Christopher Snowdon's Blog, page 270

Wowsers foiled again

Shock news from the nanny state island continent of Australia:

Young binge drinkers have simply switched to cheaper booze to beat the Federal Government's controversial "alcopop" tax.

New research shows 15 to 29-year-olds have dodged the 70 per cent tax on popular pre-mixed drinks by changing their drink of choice.

The University of Queensland study found no significant reduction in binge drinking-related hospital admissions since the tax was introduced in 2008.

Well, well, well. Who could have possibly seen this coming? Those feisty Australian youngsters worked out that if they mix their own drinks, they could avoid paying tax on ready-mixed drinks. Those cheeky little larrikins.

Australians are the biggest consumers of alcohol in the Western world...

What?!?

...ahead of the United Kingdom, the US and France.

What?!?
OK, I'll give you the US, but aside from those lightweights...

Total alcohol consumption (litres, per capita) - World Health Organisation

Australia: 10.02

France: 13.66

UK: 13.37

USA: 9.44

Going from A-Z until I get bored, here are the countries that have a higher per capita alcohol consumption than Australia:

Andorra: 15.48

Armenia: 11.35

Austria: 13.24

Azerbaijan: 10.60

Belarus: 15.13

Belgium: 10.77

Bulgaria: 12.44

Croatia: 15.11

Czech Republic: 16.45

Denmark: 13.37

Bored now, but I think you get the picture. Do Australians really believe they are the "biggest consumers of alcohol in the Western world"? Perhaps they do. I dare say a lot of people in British think they are the biggest consumers of alcohol as well. Certainly, our 'alcohol charities' have no incentive to put the record straight and the media love the fantasy of 'Booze Britain'. Without the myth of exceptionally high drinking levels, who would support the temperance lobby's draconian policies?

And do you think that the abject failure of the alcopop tax has led to apologies and resignations within the 'public health' movement? Do you imagine that politicians have become weary of their broken promises? Or do you think that one failed policy is being used as justification for another?

I think you know the answer by now...

It has prompted fresh calls for a minimum price on alcohol.

Of course it has. And what kind of people are making these calls?

"The price is the most important single determinant of alcohol use and misuse," said co-chair Professor Mike Daube from Curtin University.

Remember Mike Daube? He's the guy who wants graphic warnings on bottles of booze. He is also Mr. Slippery Slope, as I have mentioned before.

Mike Daube was the president of ASH (UK) in the late 1970s when he put that organisation firmly on the path to prohibition. If drinkers have any doubt that they're on the same trajectory as smokers they might take note that they're not just faced with the same rhetoric, but with the same personnel.

And it's no surprise to see the recently formed National Alliance for Action on Alcohol getting in on the action. These science-denying, "one drink can cause cancer" cranks are everywhere in Australia these days.

The National Alliance for Action on Alcohol says 40 per cent of 16 to 17-year-olds admitted drinking to get drunk, so any moves to raise prices would be supported.

Apart from this being a complete non-sequitur, I am so very tired of neo-prohibitionists punishing legal consumers for the perceived crimes of illegal consumers. If you want to stop 16 and 17 years "drinking to get drunk", may I suggest you enforce the laws that already exist rather than soaking the rest of us for taxes?

Any more lies you'd like to tell?

Cask wine is cheaper than bottled water, retailing for about $7.50 for four litres.

[sigh]

Peter Lavac - the whole story

I recently mentioned the bizarre case of Peter Lavac, who blames two people who lived in a flat below him for 18 months for giving him lung cancer and now plans to sue. The whole affair is as fishy as a barrel of haddock, not least because Lavac is a well-known nonsmokers' rights activist and the doctor who claims that his illness was probably caused by secondhand smoke "permeating" his apartment happens to be the chairman of ASH Australia.

My thanks to commenters on the previous post for pointing me to Lavac's testimony to a parliamentary committee on tobacco policy which is dated 1st May 2006. Despite being a member of the Non-Smokers Movement of Australia, Lavac describes himself in this document as a "private citizen". His testimony is filled with anti-smoking clichés and an obvious hatred of smokers.

We have laws to protect us from home invasion by thugs and criminals, yet inadequate laws to protect us from home invasion by toxic carcinogens transmitted by selfish ignorant idiots who do not give a dam [sic] about anyone else ... From the moment these people start sucking on their cancer sticks there is no escape ... Invisible smoking and non-smoking lines make about as much sense as having a non-urinating area in a swimming pool.

