Liberal Vision

Public Health Success?

If, as some campaigners would have us believe, obesity is more of a health risk than smoking, the data suggest that 50 years of massive investment in the public health industry have yielded very little in the way of overall risk reduction.

Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – USA

I do not believe that the relationship between smoking and obesity rates is simple but this graph suggests that as a society we should at least consider taking a more holistic look at health issues.

For far too long now, health policy has been dictated by a dangerous combination of single issue campaigning and statistics based “evidence”.

People are not numbers, they do not conform to the rigid norms dictated by the public health industry and many will choose to accept certain health risks in pursuit of what they consider a more enjoyable if potentially shorter life.

I have no idea how much of the rise in obesity in the USA was fuelled by ex-smokers displacing one potentially harmful activity with another.  Similarly, campaigners have no idea whether trying to reduce young people’s access to tobacco and alcohol might lead to increased uptake of other substances that are potentially more acutely threatening to their health.

One thing that we do know, or should if we bothered to learn the lessons of history is that many public health interventions have had unintended negative consequences and the more illiberal and draconian the intervention then the greater the risk and impact of such consequences.

Chris Snowdon deals with this subject in some depth in his book The Art of Suppression. It is an informative well researched read for anyone interested in the reality behind the rhetoric.  Until I read it, amongst other things I was unaware that Heroin was originally promoted by the pharmaceutical industry as a non-addictive alternative to morphine.  Snowdon covers a range of issues including the disaster of alcohol prohibition in the 1920s, the EUs illogical ban on oral tobacco and the growth in designer drugs as a consequence of Ecstasy prohibition.

He questions why prohibitionist policies remain attractive to many in the light of their historic failure and concludes that “in the end, fear is more intoxicating than hope.”

By Chris Oakley. Chris has previously posted on Liberal Vision:  Smokers-State Aprroved hate and Intolerance is UK policy,   Alcohol is Old News – Minimum Pricing for Digestives is the “Next Logical Step” , Soviet Style Alcohol Suppression Campaign Called for By Public Health Activists , Alcohol Taxation: The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth , A Liberal Tolerant nation? and  What hope is there for liberty if truth becomes the plaything of political lobbyists.

Tags: Christopher Snowdon, health, obesity, smoking, The Art Of Suppression

Médecins sans frontières

Doctors just can’t help trying to save people, it seems.

The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, which brings together the presidents of the Medical Royal Colleges and Faculties and so purports to represent nearly every doctor in the UK, is to lead a campaign to tackle rising levels of obesity.

One’s initial reaction might be to welcome a medical intervention aimed at combating something that kills as many as 30,000 people each year. But unfortunately, it is not a medical intervention that these doctors have planned.

My latest article on the IEA blog explains that the medical elite, having identified what it considers to be the end that society should pursue, is turning to the coercive power of the state to achieve that end.

Comments on the IEA blog, please.

 

Tags: fat, fat tax, health, tax

Alcohol is Old News – Minimum Pricing for Digestives is the “Next Logical Step”

Last week witnessed a remarkable low when the leader of a coalition between a party claiming to oppose top down dictatorial government and another claiming to be liberal, announced his support for exactly the  kind of mass social engineering that most of us hoped had died a death with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

As I pointed out in a previous post, minimum pricing adherents are not at all ashamed of the totalitarian nature of their plans and indeed have actively sought to persuade our elected representatives of the “rewards” to be gleaned from emulating Soviet policy on alcohol. They did in the process of course focus on short term successes and completely failed to mention the disastrous longer term consequences of said Soviet policy. Zealots and fanatics rarely allow the truth to get in the way of their endless campaigns which is one reason why it is generally a bad idea to appease them.

David Cameron and his government appear to have ignored conventional wisdom with regard to appeasement by caving in to a deeply dishonest campaign for minimum alcohol pricing spearheaded by the medical establishment. A campaign that has, amongst other unsavoury tactics, seen the public lied to about the real price of alcohol, misled over the number of hospital admissions related to alcohol and kept in the dark about positive trends in both attitude and consumption.

At least I have to assume The Prime Minister’s spineless capitulation is an attempt to appease the zealots as the alternative explanation that he and his cabinet truly believe a 40p minimum price per unit will “mean 50,000 fewer crimes each year and 900 fewer alcohol related deaths per year by the end of the decade” would be evidence that the country really is being run by fools.

One of the reasons it is generally considered a bad idea to appease fanatics is that it only encourages them to greater excess and also encourages others to emulate them.  On Saturday the BBC ran what should have been an upbeat news item about major food companies co-operating with the DH on obesity by cutting calorie content in their products. It sounds like just the sort of thing that people who care about obesity might applaud but this being a BBC news item it had to feature some rather severe criticism from a spokesperson for one of the myriad obscure “charities” that taxpayers are forced to fund.

According to the BBC, Children’s Food Campaign spokesman Charlie Powell said:

 “The food industry wants to be part of the solution but altogether refuses to admit that it’s a big part of the problem. And it’s to the government’s disgrace that the food industry is actually helping to set government health policy. I think we should look at what’s happening on the alcohol network and actually the government have decided that the way to go is actually to mandate companies in terms of their pricing. While they grapple with voluntary approaches, we’ll see these weasel word pledges continue.”

Charlie describes himself as “Left-thinking vegan feminist, campaigning for a fairer and more sustainable world.”

Clearly this otherwise gentle soul has scented blood following the government’s surrender on alcohol and will be crusading for minimum pricing or maybe even outright banning of foods he doesn’t think that we should be eating.  I assume that will include meat if he dares to dream that big. After all, all he needs to do is gather support from the more unscrupulous and fanatical elements of the medical establishment and anything might actually be possible.

