The Smell Of Fear

It has been a strange old week. We have seen reports coming out day after day reporting more and more bad news for the Public Health racket.

It all started out at the Public Health jolly at the so-called World Conference on Tobacco and Health (WCTOH) which took place in Cape Town, South Africa last week. I am not going to go into much detail about this as it was amply covered by Dick Puddlecote and Chris Snowdon in their respective blogs. However, the main theme of that conference was their almost non-stop attacks on Derek Yach's Foundation For a Smoke-free World (FSFW). It seems that the Public Health racket are scared stiff of FSFW because they recognise that it may well achieve the Public Health vision of a smoke-free world without any input from Public Health itself. The tweets and reports that came out of that conference whizzed past the threshold of the 'scream test'. Showing that what FSFW is doing is certainly making its mark. Public Health delegates (which included the usual UK tax-draining tobacco control spongers) were in absolute apoplexy at this new threat to their livelihoods because FSFW could conceivably make these people completely redundant. 

Unable to come up with any decent argument against FSFW other than they are funded by PMI, the delegates were reduced to drooling epithets screaming for another prohibition era a la the 1920's USA on alcohol, and immediately claiming that it would not be the same with tobacco. They tried endlessly to claim credit for the falling rates of smoking, neatly sidestepping the fact that the majority of this drop in smoking rates can be directly correlated with the rise of the ecigarette. Of course they threw everything into the claim that higher taxation was working (conveniently ignoring the rising levels of poverty caused by this action), and of course the success of plain-packaging.

Problem is, just a few days later came the news that Australia - that has had plain-packaging of tobacco for several years now - has seen a rise in the rate of smoking for the first time in a decade (oops). Of course, you will not see any report of this from Public Health circles. Australia, after all, is one of the bright shining beacons of Public Health success - except that it isn't. Australia remains one of those countries that steadfastly refuses to embrace ecigarettes, despite all of the worldwide evidence of their efficacy, and Public Health refuse to acknowledge anything that deviates from their message. I also found it interesting to note how quiet the Syndey pensioner has been since this news in Australia broke. Plain-packaging remains the tobacco controller's wet dream, despite the fact that it has failed wherever it has been tried. Only last year, we had reports of how France's smoking rate rose after the introduction of plain-packaging. Of course, it is far too early to get any indications of whether the measure has fared any better in the UK as plain packaging has only just been introduced here. But judging by the number of non-plain packaged tobacco I still see discarded everywhere, I know where my money would go if I were a betting man.

Then, a few days ago, Australian Doctor Attila Danko tweeted this beaut

In a brutal takedown of the absolute lies and rubbish that we have come to expect from the so-called science relied on by tobacco controllers, he is quoting one of the responses written by Professor Peter Hayek who used their own figures and calculations against them to show how their predictions would result in a number of smokers that is precisely TWICE the entire UK population.

Of course, I have just concentrated on the tobacco-control stories that have emanated from the Public Health bodies during the last week. There have also been numerous scare-stories on an obesity epidemic that exists only in the minds of Public Health. Actual real-life figures tell a quite different story as Christopher Snowdon has elucidated on many occasions both in his blogs, writing for The Spectator, and on many TV appearances (he was even quoted in his absence on BBC Breakfast recently). Not content with that, Public Health have also been bleating on about more sugar taxes, salt taxes (if companies do not voluntarily reduce the salt in their food) and even the banning (or restriction) of fast-food outlets - and then they wonder why the public does not take them seriously ?

It's been an interesting week for sure. There is a definite aroma emanating from Public Health of late as they realise that wheels are coming off their tax-payer funded wagon, that their whole world is slowly unravelling before the eyes.

It is THE SMELL OF FEAR.

A wonderful aroma is it not ?