His testimony provides some crucial facts that did not appear in the recent news reports, which make a mockery of ASH's claim that his lung cancer (from which he has now recovered) was caused by second, third or fourth-hand smoke. Bear in mind that this testimony was given two years before the cancer was detected, but while he was still living in the apartment.

Not long ago I was diagnosed with a very serious life-threatening illness. One of the first things I did was to purchase a small apartment right on the headland on the edge of a cliff overlooking the ocean to take advantage of the fresh clean air coming off the sea. This, I felt, would be conducive to my recovery and treatment, and give me the best possible chance of beating my illness. The location is idyllic, the view spectacular, the atmosphere tranquil, but, most important of all, the ocean air is pure and pristine.

He does not specify what this life-threatening illness was, but judging by the importance of "fresh clean air", it is reasonable to assume it was some sort of respiratory disorder. Furthermore...

My current health problems are further aggravated and compensated by the fact that I am asthmatic, and have permanent scarring of my lungs from a bout of pneumonia several years ago.

It was at this cliff-side getaway that Lavac encountered two hated smokers who lived in a flat below. According to Lavac, "second-hand smoke constantly permeates my apartment" and according to the  Sydney Morning Herald :

Professor Peters told Mr Lavac and his wife to reduce their exposure. After living in their flat for 18 months in 2005-06, they changed address.

And so, within months of giving his testimony to parliament, Lavac had moved house. He had only been there for a year and a half, and it was another 18 months before he fell ill again.

In March 2008, Mr Lavac was in a criminal trial in the Downing Centre, which happened to be filmed for an ABC documentary, On Trial.

"I got pretty sick but at the time I didn't realise just how sick," he said. "I had a bad flu that didn't seem to go away. After the jury verdict I got an X-ray done. I thought I had pneumonia."

A CAT scan detected a small dark shadow at the top of his right lung, and a biopsy confirmed it was cancer.

Here we have a guy with a history of pneumonia, respiratory illness and asthma. A man who had scarred lung tissue long before he moved to his mountain retreat and who had only moved there in the first place because he had a "very serious life-threatening illness".

Both scarred lungs and pneumonia are risk factors for lung cancer:

Tuberculosis and pneumonia can leave scarring on the lungs. The scarring is a risk factor for lung cancer development, specifically adenocarcinoma.

Asthma is also an independent risk factor for lung cancer:

The combined results from five case-control studies--that presented data limited to individuals who had never smoked--showed a 1.8-fold increase in lung cancer risk among asthmatics (95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.3-2.3).

Attributing a case of lung cancer to any single cause is a fool's game—which is why his case will fail if it ever gets to court—but Lavac had at least three identifiable risk factors for the disease which had nothing to do with tobacco. It is plainly nonsense for ASH's chairman to claim that "on the balance of probabilities" Lavac's lung cancer was caused by living for 18 months by the ocean near some people who smoked on the balcony below him. This would be a ludicrous thing to say at any time, but it it is still more absurd when the patient had at least three known risk factors.

You be the judge, because I seriously doubt that a real judge will ever be asked to decide. This is a publicity stunt to launch ASH's campaign against smoking at home. Nothing more, nothing less.

2011: The ten best bits

Like all years, 2011 was mostly awful for those of us who have a fondness for liberty. However, I have managed to find ten highlights to bring you cheer as the year comes to an end.

10. EU consultation backfires

It all seemed so easy for the European Commission: quietly launch a public consultation on tobacco regulation, pack it full of responses from NGOs and fake charities and, voila!, the EU can declare huge support for plain packaging and huge opposition to lifting the ban on snus. Alas, for our penniless European masters, the NGOs barely turned up, but the public did. Result: very little support for more bans and lots of support for harm reduction policies.

Naturally, the EU disregarded the consultation and claimed to have suddenly found a bundle of supportive responses which they won't let anyone see. Ah, sweet democracy.



9. Junk scientist caught and sacked

All he wanted to do was come up with evidence to show that meat-eaters are anti-social louts, but things unravelled for "social psychologist" Diederik Stapel in October when an investigating committee found that he had "made up or manipulated data in dozens of papers over nearly a decade". The academic fraudster was finally exposed after his students noticed that his data fitted Stapel's pre-existing beliefs a little too perfectly. Sacked in disgrace, one hopes in vain that his example will act as a warning to other politically-motivated social scientists.



