands of Irish citizens including, I suspect, many of their own readers.

It's a setback for Forest Eireann, but it's a much bigger blow for free speech and for the reputation of the Irish Examiner.

Today Ireland stands on the edge of a financial precipice. Sadly, with this absurd attack on free speech, it's not only the Irish economy that's in trouble ...

Update on Thursday, November 18, 2010 by Simon Clark

Irish Examiner promotes censorship, reports award-winning Irish blogger:

I always thought freedom of speech meant that anything was accepted provided it was not libellous, was accurate and was relevant. I have views that a lot of people would find repugnant, and I not only defend my right to air those views but also defend the right of people to oppose them.

The Examiner is a national newspaper, not a parochial rag. It has a duty to perform and part of that duty is to allow free speech without any bias from the editor. Yet here we have an editor censoring views purely because he disagrees with them.

I would love to know if the Examiner is going to refuse advertising from the drinks trade. Is there to be no mention of cars in the small ads? Either the editor should wholly endorse the Nanny State or he should back off.

Wanker.

See also: Free speech - not where tobacco is concerned (Smoke Screens)

Passive smoking and the price of propaganda

A couple of weeks ago I received an email that I wanted to publish verbatim but my correspondent was worried that it might "rip my family apart if they read it". I have edited it slightly to remove one or two tell-tale details but it is fundamentally the same. Sadly, I suspect that June (not her real name) is not alone and the scenario she describes will be familiar to others of a similar age. Anyway, this is her story:

I'm a 57-year old-woman who is not knowingly suffering from any ‘smoking related’ illnesses. I have smoked cigarettes since my teens and have raised a son and a daughter. They are both healthy. Neither of them became smokers. My husband (also a non-smoker) has no illnesses related to ‘passive smoking’. He is in fact extraordinarily athletic.

I was a ‘stay at home mum’. Luckily my husband could support us and I could devote my time to him, raising the children and being a near perfect housewife. When my youngest went to university I wanted to get back into the workplace but found that nobody wanted to employ a fiftysomething woman so I had unwittingly given up my career to raise my children.

I thought I had raised my children to be tolerant. One of the first lessons I taught them was ‘Everybody’s different and we all like different things’. Can you imagine my distress when my daughter first insisted that I smoke outside her flat? But I accepted it. I never smoke in her flat, nor in any property belonging to a non-smoker as I understand that they may find it distasteful and they have the absolute right in their own property to insist on fresh air. I’m OK with that.

This year, for the first time in years, my daughter, her husband (an ex-smoker) and their young son will be joining us for Christmas. I’d stopped inviting her (as refusals do hurt a bit) but this year she asked to come.

I’d decided not to smoke in the same room as my grandchild. Three days ago my daughter rang me. She wanted a frank discussion about my smoking. Would I be smoking outdoors? She didn’t want her son in a house where someone had been smoking. I told her that in my own house, on Christmas Day, when I had cooked for eight, I wouldn’t be standing outside in the middle of winter to smoke.

I agreed reluctantly to smoke in an upstairs room, with the door shut. I actually don’t know how I’m going to pull this off (with my sense of outrage running high) and still be a welcoming hostess to our guests.

So this is what years of propaganda about the perceived threat of passive smoking has done to ordinary families. Look, I can understand why some people may have concerns about long-term exposure over many years to a heavy smoker in a confined space (though how many people genuinely experience that is open to doubt), but short-term exposure is a different matter entirely (unless you are a serious asthmatic) - and I certainly don't buy the argument about the dangers of "thirdhand [sic] smoke".

I do believe that people should err on the side of caution (or courtesy, as my friend Rose puts it) where small children are concerned, but I am not going to condemn anyone for smoking in their own home and as a parent myself it would not stop me visiting anyone, let alone a close relative, with my own children.

As it happens, my mother-in-law gave up her 40-a-day habit before my children were born but if she hadn't quit I certainly wouldn't have boycotted her house. Nor would I have dreamt of having a "frank discussion" with her about her habit. And as for insisting that she could only smoke in one room, upstairs, with the door shut, what a blooming cheek!

But what really appalls me is that June is fearful that if she shares her experience with you, dear reader, and her children see it, it could "rip my family apart". What type of society is that?

June wants us to do everything we can to combat the propaganda on passive smoking. We're doing our best but my fear is that the horse has already bolted and it will be easier to counteract the denormalisation of tobacco than reverse the often irrational fear of secondhand smoke.

As far as families go, what is needed is a sense of proportion from parents of young children and some common sense (and courtesy) from everyone else, including smokers. Is that too much to ask?

PS. I will ask June to report back after Christmas ...