So. It is happening. As most of us have always thought. You will, of course, remember (at least for the UK) the chatter about disposable vapes started gathering momentum with some commentary from a Green MSP and now the current “Conservative” Prime Minister has decided that his Government is going to implement a variety of measures for “A smoke-free generation”.
It would seem that Sunak has been taking lessons from former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair in targeting, what is now, a highly stigmatised portion of society (albeit a slowly dwindling portion, thanks - of course - to the various anti-smoker policies introduced over the years; many of which had little to no direct impact).
In one of my, admittedly, rare perusals of the hellsite that is Twitter (I refuse to call it “X”), I stumbled across a comment from Jon Fell that caused me to stop scrolling and check the thread. The comment was:
Thank you, and that seems fair. The generational prohibition on purchase will also muddy the water when it comes to smoking prevalence for the whole population; it will be important to look at the trends for particular age cohorts too.
For those of you that follow the tobacco control debate, you’ll be - painfully - aware that the UK’s resident antismoking sock-puppet charity are always banging on about one of a few items. Of course, each item they champion - for whatever misguided reason - never goes “far enough”. This leech of a charity will never rest until smoking - and probably any reduced risk alternative - is completely eradicated.
It has been a quiet time on these pages, not through lack of things to write about, but more a lack of time to actually put finger to key.
Y’see, this campaign was released a few days ago - just in time for the typical “New Year Resolution” shenanigans - and of course, the accompanying video received rather a lot of attention.
The imagery above, and the accompanying video, bring back stark memories of the “black lung” propaganda; images of which can still be seen on cigarette packs as part of the gore-porn that adorns them.
As is the norm, things have been super-hectic here at Facts Towers so I have, unfortunately, missed an awful lot of stuff going on. I’ve also been absent from social media; mostly for good reason - it bloody annoys me.
Those of you that remember, The Freedom Association published some very interesting information about the various local authorities and their current smoking/vaping policies. Most of the councils are backwards looking, ignoramuses.
I almost missed this but, recently the Office for National Statistics (ONS) published the latest dataset for the Adult Smoking Habits in the UK which showed some interesting points. Naturally, those points are being spun to show how “successful” measures have been.
Duncan Selbie, Public Health England has proclaimed that “Britain is winning the war on tobacco”, which for many in ‘public health’ is what it is all about. Sod the Proles and their little enjoyable vices.
Things have kind of gone to hell and back recently, so I have had zero time at all to put my fingers to key and keep this blog updated. Much has happened which has been thoroughly discussed elsewhere. I may revisit some of those points at some point in the near future, but that depends on time; which as I’ve already pointed out, I don’t have a lot of. Who knew married life would be so busy?
Introduced on May 20th, 2017, the Standardised Packaging of Tobacco Products Regulations (2015) was meant to strike another blow to the smoking prevalence rate. Except that it hasn’t.
Dubbed a “major victory” by tobacco control loons ASH the removal of “glitzy packaging” has done the sum total of fuck all on the smoking prevalence in the UK. Nor has it had any significant impact in Australia. Or France.
Y’see, wherever plain packaging has been enforced, smoking rates have actually increased.
Last night I attended a private event in London called “How long until smoking is history?”. Now, aside from my initial reaction to the question of the event which many of my regular readers should be able to guess, I was curious about the event.
Especially given who was behind it. The New Statesman “in association with Philip Morris International”.
I say “private” as the event wasn"t listed on the EventBrite website, you could only get tickets via a special, password-protected link.
On Monday, the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World released the findings of a global survey about smokers. Most surveys claim to seek a “better understanding” of the target audience - in this case, smokers - and this one is no different.
Arguably, the methodology behind this particular survey; the “Worldwide State of Smoking Survey”, appears to be very robust in its approach by researching existing surveys such as the Eurobarometer, the Global Audit Tobacco Survey and the Global Youth Tobacco Survey, among others.