8. Malta gets mugged by reality

Having heard about the miraculous effect of smoking bans on heart attacks—arguably the most egregious case of systematic scientific fraud of the last ten years—the people of Malta were expecting great things when they conducted a review of hospital admissions. Alas, the country's heart attack rate had risen since the ban and they had neglected to employ a junk scientist to manipulate the figures to show otherwise.

Failing to twig that they had been tricked by the likes of Jill "let me smooth that our for you" Pell and Anna "pants on fire" Gilmore, the hapless Maltese issued the figures in a report with the unintentionally hilarious title "The Smoking Ban: The Malta Paradox".




7. BBC finally admits that drinking has been declining for years

In which the BBC admitted the truth it had been so carefully obscuring throughout the noughties.

It's difficult to open a newspaper without reading about the alcohol problems that exist in the UK. Recent headlines include "Binge drinking costs NHS billions", "Hospitals reel as drink cases soar" and "Alcohol abuse to cost NHS an extra billion"

And this week, figures from Alcohol Concern suggest the number of people being treated in hospital for alcohol misuse has more than doubled in eight years.

But behind these stories is an unexpected truth - Britons have been drinking less and less every year since 2002.

They didn't make a big deal of this admission—it featured in a little magazine article—and they made it up to their friends at the BMA by producing the most outrageously biased pro-temperance television programme of the year, but at least it was there. If we're lucky, maybe in 2012 they'll acknowledge that obesity hasn't risen since 2002 as well?



6. BMA caught pulling numbers out of the air

Of all the junk statistics that are used to justify a smoking ban in cars, the one you really don't want to cite if you're an "evidence-based" anti-smoking campaigner is the one that was debunked in a prestigious peer-reviewed journal in 2010. But when the British Medical Association earnestly informed the media that smoking in a car creates 23 times more smoke than would be found in a smoky bar, it apparently forgot that the Candian Medical Association Journal had told advocates to "stop using the 23 times more toxic factoid because there appears to be no evidence for it in the scientific literature".

The open and shut nature of the case forced the BMA to retract the silly claim. Having insisted that a single cigarette smoked in a moving vehicle with all the windows open creates 23 times more secondhand smoke than a pub full of smokers, they replaced it with the claim that ten cigarettes smoked in a stationary car with all the windows up and the ventilation off creates 11 times more smoke. Not quite the same thing, that, but it mattered not because the media had moved on and virtually no news outlets let their readers in on the cock-up.



5. Stanton Glantz roundly mocked for Smokefree Movies madness

It's always amusing when normal people suddenly become aware of deranged characters like California's mad professor Stanton A. Glantz (I can't say what the A stands for, but its an anagram of 'earholes'). In March, the paranoid mechanical engineer got himself in the news when he attacked an animated film called Rango which depicted people doing the worst thing in the world. It was true, said Glantz: "A lot of kids are going to start smoking because of this movie." Cue hilarity from across the media and blogosphere, of which the best came from the website Filmdrunk:

Let me be very clear about something: Stanton Glantz is not a real person. He can't be. An anti-smoking advocate named Stanton Glantz who lives in San Francisco and makes conclusory doomsday statements like "A lot of kids are going to start smoking because of this movie" sounds like something even Michael Bay would dismiss as being too on-the -nose. No, I'll not be fooled by this.

Look, I don't want kids smoking any more than the next guy (provided the next guy isn't Joe Camel). But these morons who take it upon themselves to try to eradicate tobacco use from the planet one city ordinance and petition at a time need to be stopped. I'm sorry if your enjoyment of the park is lessened because Johnny Motorcycle lit up a Marlboro Light and the smell of smoke just drives you batty. But tough sh*t. I don't like country music, but I'm not going to go out and picket every Keith Urban concert. As I said up top, I can understand banning smoking in tight, confined spaces like bars or airplanes for the health of consumers and employees. But when your argument devolves into "ALL MOVIES WITH SMOKING SHOULD BE RATED-R REGARDLESS OF CONTEXT," then you're no longer doing a service to your cause.

And you're an asshole.

And I hate you.

Quite.

Gobshite

4. Dutch government decides to treat electorate like grown ups

Wailing and gnashing of teeth were inevitable when the Dutch government decided to relax the smoking ban and slash funding of the neo-prohibitionist tobacco control outfit STIVORO.

