A message for World No Tobacco Day, 31 May 2021
If you just want to go straight to our unforgiving and detailed letter to WHO – it is here.
WHO has gone rogue on tobacco policy – millions at risk from tired dogma and a refusal to grasp innovation
Category: Snus
Ten perverse intellectual contortions: a guide to the sophistry of anti-vaping activists
This puts it nicely:
Life is short and shorter for smokers. Just legalise vaping.
That statement is a plain-speaking and hyper-concise dissenting report from Andrew Laming MP, one of two dissenting reports from Australia’s recently-completed parliamentary inquiry into vaping (The other dissenting report provides a model of clear, concise reasoning too, and, unusually, the dissent came from the committee chairman, signalling a welcome fracture in Australia’s political support for prohibition)
Though short, it is basically right and sufficient: no-one is trying to live forever; everyone is trying to enjoy the life they have; some people like the drug nicotine or don’t want to quit enough to stop using it; smokers die earlier because of smoke; vaping avoids the smoke problem and does not appear to create new material problems; so it follows that vaping should not be illegal. In fact, it should be encouraged. It really is that simple.
The dissenting reports prompt me to raise the issue of simplicity versus sophistry in the debate over tobacco harm reduction. This has bugged me for years. Vaping and tobacco harm reduction is basically simple. The arguments raised against it by anti-vaping opponents are laden with sophistry.
This blog looks at ten forms of sophistry used by anti-vaping activists to fabricate and fuel faux controversy. It is longer than I would like, but the subject is far from exhausted. Please dip in.
Time for the Government of Sweden to get behind snus and tobacco harm reduction
One of the more puzzling things about snus is the reluctance of Sweden’s government to claim credit for what is by any standards an extraordinary public health achievement. So here I write to the relevant ministers requesting that they acknowledge Sweden’s success, show some leadership and promote the concept of tobacco harm reduction. The challenge to the EU prohibition of snus brought by Swedish Match and New Nicotine Alliance provides an opportunity for the Government of Sweden to change its approach. I wrote the following heartfelt plea, attaching the letter that 18 comrades sent sent to the European Commission: Lifting the unjustified European Union ban on oral tobacco or “snus” in the light of ongoing legal action hoping it might encourage a more constructive pro-health, pro-trade, post-enlightenment approach. Continue reading “Time for the Government of Sweden to get behind snus and tobacco harm reduction”
Letter to European Commissioner for Better Regulation on the worst regulation in the EU – the snus ban
Updated 19 July 2017 with the reply.
Eighteen of us have written a detailed letter to Mr Frans Timmerman, the EU’s Commissioner for Better Regulation (amongst other things) drawing his attention to one of the worst regulations in the EU, the ban on oral tobacco, better known as snus. This ban is now facing challenge in the Court of Justice of the European Union (case C 151/17) by a producer, Swedish Match, and the consumer group, New Nicotine Alliance (see NNA background on the case).
The letter is available here (PDF): Lifting the unjustified European Union ban on oral tobacco or “snus” in the light of ongoing legal action
The covering email below outlines the main arguments detailed in the letter. Continue reading “Letter to European Commissioner for Better Regulation on the worst regulation in the EU – the snus ban”
WHO tobacco meeting – could the FCTC do something useful on vaping?
I’m sometimes accused of being a WHO-sceptic, or worse. No more! In the run up to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control COP-7 meeting in Delhi, 7-12 November, I have been challenged to say something positive about how the FCTC could do useful and constructive things on vaping and tobacco harm reduction from a public health point of view, other than the default answer “absolutely nothing at all”.
I sometimes refer to ENDS – Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems – to mean vaping equipment and liquids, e-cigarettes etc. Apologies.
Here we go… Continue reading “WHO tobacco meeting – could the FCTC do something useful on vaping?”
New Nicotine Alliance calls for repeal of EU e-cigarette regulation and snus ban
New Nicotine Alliance proposes that the forthcoming Great Repeal Act is used to repeal pointless, burdensome and restrictive EU regulation of e-cigarettes and to lift the illegal, unethical and anti-scientific ban on snus. This may be a ‘quick win’ from Brexit at the point of the departure of the UK from the EU. The government will need to show that there are at least some benefits.
The Great Repeal Act will not actually repeal that much of substance. It will mainly just convert the vast body of EU law that applies in the UK to domestic law. But there is scope for some crowd-pleasing repeals of especially poor regulation, of which the TPD provisions related to tobacco harm reduction are the most obvious candidate.
Here is the NNA letter to Secretary of State, Jeremy Hunt. Continue reading “New Nicotine Alliance calls for repeal of EU e-cigarette regulation and snus ban”
A strong case to overturn the EU snus ban – 10 reasons why legal action should succeed this time
Good news confirmed today: Swedish Match, the main European snus manufacturer, will take legal action to overturn the European Union ban on snus -see Reuters 1 July 2016: Swedish Match to challenge EU snus ban in UK court. This ban is possibly the most absurd and harmful piece of legislation the European Union has ever concocted, and its demise is long overdue.
The EU snus ban was introduced in 1992 (directive 92/41/EEC) and reaffirmed in 2001 (2001/37/EC) and reaffirmed again in 2014 in the Tobacco Products Directive 2014/40/EU Article 17. The ban only exists because of posturing by self-indulgent and negligent politicians backed by prohibitionist harm-inducing NGOs. It has no scientific, ethical or legal justification whatsoever (see Death by regulation: the EU ban on low-risk oral tobacco) and can only be causing harm to health by denying smokers elsewhere in Europe benign alternatives to smoking that work so well in Sweden.
In 2003, Swedish Match challenged the identical ban in the previous Tobacco Products Directive 2001/37/EC (Article 8) and failed. See Case C-210/03 before the ECJ. However, a great deal has changed since then and even in 2003/4 I think they were unlucky to face a politicised court and improper scientific assessments of risk pushed by anti-scientific prohibitionists. But why should a legal challenge succeed now when a challenge failed in 2003-4? There are at least ten reasons to believe it will succeed this time. Continue reading “A strong case to overturn the EU snus ban – 10 reasons why legal action should succeed this time”
Who or what is the World Health Organisation at war with?
The World Health Organisation does a good line in war-like rhetoric when it comes to tobacco policy. But what is it actually at war with? In this post, I examine the confusion in ‘tobacco control’ about what it is actually trying to achieve. Continue reading “Who or what is the World Health Organisation at war with?”
Anti-vaping zealots write flat-earth letter to The Times
A remarkably self-regarding letter is published in The Times (London) today. The writers are reacting with hostility to the outstanding Royal College of Physicians report, Nicotine without smoke: tobacco harm reduction, and the very positive editorial in The Times (Vaping Vindicated) that followed its launch.
In my view, their letter is truly dreadful, but it is also very revealing. In this post, I take a look at the arguments they make.
Update 2 May: my reply published in The Times.
Continue reading “Anti-vaping zealots write flat-earth letter to The Times”
The tobacco control high command has lost its way – what we learn from its views on FDA priorities
A recent editorial in the journal Tobacco Control discusses what’s wrong with the FDA. In fact, the editorial is more telling about what’s wrong with tobacco control.
Update: my e-letter in Tobacco Control – Missing the point Continue reading “The tobacco control high command has lost its way – what we learn from its views on FDA priorities”