Desperate to rush the Tobacco and Vapes Bill through Parliament before anyone can think about it too carefully, the government is taking it to the committee stage next week. There is no chance of anyone asking awkward questions because none of the 17 MPs on the committee voted against it.  As Guido reports...   16 of the 17 committee members voted for the bill and the one who didn’t, Labour MP Mary Kelly Foy, is vice-chairman of the APPG on Smoking and Health which has been pushing the ban constantly. Almost a quarter of the committee members are from the APPG, which is run by the a ..read more

The 'public health' lobby has been spinning plates this week, trying to exploit the UK's rise in alcohol-specific deaths while claiming that minimum pricing is saving lives. Meanwhile, Colin Angus has admitted that a model he produced in 2022 completely failed to predict what was about to happen. I've written about all this for The Critic...   The increase in deaths in 2022 is more of a puzzle. Although there were no Covid restrictions, higher rates of consumption among some drinkers continued. There is some evidence that the figure for 2023 will be lower, but there is no sign of it comi ..read more

I wasn't going to write about the tobacco ban again for a while, but the ludicrous spectacle of prohibitionists purporting to be champions of liberty has set me off.  Their logic is that smoking is so addictive that it restricts freedom. They claim that smokers do not actually want to smoke, but were foolish enough to get hooked in childhood and are now unable to quit. And so, despite the evidence of your eyes and ears, it is the people who keep banning things who are standing up for freedom while libertarians support enslavement.  This was the message of a slightly Orwellian edito ..read more

You won't want to miss the new episode of The Swift Half in which I talk to broadcaster and Guardian super-columnist Adrian Chiles about drinking ..read more

Proving that there is no end to 'public health' hysteria, some quackademics in South Korea are warning that unopened cigarette packs put nicotine into the atmosphere and need to be regulated. I wish I was making this up. See my Substack for more.    Our findings indicate that packaged, unopened, and uncombusted cigarettes in cigarette racks at tobacco retailers emits airborne nicotine, which is a previously unrecognized source of nicotine exposure. This result has implications for policy considerations, such as the potential installation of ventilation systems on cigarette racks or ..read more

Rishi Sunak wants tobacco prohibition it to be his legacy. As I say in Spiked, I hope that's what it becomes.   Today, MPs will vote on the Tobacco and Vapes Bill. The result is a foregone conclusion since Labour has promised to support it and their members will comfortably outnumber the handful of Conservative MPs who didn’t get into politics to ban things. The flagship policy in the bill is a ban on anyone born after 2008 from ever legally buying a tobacco product. This will gradually extend the war on drugs to include tobacco, but nearly everybody in Westminster seems to be relaxed a ..read more

Tim Stockwell, who has been running a one man crusade against the benefits of moderate drinking for 20 years, has been on a bit of a media tour recently. He got a feature in the New York Times two weeks ago and is currently in Scotland where he is gearing up for a talk at the Royal College of Physicians on Wednesday. The talk has been organised by the state-funded Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems (SHAAP) and the anti-alcohol Institute of Alcohol Studies. As the Herald reports...   Prof Stockwell's talk in Edinburgh on Wednesday is also expected to coincide with MSPs voting on a ..read more

The Impact Assessment for the Tobacco and Vapes Bill is laughable, relying on nonsense figures from ASH and ignoring the impact on the illicit trade. I've written about it for The Critic where I also ask for an ethical justification for stopping informed adults engaging in risky but self-regarding behaviour.   Last week, the Regulatory Policy Committee gave its verdict on the Impact Assessment. It expressed concern about the “over-reliance on evidence from ASH” and spotted the obvious problem that ASH’s productivity estimates “do not control for other factors that may affect a person’s e ..read more

I've seen a few posts like this recently, claiming that 'Big Tobacco' used its mysterious, fiendish tricks to manipulate food when some of them bought food companies in the 1980s.    Fun fact: Many of the unhealthy processed foods you see today were created by the Big Tobacco. In the 1980's, tobacco giants Phillip Morris & R.J. Reynolds bought the major food companies you see today. Kraft, General Foods, Nabisco, and many other food companies were run by… pic.twitter.com/IzhpoARn0o — Dan Go (@FitFounder) April 8, 2024   As I explain on my Substack, it's nonsense. So why s ..read more

I had your friend and mine Simon Clark, the indefatigable leader of FOREST, on the Swift Half last week. We talked about his career fighting for liberty. Check it out ..read more