A bunch of concerned advocates (ie. people who would be out of work if their governments also slashed tobacco control spending) wrote a tear-stained letter to The Lancet with the wonderful title 'Can the Dutch government really be abandoning smokers to their fate?' If stopping harassment and vilification is leaving people to their fate, then yes, they were.

The Dutch health minister, Edith Schippers, has said that "the state is not a nanny" and that she wants to allow "adults to decide for themselves over lifestyle decisions." Public health professionals across Europe looked at each other in bewilderment.



3. McDonalds outwits San Francisco food fascists

Bone-headed Californians decided that Happy Meals were the cause of obesity and so banned the practice of giving toys away with fast food. McDonalds duly obeyed and started selling toys separarely for ten cents while giving the proceeds to charity. The result?

Happy Meal sales haven't slowed down, McDonald's is making even more money, and parents are now spending an extra 10 cents per kid every time they stop by the golden arches.

Tee, and furthermore, hee.



2. Bigot crushed in Stony Stratford

Risible neurotic local councillor decides that there will be no more smoking on his watch and moves to ban people lighting up in the streets of Stony Stratford. ASH gives him their support but hundreds of more liberal-minded people flock to the town to register their disgust. Local residents disown him, the motion is rejected by 148 votes to 2 and Councillor Paul Bartlett - for it is he - may not be a councillor for much longer.



1. Alcohol Concern loses government funding

In October, there was terrible news for the nation's second least popular fake charity when the government decided that there was no need to keep shovelling hundreds of thousands of pounds at a temperance group which did nothing but slag them off. Having bit the hand that fed it once too often, Alcohol Concern was left without state-funding. Faced with the prospect of having to collect donations from the public like charities are supposed to do, its CEO, Don Shenker, immediately jumped ship. Shenker is now desperately hoping that any future employees don't Google his name.



Happy New Year.

March of the morons

Some pitiful news from Australia:

Cancer sparks legal action over smoking fumes
Peter Lavac, a Sydney lawyer, fitness fanatic and champion surf skier, thought something was wrong when he was not breathing as freely.

Knowing smoke was getting into his air from a flat below where a chain-smoking couple lived, he tried to get them to stop. Unsuccessful, he then approached the body corporate, strata title management and the tenancy tribunal, but to no avail.

He consulted a respiratory specialist, Professor Matthew Peters, who told him to monitor his condition. "From this data and my symptoms, Professor Peters concluded on the balance of probabilities that my symptoms and decrease in lung function were caused by the second-hand cigarette smoke," he said.

No responsible physician would make such a statement. 15% of lung cancers occur in nonsmokers and there are 40 different risk factors for the disease—there is no evidence that being in a flat near another flat where people smoke is one of them. On the contrary, such a hypothesis flies in the face of both science and common sense. What kind of an idiot is this Professor Peters?

Professor Peters, chairman of Action on Smoking and Health, said there was no lower limit for exposure to smoking. "If you can smell smoke, it is hurting you," he said.

Aha! Not just any old doctor, then. This is a guy who has argued for smokers to be denied surgery, who shills for GlaxoSmithKline and who has taken pleasure from hounding smokers out of every conceivable 'public' place in the über-nanny state of Australia. Now, having lied to his patient, he intends to persecute two innocent people who have retreated into their own home—the only place left for them to smoke. Let's not beat around the bush here, friends, this guy is the lowest of the low.

Professor Peters told Mr Lavac, 65, and his wife to reduce their exposure. After living in their flat for 18 months in 2005-06, they moved. In March, 2008, Mr Lavac felt unwell. A CT scan detected a shadow at the top of his right lung, and a biopsy confirmed cancer...

Mr Lavac, who had never smoked, lost a third of his right lung. His surgeon and Professor Peters told him that, on the balance of probabilities, the lesion had been caused by passive smoking.

Yes folks. We live in a world in which professors of medicine tell people that they have developed lung disorders because they lived in a flat for 18 months above people who smoked. This is the state of hypochondria and intellectual retardation we have reached in the last days of 2011.

You can watch this cretin below, if you can stomach it. He mentions that his patient had never smoked and reported no secondhand smoke exposure and so, in his weird little world, it must have been tobacco smoke magically seeping in from a neighbouring building wot done it. At this rate, Australians will be burning wickermen and ducking witches before the end of the decade.




UPDATE:

I didn't want to say too much about Peter Lavac in this post as he has clearly suffered a brush with death. His disbelief at contracting lung cancer is sadly typical of people who think they don't "deserve" to suffer ill health because they have followed all the rules of public health

"How could this possibly happen to me?" asks Peter. "I was at the peak of my physical strength and power. I'd never smoked, I never drank alcohol, I never did drugs, I was an athlete."

