To: ‘istewart@scotsman.com‘
Subject: Tobacco evidence – The Scotsman
Dear Sir,
I refer to the letter from Neil McKeganey (11 Sep 2015) in response to Sheila Duffy of ASH Scotland.
On the writer’s own website (http://www.drugmisuseresearch.org/funders) he lists Big Tobacco among his funding sources: Philip Morris / BAT/ Nicoventures & also Reckitt Benckiser BAT’s CEO Nicandro Duranante was appointed as a Non-Exec Director of Reckitt Benckiser Group plc in December 2013.
GTNF – Global Tobacco & Nicotine Forum aka the ‘Davos of Tobacco’ since 2008, is a yearly gathering of tobacco industry executives, invited front groups & paid friends of the industry where tricks of the trade are exchanged.
http://www.gtnf-2014.com/agenda/
“what really distinguishes the GTNF is its “two-way traffic” approach. The essence of the forum and workshop sessions is interaction, conversation, debate, consensus—a sharing of knowledge, expertise and wisdom”
The writer is a repeat yearly speaker/panelist at GTNF conferences dating back numerous years & is scheduled to attend GTNF in Bologna this month
http://gtnf-2015.com/look-whos-talking/
Big Tobacco does not invite dissenting voices to speak at its own industry conferences.
Indeed the writer sees nothing wrong with convicted Rico racketeers funding selective research
http://www.who.int/tobacco/media/en/TobaccoExplained.pdf
“it is a predatory industry whose market dynamics demand that it recruits young people. It does this by deploying vast promotional expenditures to create, communicate & amplify a set of positive values associated with the product. Once the glamour phase subsides, nicotine addiction takes over making the customer dependent on the product & securing a profitable cash flow. Trapped by nicotine addiction, the smoker is subject to a variety of sub-lethal illnesses which culminate in a one in two probability of death through smoking-related disease. The smoker’s death means a replacement customer must be found – and the cycle begins again”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2509609/
“After combing through nearly 50 million pages of previously secret, internal tobacco-industry documents, UC Davis and UC San Francisco researchers say they have documented for the first time how the industry funded & used scientific studies to undermine evidence linking secondhand smoke to cardiovascular disease.”
Moreover, another frequent speaker at the GTNF conferences each year is Dr Delon Human, a South African doctor based in Switzerland who was funded by BAT to write a book on nicotine.
Human’s EuroSwiss Health company along with LIAF (Italian anti tobacco foundation) http://www.liaf-onlus.org/ funded the recent Nutt report https://www.karger.com/Article/FullText/360220 relied upon by PHE for its ‘e-cigs 95% safer’ report.
The chief executive of LIAF is Dr Riccardo Polosa. A search of Legacy tobacco documents online https://industrydocuments.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco/ reveals 134 links for ‘Polosa’ & shows his University department received Euro 400,000 study funding from PMI 12 years ago. Another regular GTNF panelist is South African opthamologist Kgiso Letlape with connections to Delon Human thru the African Medical Assn. http://www.africama.net/about_afma.htm
Polosa & Letlape are amongst the authors of the Nutt report funded by Human /LIAF and the writer rubs shoulders with them at the GTNF conferences. Another Nutt report author, K Fagerstrom is shown as a recipient of industry funding.
http://www.tobaccoreporter.com/gtnf-2013/
http://www.gtnf-2014.com/ (the Davos of Tobacco)
As for the writer’s query on the effectiveness of killing the ‘Silent Salesman’ (the last available advertising outlet for Big T = the pack) combined with a multi pronged approach of increased taxation , health warnings replacing the glitz & control of point of display, Health Australia states:
http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/content/tobacco-kff
Q: Have any early impacts of tobacco plain packaging been identified?
A: Research undertaken during the roll-out phase of the tobacco plain packaging legislation, when both plain and branded packs were available found that plain packaged cigarettes with larger health warnings increased smokers’ urgency to quit and lowered the appeal of smoking
Australia’s plain packaging laws successful, studies show The first comprehensive evaluation of Australia’s ground-breaking plain packaging tobacco laws shows they are working, the Victorian Cancer Council says.
Fourteen separate studies on the impact of plain packaging in its first year were published today in a special supplement to the British Medical Journal.
The research found after the laws were implemented, there was a “statistically significant increase” in the number of people thinking about & making attempts to quit smoking
http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/24/Suppl_2.toc
Readers must query the possible bias and intentions of the correspondent with a pinch of salt, which is also bad for the health.
People in glass houses should not throw stones.
James Middleton
Chairman
——————————————————————-
http://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/letters/tobacco-evidence-1-3883447
00:29 Friday 11 September 2015
HAVE YOUR SAY
Sheila Duffy (Letters, 9 September), like many single-issue lobbyists, celebrates the data that confirms her view while casually disregarding other evidence that contradicts it.
In her letter, she refers to the dozens of studies that have focused on tobacco plain packaging without mentioning the “inconvenient finding” that not a single one of those studies has actually shown a reduction in smoking prevalence attributable to plain packaging.
In advance of this policy being implemented in Australia, leading tobacco control researchers were advising that plain packaging would result in a 1 per cent reduction in adult smoking and a 3 per cent reduction in children’s smoking within two years of the policy being implemented.
Those same researchers are now advising that plain packaging may be a “slow burn distal” influence on smoking with its impact best considered in the long term when it is used alongside a whole host of other tobacco control measures such as taxation.
Tobacco plain packaging was implemented as a way of reducing smoking prevalence and while it may well reduce the attractiveness of smoking, nobody ever died from the attractiveness of a cigarette packet.
The key to reducing smoking-related health harm, as Duffy well knows, is to reduce smoker numbers.
Those who advocated for plain packaging should be demanding the evidence on whether it has reduced smoker numbers rather than switching the assessment criteria to a range of soft, subjective measures, such as determining if plain packaging reduces the appeal of smoking.
Neil McKeganey PhD
Centre for Drug Misuse Research Glasgow
19:56 Tuesday 08 September 2015
HAVE YOUR SAY
In THE midst of a recent article about alcohol minimum unit pricing, Neil McKeganay, from the Centre for Drug Misuse Research, casually dismisses proposals for standardised tobacco packaging as lacking in evidence. Far from being rushed this policy has been years in the making, and the subject of dozens of studies – I wish all policy initiatives were so carefully considered and had such strong public support.
Plain, standardised packaging makes the look of tobacco more truthful and is designed to disrupt tobacco companies’ attempts to hook in new consumers through presenting their product as sophisticated, rugged or slimming. In 2011 the UK Department of Health commissioned a systematic review of 37 studies on the likely impact of standardised packaging, later updated with 17 further studies. This evidence consistently demonstrated that standard packs would reduce the appeal of tobacco products and increase people’s awareness of health warnings.
In Australia where tobacco has been sold in standardised packaging since December 2012, all the early signs are encouraging. Smokers say the cigarettes don’t taste as good, and that they are more likely to think about quitting. Smoking rates in Australia are plummeting. Figures from the Australian department of health show that tobacco consumption in the first quarter of 2014 was at the lowest ever recorded.
McKeganay’s own tobacco-industry funded group claims an interest in researching “harm reduction”. Standardised tobacco packaging is a well-evidenced harm reduction measure.
Sheila Duffy
ASH Scotland Frederick Street Edinburgh