Christopher Snowdon's Blog, page 6

Is smoking making a comeback?

Smoking is on the up in the south of England, according to a study this week. Perhaps it is. We'll see. It wouldn't be surprising for three reasons I discuss at The Critic . 

There have been four large increases in tobacco taxes since 2021 which have had the effect of lowering the de facto price of cigarettes for millions of people. Last October I wrote about how legal tobacco sales fell by 30 per cent in just two years despite a much smaller decline in the number of cigarettes smoked. The figures for 2024 were published recently and show that sales fell by 45 per cent between 2021 and 2024 despite the number of smokers falling by less than one per cent. For those with eyes to see, this is conclusive proof that the black market for tobacco has grown at an astonishing rate in recent years thanks to the government pricing smokers out of the legal market. The going rate for a pack of cigarettes is now effectively £5. 

While it has become cheaper to smoke, the hysteria about vaping has grown. A mere 13 per cent of smokers in England know that vaping is less harmful than smoking. More than a third think it is worse than smoking and 37 per cent think it is equally harmful. This represents a staggering failure of public health messaging and should be borne in mind whenever you see an opinion poll showing support for anti-vaping legislation. Ignorance about the relative risks of smoking and vaping is endemic among both smokers and nonsmokers and gets worse every year. It would be hardly surprising if smokers are taking a “better the devil you know” approach.

Read the rest.

 

Not Invented Here syndrome

This week, the IEA published Not Invented Here , a short book looking at why single-issue pressure groups often object to practical solutions. It features nimbies, environmentalists and lots of 'public health' types. You can read it here. We also had a good event at the IEA on Wednesday. I'll upload the video when it goes live.

In the meantime, we've got a nice Substack now so do bookmark it and/or subscribe. We have a little exclusive coming out on Monday. 

How slushy ice drinks became a health hazard

The UK sugar tax has had an unexpected consequence for health. 

A study in Archives of Disease in Childhood identified 21 cases of children in the British Isles developing hypoglycaemia and suffering from what the authors describe as ‘an acute decrease in consciousness’ after drinking ‘slush ice drinks’ such as Slush Puppies. None of the children had a history of hypoglycaemia. None of them had an episode like this again, apart from one child who became ill after drinking another slushy ice drink.  

The cause of their collapse was glycerol intoxication, and the finger of blame falls on the sugar tax.

 Read all about it at the Spectator .

More obesity babble

I've returned to the topic of bad obesity predictions for The Critic.

 

What is the purpose of pointless projections that are so bad they make the Bank of England look like clairvoyants? The authors of the 2011 Lancet study admitted that their projections were “mere extrapolations from available data” and that “past trends do not always predict the future”. Indeed they do not. In Britain, the big rise in obesity ended twenty years ago and its causes are not fully understood. Rates of obesity have ticked up since 2006, but only gently and inconsistently while rates of overweight have not increased at all. There is no reason to base future projections on the assumption that obesity rates will suddenly start rising like they did in the 1990s. 

 Have a read. 

Nanny state politicians in their own words

I've been reading the transcripts of various interviews with British politicians conducted by Henry Dimbleby and Dolly van Tulleken. They include Tony Blair, George Osborne, Boris Johnson and David Cameron, plus various health ministers going back to Virginia Bottomley and William Waldegrave. You can read them here. You might find them interesting.

Dimbleby and van Tulleken talk to them about obesity/food policy and want to find out why more nanny state policies have not been introduced over the years. Three things stood out to me.

Firstly, they nearly all said that they wished they had done more, acted sooner, been bolder, etc. None of them has any real doubts that people's diet and waistlines are something that the government can (or should) control. None of them questions the garbage they are told by 'public health' activists and dietary entrepreneurs, such as the fake child obesity figures or the demonic status of 'ultra-processed food' (Matt Hancock is particularly gullible in this regard).

Secondly, there is no difference between Labour and Conservative politicians. If you read these transcripts blind, you would not be able to guess which politicians were from the party that supposedly supports the free market and personal liberty. If anything, the likes of William Hague and Seema Kennedy are more statist and authoritarian than Alan Milburn and Tony Blair. It is a Uniparty and no matter you vote for, the coercive paternalists always get in.