However, as Mag points out in the comments, Mr Lavac has a back story himself. He is a member of the Non-Smokers Movement of Australia and lobbied parliament for a draconian smoking ban in 2006.

The coincidences are coming thick and fast, are they not? ASH and the NSMA are both small organisations with limited memberships and yet it just so happens that the "victim" of fourth-hand smoke (or whatever it is) is a prominent lobbyist for NSMA and the doctor who says his story checks out just so happens to be the chairman of ASH.

Gee, what a small world.

Absurd logic

Earlier this month, the Department of Health announced that it would be launching a public consultation on plain packaging before the end of the year. They have since delayed it until the spring, but the British Heart Foundation was clearly all geared up for the earlier deadline. How else to explain this spurious propaganda appearing three days before new year?

Branded cigarettes safer, say 25%
More than a quarter of young smokers believe cigarettes in "glitzy" and branded packaging are less harmful than those in packets with a plain design, a charity has warned.

A report by the British Heart Foundation (BHF) found that just over 25% of regular smokers aged 16 to 25 thought a branded cigarette pack was less harmful than another based on the packet design alone.

This refers to the fact that people can still remember when (low-tar) Marlboro Gold were called Marlboro Lights. That was not so very long ago so it is hardly surprising. The BHF do not consider the fact that Marlboro Gold will still be called Marlboro Gold even if plain packaging is introduced and, therefore, a minority of people will consider them to be less harmful—or, to put it another way, that Marlboro are more harmful. Being prohibitionists, they never contemplate the consequences of their actions. Action is all that counts. But unless they plan mass brainwashing of the population, the plain packaging ruse will have no effect on the misconception they profess to be concerned about.

Betty McBride, director of policy and communications at the British Heart Foundation, said: "As informed adults, we know that smoking is a deadly addiction that kills half of all smokers.

Why does the British Heart Foundation—a charity—have a "director of policy"? Is this really what people donate their money for?

"But young people are not always fully aware of the risks, and the power of branding holds more sway."

Firstly, it is highly unlikely that young people are not fully aware of the risks considering the multi-million pound anti-smoking campaigns in every media, as well as at school. Secondly, in case you hadn't noticed, "young people" are not allowed to buy cigarettes and by the time they are able to buy them they are "informed adults". Even if they obtain them illicitly in the mean time, they will find extensive, graphic health warnings on every pack. If these do not make them "fully aware of the risks", the fault lies with the anti-tobacco policy-makers who created them.

But for do-anything, say-anything campaigners like the BHF's director of policy, nothing is ever enough...

"Tobacco advertising is rightly banned in the UK. Yet current glitzy packaging clearly still advertises tobacco on the cigarette box."

Tobacco advertising is indeed banned. I vividly recall organisations like the BHF celebrating all those years ago when the UK introduced a total and utter ban on tobacco advertising and sponsorship. They celebrated because the ban was so "comprehensive". There was not a word from them about any "loophole" which allowed cigarette packaging because, as everyone understood, packaging is not advertising. Only very recently, as the anti-smoking movement searched for new barrels to scrape, have they attempted to redefine advertising to include colours and logos.

She added: "It's an absurd loophole the tobacco industry takes full advantage of to lure in new young smokers."

This is abject nonsense, but expect to hear much more of it next year. The alcohol, food and pharmaceutical industries should take note. 'Junk food' and alcohol are not allowed to be advertised before 9pm. Most drugs cannot be advertised at all. Alcohol may also soon be subject to a total ban. Why, then, should children have to be "exposed" to the "advertising" of "glitzy packaging" every time they step foot in a shop or walk past a window? Won't somebody think of the children? Something must be done, etc. etc.

Either packaging is advertising, in which case products which cannot be advertised on television should be sold in plain packaging from covered shelves, or it is not, in which case some semblance of a free market should remain.

It is not, of course. Never in history has a logo on a product been considered advertising. Even the fruitiest loops of the anti-smoking fraternity never viewed it as such until necessity became the mother of invention. They will resort to anything to get their way, but their corruption of the English language must be resisted by every industry before the neo-prohibitionists take the "next logical step."

