Filth column: the politics of hate

The film director James Cameron, criticised for allowing a character to smoke in his blockbuster Avatar, defended himself by saying that he knows that smoking is a ‘filthy habit’ – he just doesn’t think he should be forbidden to show it.

"Thanks, James. With friends like you, who needs enemies?" So says musician Joe Jackson in his latest article for The Free Society website, published today. Joe writes:

I took a shower this morning and put on clean clothes. My teeth are brushed and my nails manicured. Can anyone tell me – I mean, in a reasoned, logical way – why I am so ‘filthy’ for smoking tobacco?

Is ‘filth’ a kind of euphemism, by which some people mean that that smoking is aesthetically unpleasant to them? If so, it’s purely a matter of taste, and to insult people just because you don’t share their pleasure is just plain rude.

Personally, I can’t stand dogs – I’m allergic to them, and think they’re smelly. But I can see that many people love them, so I bite my tongue and try to be tolerant. I certainly don’t want the government banning dogs from every pub in the land.

Living in the UK today, Joe concludes, is a bit like being back at school:

Rules and regulations, bullying and humiliation. Except that this is a school in which the teachers actually encourage the bullies to beat up the fat kids, or the kids who don’t like sports, or the kids who don’t like the food ...

One thing’s for sure: so much meanness, intolerance, divisiveness and hate must inevitably provoke a backlash. I can’t wait.

Full article HERE.

Mick Hume: the politics of behaviour

Mike Hume, founding editor of Spiked, has written an article that screams common sense. A 60-a-day smoker until he gave up (going cold turkey "using the oral crutch of sucking 20-plus lollipops a day"), Hume writes:

As one who has long been irritated by the increasingly shrill and illiberal anti-smoking crusade, I have been thinking again about the issue over the past week. Because this New Year marked the twentieth anniversary of the day I stopped smoking for good.

The intervening two decades have brought remarkable changes in the way that both smokers and giving up smoking are viewed in our society. It seems to me now that these changes are about far more than the way we see cigarettes. They mark a downward shift in the predominant cultural view of our humanity, and a demeaning of the qualities of adult autonomy and independence.

He adds:

The move to redefine smoking as anti-social behaviour has also struck a chord with many because it chimes with the cri de coeur of the age – that your life is being messed up by other people, and you need protection from them (and possibly also from yourself). The underlying issue here is not passive smoking so much as passive living, inviting the authorities in to resolve your problems. Hence there was none of the talked-of resistance to the ban on smoking in public places. Where once it would have been thought these were matters for adults to sort out among themselves, now it is considered fair enough for the state forcibly to stub it out.

He concludes:

I don’t regret stopping smoking 20 years ago, and it would be daft for anybody to take it up as some sort of political protest. But I do worry about what is behind the changed cultural status of smokers and giving up. I think I will always feel like a smoker inside, even though I hope never to have another puff. But even those who have never touched one should surely be concerned about the diminished view of adult autonomy and free choice that the anti-smoking crusade has helped to spread, opening the door to the new interfering ‘politics of behaviour’ in a way that would never have been tolerated in the smoke-filled rooms of yore.

Full article HERE. Highly recommended.

H/T Pat Nurse - Tea and Cigarettes

Revealed: the mind of an anti-smoker

Sometimes you think you have read it all and then an article like this appears. It was written by David Sexton and was published by the London Evening Standard.

It now seems simply bizarre that people used to be allowed to smoke in planes, on the Tube, in hospitals, offices and restaurants.

In time, it will seem equally improbable that they could once do so with impunity in the faces of people sharing public space outside.

The arguments may no longer be about the dangers of secondary smoking but they are no less compelling. It's not just that they smell so terrible and throw their butts everywhere.

When you see a smoker, sucking in hard as soon as he or she gets to the threshold, what you are seeing is not just addiction but self-harming of the most terrible kind. Half of all regular smokers are killed by their habit.

No other vice, not even drinking to excess, is so directly and inherently suicidal. We would not find it acceptable to see people routinely setting fire to themselves in public.

Yet that is precisely what smoking in public is equivalent to. Children should not grow up thinking that's normal.

Properly understood, smoking is a moral affront every time. So long as we smile on it, we are approving a holocaust.

Full article HERE.

I know that columnists have a page to fill ("It doesn't matter what you write, just get it written" is a mantra that many journalists grew up with) but do they really have to sink this low?

No wonder the Standard is free these days. Who would pay to read this pathetic illiberal rubbish?

Velvet Glove, Iron Fist: first review

Velvet Glove, Iron Fist: A History of Antismoking, which is officially published next week, has received its first review - in the Economist, no less. And it's a good review too: "In this solidly researched, interesting and only occasionally strident book, Christopher Snowdon, an independent researcher, documents the cigarette’s journey from patriotic necessity to pariah status."

