Banning filters?

ASH want to ban cigarette filters and various other things. They're completely out of control. They even want a consultation on banning vaping in 'public places'.

They also call cigarette filters a fraud. I have written about this for The Critic.

 

The Tobacco and Vapes Bill hasn’t become law yet, but Action on Smoking and Health have already announced their next set of demands. Via the All-Party Parliamentary Group that ASH set up and run, they are calling for a ban on smoking in the tiny handful of cigar lounges that are still allowed to permit it, a £700 million a year levy on the tobacco industry, health warnings on individual cigarettes, and a ban on cigarette filters. 

These are the last desperate squeals of an organisation that has made itself obsolete. The idea of a tobacco industry levy has been repeatedly rejected by HMRC because the tax will ultimately be paid by consumers and we already have tobacco duty for that. Banning smoking in luxury cigar lounges is just petty, and health warnings on cigarettes, as recently introduced in the anti-tobacco basket case that is Australia, are preposterous. 

The only interesting proposal is the ban on cigarette filters — and not in a good way. ASH will have half an eye on the House of Lords, where the Tobacco and Vapes Bill will arrive later this month. Since the average peer is even more intolerant and puritanical than the average MP, ASH will be hoping that they add yet more bells and whistles to this appalling piece of prohibitionist legislation. In the reading in the Commons last month, an amendment to ban cigarette filters (proposed by one of those freedom-loving Conservatives, natch) got more than 100 votes. The amendment referred to “plastic cigarette filters” so Caroline Dinenage — for it was she — may have thought that this was a minor piece of environmental regulation. Perhaps she didn’t know that all cigarette filters are made of plastic; cellulose acetate to be precise. A ban on plastic filters would be a ban on all filters and, unless the UK is going to repeal EU laws on tar and nicotine yields, possibly a ban on all cigarettes. 

 

Read it all.

 

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The smoking ban

The tobacco ban went through the House of Commons today. Barely anyone even noticed. It will take years for it to bite, by which time taxes will have turned most of the market illicit anyway and some health secretary will no doubt have taken the "brave and bold" step of taking the nicotine out of cigarettes or banning them for people of all ages.

I have said enough about this stupid prohibition for now, so here's someone speaking the truth about the 2007 smoking ban which some people naively believed represented the anti-smoking lobby's final demand. The account is called Britain's Lost & Living Pubs. Give them a follow.

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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.

 

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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. 

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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