Thirdly, despite Dimbleby and van Tulleken frequently prompting them to complain about lobbying from the food industry, most of them do not think this makes a lot of difference to policy-making. It is public opinion and the personal views of ministers that matter, not the paper tiger of Big Food. 

Admittedly, the first two of these observations may have been influenced by the fact that they were being interviewed by people who are overtly in favour of greater state meddling. They may have given different answers to more liberal interviewers. They are politicians after all, even if some of them are retired. But I am strongly of the view that what they said to Dimbleby and van Tulleken is what they really think. I have heard a couple of these people make libertarian-ish speeches before doing exactly the opposite in office. Judge them by their deeds. These interviews make it clear that they would have been even less liberal if they had got the chance, but they nothing if not pragmatic.

Here is Jeremy Hunt, for example.   

As a politician, one has to be mindful of how to lead on public opinion – you want to be slightly ahead of the curve, but not so far ahead that you lose credibility and are faced with too much opposition from newspapers and within the party. That is how we reduced smoking. Caroline Flint announced the ban on smoking in public places. I built on it with plain paper packaging and then Rishi introduced the full ban. Caroline would not have succeeded if she had gone straight for a ban so there is an element of bringing people with you. 

 Hang on. That sounds very much like the supposedly mythical slippery slope, the ratchet effect, the salami slicer. Why yes. Yes, it is... 

Work out what your 'next big thing' is and get on with it. Then after a few years, when people have got used to it, come back with another. Keep going step by step - it's the only way to change habits. 

 It's nice to have it from the horse's mouth that there is no point trying to appease these people. One thing will lead to another. Do not give them an inch. Jeremy Hunt was also kind enough to confirm that shrinkflation is deliberate government policy. 

But we are making real progress on portion sizes. I went on holiday to Croatia and bought a Magnum. 'Wow that's big' I thought. Then I remember that's how big they used to be in the UK. As the father of three young kids I am delighted they have got smaller! 

 A senior Conservative politician who can't say 'no' to his own children and who thinks it is a good thing when British consumers get ripped off? It turns out that there are many such cases.

The People vs. Paternalism

 

Millions of consumers are routinely impoverished and have their freedoms taken away by tiny pressure groups. How does it happen and what can be done about it? 

That is the question I try to answer in a new IEA report: The People vs Paternalism. Free download.

And I've written about it for The Spectator.

Quote of the week: minimum pricing

Two of the people paid by the Welsh government to justify evaluate minimum pricing have written a piece for The Conversation which contains a 'public health' quote for the ages. 

Minimum pricing for alcohol is well supported by evidence. It is not without its critics, especially those citing continued trends in actual numbers of alcohol-related deaths. 

This is the only mention of deaths in the article. As I mentioned recently, alcohol-specific deaths have gone up more in Wales than in any other part of the UK since the Welsh introduced minimum pricing. There is a whiff of the hostage video about the article. The authors know the policy didn't work and anyone who reads their evaluation can see that. The quote above feels like a wink to the reader. Nevertheless, they have a job to do...
 

Based on our findings, we recommend that the Welsh Government retains minimum alcohol pricing. 

 PS. Invoice attached.

What is the Marcela Trust?

Action on Sugar is back in the black. After receiving just £74 in voluntary donations in 2022/23, the pressure group - formally known as - raised £201,225 last year. 

£200,000 of that came from the Marcela Trust. The Marcela Trust was set up by the late businessman Octav Botnar and is named after his (now also late) wife. Mr Botnar founded Datsun UK, which later became Nissan UK, and was a bit of a character.  

In June 1991, the Inland Revenue raided Nissan UK's headquarters, as well as Mr Botnar's home and the homes of other company officials. The tax authority accused Botnar of evading more than £200 million in taxes. The scam involved using a third party shipping agent to deliberately overcharge Nissan UK for the shipment of vehicles from Japan so as to artificially depress its own profits thus reducing the company's exposure to corporation tax. Botnar left for Switzerland and lived for the rest of his life there in Villars-sur-Ollon.

 I have long been intrigued by the Marcela Trust because I have never been able to work out what it is. It has a vast amount of money but it doesn't seem to give much of it away and its charitable objectives are hilariously vague... 

THE CHARITY PROVIDES SUPPORT TO SELECTED CAUSES IN LINE WITH THE CHARITY'S OBJECTS.

