Martin Dockrell of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) looks at the Conservative party's links to the tobacco industry, and the tobacco industry's false claims.
By Martin Dockrell of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH)
When he was still leader of the opposition David Cameron said:
“I believe that secret corporate lobbying, like the expenses scandal, goes to the heart of why people are so fed up with politics; it arouses people’s worst fears and suspicions about how our political system works.”
His government’s tobacco control plan (pdf), published in March, promises to protect health policy from tobacco industry lobbying. They even plan to make respondents to health consultations declare any links with the tobacco industry, financial or otherwise.
This makes sense when you consider that much of the pro-tobacco lobbying – ostensibly from retailers, publicans and smokers – has been bankrolled by tobacco manufacturers.
The problem with hidden lobbying is just that, it is hidden. On April 27th the Guardian ran the headline:
“BAT denies allegations that it funded anti-tobacco ban lobby.”
The very next day they ran the story:
“BAT admits bankrolling newsagents’ tobacco campaign”
And that only scratches the surface. Tobacconomics, a new report from ASH, shows how the industry generates dodgy data and then recycles it through a lobby laundry process to remove the whiff of Big Tobacco.
We have grown used to an industry that misleads politicians and the public but this is one that will even mislead its own shareholders. At their AGM in Bristol Imperial executives were asked what impact Ireland’s tobacco display ban had on tobacco duty revenue.
Three times they were asked; three times the answer came back “a fall of half a billion pounds”.
But this is a matter of public record. Figures from the Irish government show that in 2009 there was an increase in revenue of €50 million in the six months following the ban as in the six months before.
And have you heard the claim that 50 English pubs have closed every week since the smoking ban? Well there is no official definition of a pub but the number of licenses to sell alcohol both on and off the premises (so excluding restaurants and shops) increased 5% that year and has increased every year since.
In the word’s of the BBC’s Mark Easton:
“Pubs aren’t dying – they are evolving.”
Industry watcher, Professor Anna Gilmore explains how it works:
“Industry funded analysts produce unbalanced and misleading reports, these get recycled by lobbyists and front groups and in due course crop up in the speeches of industry friendly politicians.
“Thus essentially bogus claims become accepted as ‘fact’.”
Let’s look at Philip Davies’s claim that when Canada banned tobacco displays “there was a rise in teenage smoking as a result of the ban”. It all started when Japan Tobacco International (owners of the Silk Cut brand) commissioned consultants “Europe Economics” to provide “expert economic analysis”.
Their findings were quickly recycled by Patrick Basham and published by the Institute for Economic Affairs, thus obscuring the tobacco industry link (although Basham, is adjunct scholar at the tobacco funded Cato Institute). The “factoid” was peddled furiously by the National Federation of Retail Newsagents (the group at the centre of the Guardian’s exposé above).
And what does the data say? Well Canadian provinces introduced display bans over a period of several years and it is difficult to link cause and effect, but over all that time there was not a single year when Canadian teen smoking increased and indeed, over the period, it fell by more than a third.
Last year’s Australian election was marked by a $5 million television campaign attacking the Labour government’s plan to put cigarettes in plain packaging. Research shows plain packs would be less attractive to young people, less misleading to smokers and increase the impact of health warnings.
The ads purported to be from “tobacco retailers” fearing economic ruin, but turned out to be funded by the industry.
Andrew Lansley plans to consult on a similar law for the UK. Internal industry documents reveal manufactures do not “want to see plain packaging introduced anywhere regardless of the size and importance of the market however small”.
One thing is for sure, the industry will be lobbying more ferociously than ever before.
30 Responses to “Is Big Tobacco blowing smoke in Cameron’s eyes?”
ToryBater
@Jonathan. I’ve just re-read this and checked the links. Tell me
1) Did Irish tobacco duty fall by 50% as Imperial claim or increase by €50 million?
2) Is the guy not right. THe number of on and off sales licenses increases from 77,000 to almost 81,000
3) Philip Davies and Japan Tobacco say Canadian teen smoking went up. What year would that be?
Dave Atherton
Where do we start with such rubbish. First of all Freedom2Choose do not or have not ever received, payments, remuneration, or grace and favour from tobacco companies or its affiliates. Any other opinion is a smear and is libelous. I am an Executive of F2C.
Secondly, the display bans in Canada did not come in until 2006/7 and as you can see from ASH’s own graph it hardly made a scrap of difference, most reductions came pre ban.