Full review HERE. So far the comments (4) are all from anti-smokers. For example, "Once again, in its crusade for the liberal society, the Economist is blind to the tyranny of forcing others to inhale the poisonous stench of tobacco smoke." You might like to respond.

Christopher Snowdon will be signing copies of Velvet Glove, Iron Fist at Forest's 30th anniversary reception in London next Monday. Entry is free. If you would like to attend telephone 01223 270156 (office hours) or email events@forestonline.org.

You couldn't make it up - but they did

We've all heard the claim that smoking costs the NHS £1.5 or £1.7 billion a year. This figure is often trundled out to demonstrate what a burden smokers are to society, although campaigners conveniently ignore the huge amount of money smokers contribute through tobacco taxation and VAT (£9-10 billion).

Anyway, the figure of £1.7 billion isn't the cost of smoking at all. It refers to "smoking-related diseases" which is quite different. Almost all smoking-related diseases are multi-factorial which means it is very difficult to prove that smoking is the cause (or the only cause). Nevertheless, they are counted as "smoking-related diseases" (because they are, literally, associated with smoking) and smoking cops the blame for the cost, irrespective of the cause.

Personally I think we've done quite well over the years to emphasise the huge financial contribution that smokers make to society and the ridiculous nature of the "cost/burden" argument. (It seems to surprise a lot of journalists and broadcasters and their previously unsympathetic tone sometimes changes as result.)

This may explain why anti-smoking campaigners have torn up the figure of £1.7 billion and come up with a new one of - wait for it - £5 billion!

Yesterday I was asked to respond and I came up with this quote:

"This figure is based on the usual guesstimates and should be treated with the contempt it deserves.

"Even if it was true, smokers still contribute twice that amount to the Treasury in tobacco taxation and VAT. Far from being a burden on society, smokers make an enormous financial contribution.

"Smoking rates have been falling for 50 years. The percentage of the population that smoke is half what it was 30 years ago. It is preposterous to suggest that as the number of smokers falls, the cost to the NHS should increase so dramatically. Have they considered other factors like diet?

"Anti-smoking campaigners will stop at nothing to denormalise smokers. This absurd calculation is simply the latest weapon in the war on tobacco."

The BBC has the story HERE. (Note the definitive headline, 'Smoking disease costs NHS £5bn', as if it's a fact.)

PS. According to the British Heart Foundation, "This annual cost is still likely to be an underestimate, [researchers] say, because it does not include indirect costs, such as lost productivity and informal care; the costs of treating disease caused by passive smoking; or the full range of conditions associated with smoking."

No doubt, after a few beers and with the help of a wonky calculator, they'll come up with a figure close to (or possibly exceeding) £10 billion. You read it here first.

Update on Tuesday, June 9, 2009 by Simon Clark

My colleague Neil Rafferty will be commenting on this story on the BBC Radio Wales lunchtime phone-in. I shall be doing BBC Radio Oxfordshire this afternoon.

Update on Tuesday, June 9, 2009 by Simon Clark

Neil emails to say: "Just done half hour phone-in on Radio Wales. It was basically me, Antony Worrall Thompson and Susie Squire from the Taxpayers Alliance. If anyone from ASH was listening, they must have been going mental."

Cultural differences

Earlier this week my daughter, who is 12, returned from a school exchange trip to France. Her group was staying just outside Paris so they were able to visit the Eiffel Tower and Parc Asterix and the "house and garden of some dead artist guy".

Unprompted, Sophie told me that a lot of the older French children smoked. Each morning a large group, including some as young as 14, would gather outside the school gates and light up. Inevitably, coming from England, some of the visiting children would cough theatrically and complain about the effects of "passive smoking".

"What did you do?" I asked my daughter.

"Oh," she said, "I told my friends they didn't have to stand there. If they didn't like it they could move."

"What about you?" I asked. "Did you move?"

"No, Dad," said Sophie. "Actually, I quite liked the smell."

Update on Sunday, June 7, 2009 by Simon Clark

My daughter has changed her tune. Apparently she didn't say she liked the smell of cigarette smoke. What she actually said was, "It didn't bother me". There, I've set the record straight.

Guus Hindink - top man

Departing Chelsea manager Guus Hiddink could be fined £50 for smoking a cigar in the dressing room following the FA Cup final on Saturday. How petty. Then again, let's just enjoy the image of one of the world's top managers lighting up in the presence of some of the fittest sportsmen on the planet (not to mention their billionaire boss) and no-one batting an eyelid. Story HERE.

Anti-smokers brought to book

It's half-term so yesterday we visited my parents in Derbyshire. They live in a small hamlet in the Peak District. It was a beautiful day so I sat in the garden and read Velvet Glove, Iron Fist: A History of Anti-Smoking by Chris Snowdon which is published next month.