The hyper-inflation of beer

Amongst my stocking fillers this year was a book titled The Book of Beer Knowledge  from which I give you these statistics:

Pint of milk

1971: 5p

2007: 32p

= 640% increase

Pound of steak

1971: 60p

2007: 408p

= 680% increase

Sliced loaf

1971: 9.5p

2007: 88p

= 926% increase

Pint of beer


1971: 12p

2007: 224p

= 1867% increase

Aside from the enormous, above-inflation rise in the price of beer—despite the temperance lobby's disingenuous assertion that alcohol has become more "affordable"—I'm struck by how much the price of a pint has increased even since 2007.

The book was published by CAMRA so £2.24 pint was presumably the average cost of real ale, but anecdotal evidence tells me that the price must have risen to around £3 in the four years since, no? Does anybody have some 2011 prices to complete the picture?

Everyone needs sugar - let's tax it!

An op-ed in the New Zealand Herald  calls for a tax on sugar. Nothing special about that, but the article—written by one Tony Falkenstein—uses so many of the neo-prohibitionist's rhetorical tricks that it should be regarded as a classic of the oeuvre.

It starts with the inevitable argumentum ad tobacco:

Remember the Marlboro man who rode across billboards, cigarette hanging from his lips? Remember Benson & Hedges, which sponsored the tennis, Rothmans which sponsored the cricket? - all brands promoting healthy living when the exact opposite was the truth.

Ignoring the fact that tobacco isn't essential to human life but sugar is, Falkenstein then draws a spurious comparison:

It took a tax to dramatically slow smoking addiction; a tax on sugar and fat products would do the same.

And let's have that parallel with tobacco again...

Thirty years ago nobody would have imagined that cigarette advertising would be banned, workplaces would be smoke free, and that cigarettes would attract an excise tax of 24c a cigarette.

Perhaps not, but thirty years ago there were people who warned that the anti-smoking campaign would set a template for food faddists, teetotallers and other puritans and cranks. This was always strongly denied, but it is now glaringly obvious that they were right.

We now have two newer addictions - sugar and fat.

These are not addictions, let alone "new" ones. Fat and sugar are essential to sustain life, hence the body naturally desires them.

These are the major cause of Diabetes 2

Hardly the "major cause". According to Diabetes UK, the causes of diabetes are many and varied:

You should ask your GP for a test for diabetes, if you:
are white and over 40 years oldare black, Asian or from a minority ethnic group and over 25 years oldhave one or more of the following risk factors.
The risk factors

A close member of your family has Type 2 diabetes (parent or brother or sister).You're overweight or if your waist is 31.5 inches or over for women; 35 inches or over for Asian men and 37 inches or over for white and black men.You have high blood pressure or you've had a heart attack or a stroke.You're a woman with polycystic ovary syndrome and you are overweight.You've been told you have impaired glucose tolerance or impaired fasting glycaemia.If you're a woman and you've had gestational diabetes.You have severe mental health problems.

He continues:

Sugar is an addiction...

No. No, it isn't.

...so a gentle weaning off the addiction will make it more manageable for consumers as well as giving manufacturers time to adjust the composition of their products.

The excise tax I propose would be 20 per cent on all products with more than 10 per cent sugar content.

Apples and mangos are 15% sugar. Bananas are more than 50% sugar. Are you sure you've though this through?

Each year the sugar content bar would reduce by 1 per cent , so that in seven years the 20 per cent tax would apply to all products with more than 4 per cent sugar,which is considered an acceptable level.

This would mean a sin tax on all fizzy drinks, of course. But it would also mean a sin tax on most fruits, all smoothies, all desserts and a good proportion of yoghurts. From taxing Marlboros to taxing grapes in thirty years. If this is not a slippery slope, what is?

Of course, the food industry is equated with Big Bad Tobacco.

The food and beverage industry, like the tobacco industry before it, can afford to outgun health spending for its own benefit.

And there is the usual appeal to the economy:

The country cannot afford the cost of diabetes, and a sugar tax will force the industry to adopt better standards, and consumers to reduce their addiction.

If the country cannot afford diabetes, how can it afford a Pigouvian tax levied to pay for diabetes? The idea, surely, is to be Pareto efficient?

And finally, the massive conflict of interest. Who is this Tony Falkenstein who wants a 20% tax on all sugary drinks?

Tony Falkenstein, ONZM, is chief executive of Just Water International.

Just Water International makes its money from selling water coolers. Fancy that!

Tony Falkenstein: Rent-seeking shill
(Thanks to Ross for bringing this article to my attention.)