Thirdly if you would care to read in my link the British Beer and Pub Association’s closures from my blog you will see that between 1980 and 2006 pubs closed at a rate of 0.6504% a year and post ban rose to 2.775% a four fold (4X)increase. Four years before the ban for example 1,200 pubs closed, post ban 4,791 four years after. Dockrell must think the British public are fools.
http://daveatherton.wordpress.com/2011/04/21/british-pub-closures-1980-2010/
https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?hl=en&key=tqzVGoN1smPiztMp-mp0ckg&hl=en#gid=0
Dave Atherton
If Left Foot Forward readers want to read about big corporations bleeding the taxpayer dry look no further than the World Health Organization (WH0), big pharmaceutical companies and ..er…ASH.
Exhibit 1 the announcement in 1998 of the WHO teaming up with pharmaceutical companies to increase their profits. (1) “WHO LAUNCHES PARTNERSHIP WITH THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY TO HELP SMOKERS QUIT.” Yes that is an WHO URL at the bottom.
Exhibit 2 ASH. Mr. Dockrell does ASH still own shares in Glaxo SmithKline? (2) “ASH has a small shareholding in GSK…..We have worked with GSK under the auspices of the WHO-Europe Partnership Project on tobacco dependence and at various one-off opportunities. ASH was instrumental in securing greater government commitment to smoking cessation products in the NHS National Plan and we have helped with PR for both Zyban and Niquitin CQ.”
Exhibit 3 ASH’s take on Pfizer’s stop smoking drug varenicline branded as Chantix/Champix. (3)
“7. It looks to be an effective and welcome addition to our range of medications to help smokers stop.”
What has been the long term effects on users? (4)
“Hundreds of reports of suicides, psychotic reactions and other serious problems tied to the popular stop-smoking drug Chantix were left out of a crucial government safety review because Pfizer Inc., the drug’s manufacturer, submitted years of data through “improper channels.”
“Some 150 suicides — more than doubling those previously known — were among 589 delayed reports of severe issues turned up in a new analysis by the non-profit Institute for Safe Medication Practices.”
“We’ve had a major breakdown in safety surveillance,” said Thomas J. Moore, the ISMP senior scientist who analyzed the data. The serious problems — including reports of completed suicides, suicide attempts, aggression and hostility and depression — had been mixed among some 26,000 records of non-serious side effects such as nausea and rashes, with some dating back to 2006, the year Chantix, or varenicline, was approved.
They echo previous claims that the drug can induce extreme reactions in people trying to quit cigarettes, including vivid nightmares, crippling depression and sudden, violent outbursts.”
Mr. Dockrell are ASH still recommending this big pharma product?
1. http://www.who.int/inf-pr-1999/en/pr99-04.html
2. http://www.ash.org.uk/files/documents/ASH_635.pdf
3. http://www.ash.org.uk/files/documents/ASH_447.pdf
4. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43187290/ns/health-health_care/
Chris Snowdon
I see that this blog has got rid of its ‘evidence based blogging’ tag-line. Not a moment too soon if this is the kind of thing you’re publishing. So many discrepancies in this article, but to take just three…
There’s no definition of a pub, says Dockrell. Well, perhaps not, but I think we all know one when we see one. I assume the British Beer and Pub Association know what a pub is, however, and their figures show an unprecedented decline in pub numbers since 2007. http://bit.ly/aM3x7v This should hardly need mentioning. The collapse of the pub trade has been a big news story in recent years. We can argue about the cause of that, but only ASH deny it is happening at all.
On Canada, Dockrell says it’s hard to see what’s happening because provinces brought their bans in at different times. It’s certainly hard to see what’s going on from his graph, but the Canadian government actually publishes smoking prevalence figures for each province and these show that in nearly every case a general downward trend in youth smoking was stalled or reversed when display bans came in. The national decline was driven by the more populous provinces (Quebec, Ontario) which didn’t have display bans. (See p. 29-31 http://bit.ly/iVPDeJ) This doesn’t mean that display bans encourage teen smoking- although there are arguments that they might – but it certainly doesn’t show that they don’t effectively discourage it.
As for this: “Figures from the Irish government show that in 2009 there was an increase in revenue [from cigarette sales] of €50 million in the six months following the ban as in the six months before.”
I have read and re-read this, but I cannot for the life of me understand how Dockrell thinks this is an argument in his favour. I can only assume he was so excited by the idea of BAT misleading its shareholders that he forgot to pretend that display bans reduce cigarette sales.
Oh, and tobacco retailers are, by definition, part of the tobacco industry. For the record, I’m not and never have been.
Daniel Pitt
Big Tobacco is blowing smoke in Cameron's eyes http://t.co/EfUQ79p #ConDemNation