Category Archives for "Tobacco Control"
Tobacco Control
Which better, Tobacco control or Tobacco Abolition? Dr. Gabriel Symonds is a medical doctor and former smoker. Find out his views below.
Banning Menthol Cigarettes in the US
In a recent edition of The British Medical Journal a headline caught my eye: ‘US doctors support bid to ban menthol cigarettes.’ We learn that the American Medical Association together with the African American Tobacco Control Leadership Council and the UK charity, Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), have brought a lawsuit against the US […]
Continue readingThe Successes of the Tobacco Controllers
An earnest young woman, Kylie Lindorff, gazes out at us from a photo in the 2019 Annual Report of the Framework Convention Alliance (FCA). This is made up of the organisations—there are nearly 500 of them—which work on the ‘development, ratification, and implementation’ of the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). Ms […]
Continue readingHow to Solve the Tobacco Problem
This idea is set out in an eighty-two page Guidebook commissioned by the Framework Convention Alliance on Tobacco Control (FCA for short), written by an outfit modestly calling itself Sovereign Border Solutions. The latter name reminds me of a company proclaiming it deals with ‘fluid transfer solutions’ instead of saying they sell hosepipes. Let’s take […]
Continue readingHow To Solve The Smoking Problem
It is a truth that appears not to be universally acknowledged by some Tobacco Controllers that in order to stop doing something you have to start doing it first. People are not born smokers. Public health organisations are much exercised to appeal for funding to run stop-smoking clinics. They have a modest success with smokers […]
Continue readingAddiction Sticks and Tobacco Control Vaccine
The March 2018 edition of the highly esteemed journal, Tobacco Control, contains interesting examples of infelicitous writing, to say nothing of wrong-headed ideas: addiction sticks and tobacco control vaccine. As part of an attack on Philip Morris International’s cynical and false claim, ‘We’re trying to give up cigarettes’, it’s gratifying that the editor, Professor Ruth […]
Continue readingSchrödinger’s Cat – and Cigarettes
Schrödinger’s cat, for readers who have not heard of it, is the name of a thought experiment devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. It is meant to illustrate a principle of quantum mechanics in which a cat in a box can be both dead and alive at the same time. I am not […]
Continue readingTobacco Control: Confusion and Naïvety
Let me explain. Tobacco Control is the name of a learned journal that states one of its aims is: …to study the nature and consequences of…efforts to prevent and control the global tobacco epidemic… This is confused. The tobacco epidemic, as it’s called, is all too obviously in full swing. Therefore it is too late […]
Continue readingUp the Garden Path to Reduce Tobacco-Related Death and Disease
Bhutan: sale and purchase of tobacco products prohibited! I wrote about the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study on 17 June 2017 (https://www.nicotinemonkey.com/up-the-garden-path-to-prove-the-useless-about-e-cigarettes). Here is another paper about it in, where else, Tobacco Control (July 2017). It’s written by a no less than forty-one American authors from thirteen different institutions. The conclusion of […]
Continue readingTobacco Control: Feeble, Duplicitous and Futile
Why should you need willpower to refrain from poisoning yourself? We do not need to read very far into the current (July 2017) edition of Tobacco Control to have demonstrated to us yet again the feebleness of the current official approach to the tobacco problem, the duplicity of the tobacco industry and the futility of […]
Continue readingOut With ASH – In With CAT!
Gentle reader, bear with me until l come to the bit where I disclose the amazing revelation that recently came upon me. Now, the following is from the website of ASH (Action on Smoking and Health), quoting the UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE): While recognizing that quitting smoking is always the […]
Continue readingThe End of the World – Or At Any Rate the End of China – Is Upon Us!
How proud Dr Margaret Chan (Director-General of the WHO) and Helen Clark (Administrator of the UN Development Programme) must feel of their ringing rhetoric in warning of the catastrophe facing China! (Foreword to Health, Economic and Social Costs of China’s Tobacco Epidemic, WHO 2017) Tobacco use kills six million people every year and is a […]
Continue readingTobacco is the Root of all Evil
A young girl ties tobacco leaves onto sticks to prepare them for curing in East Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara. © 2015 Marcus Bleasdale for Human Rights Watch The desperate need to deal with the smoking problem by outlawing tobacco could not be more plainly made than in the six bulleted points of ASH’s (Action on […]
Continue readingThe Great Smoking Paradox
The scholarly journal with the curious name of Tobacco Control, on the cover of the May 2017 issue shows a picture of an inflated balloon with a map of the world on it about to be burst by a lighted cigarette. The wording is ‘Tobacco threatens us all’ and ‘Say No to Tobacco’, among other […]
Continue readingControlling Tobacco with Horrible Pictures
The UK government is about to introduce legislation to require cigarettes to be sold in what is called standardised packaging. They claim this will discourage children from starting to smoke. Fine, but it’s rather a roundabout way of going about it. They’re saying, in effect, ‘Don’t buy this, it’s dangerous.’ Or are they trying to […]
Continue readingLies, Damned Lies, and Big Tobacco
How can Nic-‘otine’-andro Durante face himself in the mirror each morning? Let me put it another way. What are 10,000 deaths a year in the UK worth? To work this out we need to remember that one of the warning labels appearing on cigarette packs amusingly states ‘Smoking kills’. More precisely, smoking kills about 100,000 […]
Continue readingThose are my principles, and if you don’t like them…well, I have others
The title is a quotation from Groucho Marx. A further examination of the website of Japan Tobacco International (JTI) reveals more weasel words. A major section is headed ‘Our principles’ and, more specifically, ‘Six core principles define JTI’s attitude to smoking’. (The word ‘core’ is redundant.) The hypocrisy from start to finish is breathtaking. The […]
Continue readingAre Smokers Getting A Raw Deal?
Tobacco is not an illegal substance yet the government is persecuting a minority. I think that’s a disgrace in a social democracy. Sir Ronald Harwood Playwright and screenwriter There is in Britain a smokers’ rights group called Forest (Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco). The name tells you a lot. But are […]
Continue readingMrs May – Save Us!
From the pages of that trusty source of the latest developments in medical politics, The British Medical Journal (7 January 2017), comes an arresting news item: More than 1000 doctors and other healthcare workers…have written an open letter to the prime minister, Theresa May, and England’s health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, urging them to publish a […]
Continue readingTobacco Doesn’t Need to be Controlled; it Needs to be Abolished
These cigarette machines are ubiquitous in Japan. Note the ad for Parliament cigarettes. The attractive models imply that smoking is sexy. The wording says something like ‘vivid, strong menthol, crystal blast’. You can undergo this refreshing experience by crushing the menthol flavour capsule in the filter. The small print at the bottom, covering only about […]
Continue readingWhat’s up with ASH?
Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) in their 2008 report draw attention to a well-known but nonetheless shocking fact: Products which are known to kill one in every two of their life-long users are available for sale in shops throughout the land. What to do about this scandalous situation? The obvious thing they dismiss: As […]
Continue readingThe Latest Wheeze in Tobacco Control
Cancer Research UK, bless their cotton socks, wants Big Tobacco to be obliged to ‘cough up’ to the tune of £500m, the equivalent of one penny per cigarette sold in the UK. The intention is to make up the current government deficit in health funding and would be used in public health services to help […]
Continue readingThe Curious Idea of Controlling Tobacco
Did you know there is a scholarly journal calling itself, indeed, Tobacco Control? The very title shows the wrong-headed approach to the smoking problem: tobacco doesn’t need to be controlled; it needs to be abolished. In a recent edition there is an editorial and a research paper complaining that the full list of ingredients in […]
Continue reading