What effect will a fat tax have?

From The Guardian :

Imposing a 10% "fat tax" on sugary drinks would help tackle soaring rates of obesity, according to new research by international experts.

Would it, by God? And your evidence?

"In testing taxation as an option for shifting beverage purchase patterns, we calculate that a 10% increase in the price of SSBs could potentially result in a decrease of 7.5ml per capita per day." A similar 10% hike in the cost of full-fat milk would also reduce consumption of it by 5ml per person per day and increased intake of reduced fat milk by 7ml per head every day, it adds.

Okay. So a 10% tax—essentially a tithe to be given to the Gods of public health—would reduce full-fat milk intake by 5ml a day, or 1,825 ml a year. That works out at 3.2 pints a year.

Doesn't sound like very much, does it? And indeed it's not. There are 380 calories in a pint of full-fat milk and 265 calories in a pint of semi-skimmed. If a 10% tax on full-fat milk makes people replace 3.2 pints of full-fat with 3.2 pints of semi-skimmed, they would reduce their calorie intake by 368 per year ((380-265 = 115) x 3.2 = 368). This works out at one calorie per day which is, to all intents and purposes, nothing.

But there is more. The fat-taxers seem to think that consumption of reduced fat milk will increase by 7ml a day—more than offsetting the 5ml fall in full-fat milk consumption. Why they believe this, I know not, but let's roll with it for a moment.

A 7ml increase is 2,555ml a year, ie. four and a half pints a year. If this is semi-skimmed, this is an extra 1,166 calories.

If it is skimmed milk (195 calories per pint), it would be an extra 858 calories.

Remember that people will supposedly lose 1,216 calories because the fat tax makes them reduce their full-fat milk consumption by 3.2 pints.

So if they switch from full-fat to semi-skimmed milk, they will lose fifty calories per year—a whopping 0.1 calorie per day! (1166 - 1216 = -50). Just watch that flab fly off!

Even if they switch to skimmed milk, they will lose only 358 calories per year, ie. one calorie a day (858 - 1216 = -358).

As for reducing consumption of "sugar-sweetened beverages" by 7.5ml a day, there are 400 calories in a litre of Coca-Cola, so a reduction of 7.5ml works out at 3 fewer calories per day. This, of course, assumes that people would replace their Coke with water or nothing at all. If they substituted something "healthy", like an Innocent Smoothie, they would wind up consuming more calories because a typical litre of smoothie contains more than 500 calories. (But we don't mention that because middle-class people like them.)

Since the average adult male needs 2,500 calories per day to maintain a healthy weight, the idea that a reduction of 0.1 to 3 calories would "help tackle soaring rates of obesity" must be described as extremely fanciful. It would, however, be an effective way of clawing more money out of the hands of the hapless electorate on the pretext of health. And that, dare I say, is the real appeal.

Vested interests

Dr. Theodore Dalrymple has written a typically incisive article about the Dutch government's decision to reduce the amount of taxpayers' money spent on anti-smoking groups. You might recall the squeals of discontent from various tobacco control employees in a recent letter to the Lancet. That the authors of that letter depend on draconian anti-smoking policies for their livelihoods has not gone unnoticed by Dalrymple.

It seems to be beyond the imagination of anti-smoking campaigners that someone might support the right to smoke on grounds of principle and not of narrow personal interest. The item, brief as it is, gives a flavor of the often bile-filled writing of anti-smoking campaigners:

It would be a matter of no little shame to a country that prides itself on a compassionate and inclusive ethos if its government were to abandon smokers to their fate. Every death that ensued would not just be the responsibility of the tobacco industry, which continues to promote its lethal product, but also of every politician in the Dutch Government who chose to look the other way and allow it to happen.

What of the responsibility of the smokers themselves?
Of this, not a word: they are putty in the hands of the tobacco companies and their government, scarcely human in fact. Apparently, Dutch smokers would stop if they knew about the effects of secondhand smoke, which are harmful additionally to first-hand smoke. A strange psychology indeed!
What if someone wrote a theoretical defense of the right to smoke, but put at the end that he had received money from the tobacco companies and indeed was employed by them? A cry of "vested interest!" would deafen.

Do go read the rest.

Kicking Edgar Allan Poe

"Quiantest thoughts, queerest fancies come to life and fade away.

What care I how time advances?

I am drinking ale today."

- Edgar Allan Poe

Happy boxing day.