I can't speak highly enough of this extraordinary labour of love. I've read many books on smoking and this is best by far. It's a superb read. To use that old cliche, it's a page-turner, which is some achievement. It's packed with information but it's also very readable - serious yet hugely entertaining.

Better still, this is no fire-breathing polemic. The amount of research that has gone into it is staggering. And the tone is moderate throughout which is important because it will appeal to a far wider readership.

Velvet Glove, Iron Fist is published on 22 June. Forest is hosting the book launch at Boisdale where Chris will be signing copies and saying a few words. You can also pre-order your copy HERE.

In the meantime I will wet whet (!) your appetite by publishing the occasional snippet on this blog.

Happy days

Writing in the June issue of The Oldie, veteran sports writer Frank Keating recalls going to his first Test match. It was 1949, the venue was Old Trafford, the opposition was New Zealand, and the home team featured an 18-year-old batsman (Brian Close) who went on to become a legend for England and Yorkshire and is still the youngest player ever to win an England Test cap.

Keating writes:

It was an entrancing day. Behind the pavilion at close of play I asked Close to sign my autograph book: before he did so, he told me to hold his ciggie's still-burning dog-end. It was a Wills Woodbine.

On the second morning, we were there when the players arrived. Talk about a quiet drag behind the pav! Was it a Smokers' Convention or a sporting Test match? Sixty years ago it was, of course, the way of the world. The New Zealanders arrived from their hotel in a coacj, disembarking in a fug, pipes and ciggies at full bellow almost to a man ...

Like their captain [Freddie Brown], Bill Edrich, Godfrey Evans, and Reg Simpson were pipemen, and each were billowing post-breakfast clouds; so was popular roly-poly Black Country leg-spinner Eric Hollies, his burning-bowl furnace, I remember still, letting loose particularly pungent and ripe emissions. Ah, was this my first ever Condor moment?

Gnarled ex-miner and opening bowler Les Jackson was at his Woodbines. In the public prints Len Hutton, we knew, advertised both downmarket Black Cat cork tipped and Phillips 'Special Sport' untipped; but here in real life the pale maestro was shamelessly smoking classy Player's Navy Cut untipped. So was Denis Compton. Ex-Navy amateur Trevor Bailey was chain-smoking, naturally, Senior Service.

In 1949, Britain and its sportsmen were snug in the calming embrace of m'Lady Nicotine. No health scares then. Why should there b? Of that historic all-dancing all-smoking first XI of mine, only one (Hollies, who died of a heart attack at 69) failed to make three-score-and-ten.

Edrich died (after a staircase fall) at 70, Hutton at 74, Compton and Evans at 78, Brown 80, Washbrook at 84, Jackson at 86. Happily still with us, full of the joys, and playing strokes all round the wicket are Close 78, Bailey 85, and Simpson 89. Happy days.

Happy days indeed.

So why do we still smoke ...

... asks Jane Feinmann in the Independent today. See HERE. You may wish to comment.

Who is Ashmob?

Saw this link on Christopher Snowdon's website. Ashmob - what a great idea. But I can't find any contact details. Can anyone help?

Update on Wednesday, February 18, 2009 by Simon Clark

It's all coming back to me. The man behind Ashmob, Alexi Duggins, interviewed me in April 2007 (prior to the smoking ban) for a magazine called Total:Spec. The first (only?) Ashmob event took place on 30 June 2007. According to Metro, "In London's Covent Garden, dozens of smokers held an Ashmob – based on flash mobbing where hundreds of people create a seemingly spontaneous event. The smokers all lit up simultaneously at 2pm and waved placards reading 'Roll up, Roll up' and 'Sex, Cigs and Rock & Roll'." Now, wouldn't it be fun to do something like that to mark Forest's 30th anniversary?!

Smoking: time to re-draw the line

The Independent, unlike its centre-left rival the Guardian, has always been rather more liberal on the subject of tobacco. Indeed, some of the most enlightened articles about smoking - and passive smoking - have been published in the Indy. Even the paper's health correspondents have been known to give Forest a reasonable crack of the whip.

In today's Independent health editor Jeremy Laurance highlights the American trend for smoker-free workplaces which he calls a "sinister new development". According to Laurance:

There is a scale of harms associated with smoking. As a non-smoker, I am of course in favour of smoke-free public spaces. But even I baulked at the closure of the Independent's smoking room. What harm were they doing, apart from to each other? That seemed to me a curb on individual freedom too far.

The latest assault – banning smokers rather than smoking – is an order of magnitude more serious. What the US does today, we tend to find ourselves doing tomorrow.