 In 2022/23 it had an income of £8.2 million but it spent £5.8 million on running costs, including £2.6 million on wages. It only handed out £353,000 in grants (which, as I understand it, is supposed to be the purpose of the trust) and most of that went to a fanatical anti-sugar lobby group.

Action on Sugar is not a grassroots organisation, to put it mildly. The £74 it raised in donations in 2022/23 was a big improvement on the £7 it raised the year before. It was rapidly running down its bank reserves when the Marcela Trust stepped up with 200 grand. And those reserves only existed because the Marcela Trust had given it fat wads of money back when it was plain old Consensus Action on Salt and Health, the last of which was a £140,000 grant in 2017/18. 
Back in 2012, the blogger Hemiposterical tried to find out what this is all about, but despite following it up for years was never really able to. I don't particularly care where Action on Sugar gets its money from, but out of sheer curiosity I'm asking the question again in case anyone can help. What does the Marcela Trust do and what has it got against sugar and salt?

Gambling is still not a public health issue

I've said it before and I'll say it again: gambling is not a public health issue.

Gambling is not a public health issue. Never has been, never will be. Problem gambling is a mental health problem but not a public health problem. It is no more of a public health issue than depression, anxiety or standing on a piece of Lego in your bare feet. There may be things that the government could do to alleviate these problems, but that does not make them public health issues. For the term “public health” to be useful, it has to mean something more than the aggregated health conditions of a society. Pollution, contagious diseases and sewage are public health issues because they present risks that individuals cannot easily avoid through their own actions. The same cannot be said of putting a tenner on the 2.30 at Chepstow.

Obesity and smoking are routinely described as public health issues when they are nothing of the kind. The legal professor Richard E. Epstein pointed out twenty years ago that this misleading terminology is “designed to signal that state coercion is appropriate when it is not.” As I wrote last month, gospel temperance groups have reinvented themselves as ‘public health’ groups because that’s where the action is if you want something banned these days.

It is not a matter of semantics. Resources for genuine public health problems are limited and infectious diseases may flourish if money is diverted towards clamping down on the leisure pursuits of affluent westerners (yes, I’m looking at you, World Health Organisation). In any case, saying that something is a public health problem doesn’t make it any easier to solve. Indeed, it makes it more difficult to solve because it opens the door to a legion of clueless “public health professionals” and single-issue campaigners who bumble in waving their hammer and looking for another nail.

 

Read it all.

Minimum pricing ditched in Australia

AI generated

Have you noticed all the countries lining up to introduce minimum pricing after it was such a world-leading success in Scotland? You haven't because there aren't any. Wales and Ireland were daft enough to follow suit and that's about it. Parts of Canada have had a version of it for years and Russia has experimented with it for vodka, but otherwise the rest of the world doesn't want to know, despite the WHO recommending it in a report written by Colin 'Nostradamus' Angus with the help of Aveek Bhattacharya, then of the "Institute of Alcohol Studies" and now - terrifying - working at the Treasury.

The neo-temperance lobby could boast that it still had Australia's Northern Territory, but no more. Last September, the NT government said that it would get rid of minimum pricing because - hold on to your hats! - it hadn't worked.

And now they have. 

The Northern Territory Government has delivered on its election promise to remove the minimum floor price for alcohol.

The Liquor Legislation Amendment (Repeal of Minimum Pricing) Bill 2024 passed through Parliament yesterday.

The floor price, also known as the Minimum Unit Price (MUP), was introduced in 2018, with the current Country Liberal Party (CLP) Government saying it failed to achieve meaningful outcomes while imposing unnecessary burdens on responsible consumers and businesses.

Minister for Tourism and Hospitality Marie-Clare Boothby said: “Unlike the previous government, the CLP is focused on real reforms which deliver meaningful and fair results for all Territorians.

“The CLP Government has listened to the concerns of the community and industry, ensuring policy is rooted in evidence and effectiveness.

“We promised that 2025 would be a year of action, certainty and security for Territorians.

“We are committed to supporting a strong hospitality sector while ensuring alcohol policy is responsible, targeted, and evidence-based.”

Don't you love a vibe shift?

"We need solutions that address the complexities of alcohol-related harm, not blanket policies that punish the majority for the actions of a few.

"This is a line in the sand. Scrapping the floor price demonstrates our government’s commitment to real, meaningful change."

 And so it does. Could we import some of this sanity to the UK please?