On this occasion, we must draw the line. As the anti-smoking charity ASH (which bans smoking but not smokers among its own employees) says, the object of the policy should be the habit, not the person who has it. A ban on smokers is an unacceptable infringement of personal liberty and must be firmly resisted.

Full article HERE.

Apart from Laurance's opening sentence ("By near universal acclaim, smoke-free workplaces have made the world a better place"), my only quibble is the suggestion, "On this occasion, we must draw the line".

Of course we should draw a line. But the line should have been drawn at separate smoking rooms, or well-ventilated smoking areas. Anyone who supports a comprehensive smoking ban is effectively giving the green light to employers, politicians and health fanatics who want to go that extra mile in search of the "next logical step".

That is why government HAS to amend the smoking ban, if only to allow separate smoking rooms. It will draw a line and send a clear message to the SS (stop smoking) brigade that extremism of any sort is unwelcome and must be resisted in the interests of society as a whole.

Do we need a national smoking day?

A national smoking day would be glorious and liberating, thinks Nigel Farndale in the Sunday Telegraph (HERE). He's not alone. In 2007 there was an attempt to organise a National Smoking Day but, with respect to the organisers, 31 December was not the best date to choose and it fell rather flat.

That aside, is the basic premise a good one? After all, if you have a national smoking day, what does that make every other day - no-smoking?

I'm not saying it would never work but if you're going to have a national smoking day you've got to have a clear objective. In other words, what are you trying to achieve?

You've also got to do it properly. That means a series of well-publicised events up and down the country or, at the very least, one BIG event attended by hundreds or thousands of people. There has to be something for the media to report. Unsubstantiated claims of people lighting up across the UK in support of NSD are not enough.

Anyway, I was amused that Farndale invoked the name of Auberon Waugh and even suggested that NSD become Auberon Waugh Day "in the manner of Martin Luther King Day".

Bron was a loyal supporter of Forest and for a while we "sponsored" a monthly drinks party which he hosted at his Academy Club in Soho. (I wrote about it HERE in 2007.)

Auberon Waugh Day may never happen but Farndale has given me an idea for a Bron-inspired event to mark Forest's 30th anniversary later this year. Watch this space.

Smoking and employment

Someone has drawn attention, on another thread, to an article by Prof Michael Siegel of the Boston University School of Public Health which raises the question of smoking and employment. This is an issue that Forest first highlighted eight or nine years ago when we analysed hundreds of recruitment ads in a number of publications (including the Guardian) and noted the increasing trend for companies to employ "non-smokers only". (Our subsequent report caused quite a stir.)

The press release that promotes Siegel's article is unambiguous: "US experts call for rethink of trend to bar smokers from employment". It continues:

The increasing trend for employers, particularly in the US, to bar smokers from applying for jobs or staying in post should be stopped, until the appropriateness of such policies has been properly evaluated, argue experts in an essay published in Tobacco Control.

As of August 2008, 21 US states, 400 US cities, nine Canadian provinces, six Australian states/territories, and 14 other countries, including the UK, had banned smoking in workplaces, bars, and restaurants.

But in recent years, smoke free workplaces have shifted to “smoker-free workplaces”, with some companies even stating “tobacco free candidates only” in their employment policies ...

These policies aim to cut cigarette consumption, by promoting the need to quit and by making smoking less socially acceptable, say the authors from the Universities of Washington and Boston.

The evidence backs them up. And there is also some evidence to suggest that these policies could boost productivity and reduce absenteeism, they add.

But quite apart from infringements of personal privacy and individual rights, smokers who are sacked or forced to resign many not be able to find other work, which in itself could have a seriously detrimental impact on their and their families’ health, contend the authors.

Smokers will also be unjustly discriminated against in a way that people who risk their health by drinking or eating too much, and exercising too little, are not ...

The authors call for a much wider public health debate, and for proper evaluation of these policies, on the grounds that “the potential unintended side effects ... could be far reaching”.

Michael Siegel writes about the article on his blog HERE. For the full article, in Tobacco Control, click HERE.

The joy of smoking (a cigar)

Message from Eamonn Butler, director of the Adam Smith Institute. Posting on Facebook, he writes: "Eamonn Butler has been sampling Hunters & Frankau's famous cigars, and wondering how to limit the damage caused by the UK's Stalinist smoking ban".

I can confirm this is true because I was there - and a very pleasant couple of hours it was too.

I may not be a smoker but even I can appreciate the appeal of a good cigar (especially if it's accompanied by a decent glass of wine, or port or whatever). I'm loathe to argue that there should be one rule for cigars and another for cigarettes, but it took me the best part of an hour to consume my Cohiba. Had I been forced to stand outside, on a cold January afternoon, I wouldn't have bothered.

I suspect that few people smoke cigars in their own homes (well, would you?) so it begs the question: do cigars have a future in the UK? And if not, does it matter?