His first port of call could be Jonathan Waxman, whose words are living proof if more was needed that passing a medical degree is no guarantee of intelligence, humility, decency or common sense.

“Not only do we need to ramp up the public health campaigns that encourage us to ditch the doughnuts. But we will have to go further and ban adverts for high-fat foods. It is wrong that manufacturers can produce mayonnaise with a 70 per cent fat content, so we should tax food laden with saturated fats. 

Some will argue that this is an affront to personal freedom. But the people with the least ability to make informed choices are the poor, who happen also to be more likely to smoke or be fat.”

As Dave and his elitist mates seem to share Waxman’s view that the people in general and the poor in particular are too stupid to be allowed to make their own choices I think it likely that it will not be long before minimum pricing becomes the preferred option to reduce consumption of anything the medics and activists decide they don’t like.

I recommend stocking up on digestives and other “sinful” foods before it is too late.  I wouldn’t worry about alcohol because it is ridiculously easy to make.

By Chris Oakley. Chris has previously posted on Liberal Vision:  Soviet Style Alcohol Suppression Campaign Called for By Public Health Activists , Alcohol Taxation: The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth , A Liberal Tolerant nation? and  What hope is there for liberty if truth becomes the plaything of political lobbyists.

Tags: minimum pricing alcohol

Soviet Style Alcohol Suppression Campaign Called for By Public Health Activists

As someone familiar with cutting edge science and those who work at the frontiers of medical research, I have always been struck by the backward totalitarian nature of public health. In a world in which hard science and enlightened medical opinion is positively buzzing about personalized medicine and the benefits of treating people as individuals, public health continues to push ideas that are more in keeping with early 20^th century totalitarian doctrine then 21^st century medicine.

ASH is of course one of the biggest culprits. Completely closed to the concept of constructive debate it spreads its misery through quasi-religious adherence to strict dogma and increasingly ridiculous attempts to claim that all opposition to its policies are the result of tobacco industry conspiracies. The similarities between the rhetoric of ASH and the propaganda of the former Soviet Union is quite uncanny at times but as far as I know, ASH has never actually advocated Soviet policies. I am sure that its employees would do if it suited the cause and involved more free money from the taxpayer but the opportunity seems not to have arisen.

However, the same can no longer be said for their cousins in the neo-prohibitionist movement who are now openly advocating that the UK government take its lead on alcohol policy from the Soviet Union. In an academically inept, blatantly political piece published in The Lancet, a group of liver doctors who in their conceit, believe themselves experts on the causes of alcohol abuse rather than its consequences, propose Gorbachev’s 1985 crackdown on alcohol in the Soviet Union as a template for alcohol control in the UK.

The Lancet article is a rework of last year’s effort in which the authors made the embarrassingly simplistic claim that the decline in French liver deaths was down to an alcohol advertising ban. Both were uncritically covered by the BBC whose representatives have assured me that they have no bias when it comes to public health despite the fact that they showcase minimum price campaigners however obscure on what feels like a daily basis.

This year Gilmore et al wax lyrical about Soviet Russia and how it achieved a 12% reduction in alcohol related mortality in just two years. The implication being that our government would see similar results if only it would do what the neo-prohibitionists ask of it. Minimum pricing is of course at the top of their list because  such a policy, although likely to be utterly ineffective in the form currently advocated, will give them a powerful lever with which to control the proletariat as they ratchet up future campaigns.

History sees Gorbachev as a heroic reformer in many senses, but he had no qualms in using the full power vested in him as an autocratic dictator to press home an aggressive anti-alcohol policy. Measures included:

• Closing  vodka distilleries
• Destroying  vineyards in the wine-producing republics of Moldavia, Armenia and Georgia
• Restricting the times during which shops and restaurants could sell alcohol
• Banning restaurants from selling hard liquor
• Raising the legal age for alcohol consumption from 18 to 21
• Effectively increasing prices by over 75%
• Creating a state sponsored temperance society that grew to 14 million members

His policies were as our neo-prohibitionist friends tell us immediately successful and he achieved a short term significant fall in alcohol related deaths. The price of vodka rose by 25% in 1985 alone and by a similar amount in the following year. The Lancet article unsurprisingly fails to mention the longer term consequences of the campaign.

Although Gorbachev did theoretically reduce legal alcohol consumption by 50% according to some estimates, the Russians have a long tradition of distilling their own firewater known as Samogon. The state crackdown:

• Stimulated the illegal alcohol industry
• Galvanized organized crime to take advantage of a burgeoning black market
• Led to an increase in deaths from poisoning caused by illicit alcohol.

By the third year of the campaign, despite severe custodial sentences being in force for home brewing, illegal Samogon was being consumed in larger volumes than legal alcohol, the policy was hugely unpopular, it was costing the government a fortune in lost revenue and it had significantly benefited organized crime. It was abandoned in October 1988.

The fall in alcohol related deaths seen in the early days of the campaign was rapidly reversed and increased above pre-legislation levels to peak in 1994.

Some will argue that had the Soviet Union persisted with its vigorous campaign, the fall in deaths during the first 18 months would have continued and the end would have justified all of the repression. So it is worth pointing out, bearing in mind the UK activist’s obsession with price, that the increase in alcohol related deaths in the early 90s took place against a background of high prices for legal alcohol that was a legacy of the Gorbachev campaign. Although some aspects of the campaign were reversed, the price stayed 75% above 1985 levels during the Russian mortality crisis of the early 90s.

Others, including some who claim to be liberal, will of course assert that the Soviets did not go far enough. Perhaps they never thought of putting vodka in olive drab bottles with massive pictures of diseased livers on them? You can be sure that Ian Gilmore has.

By Chris Oakley. Chris has previously posted on Liberal Vision:  Alcohol Taxation: The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, A Liberal Tolerant nation? and  What hope is there for liberty if truth becomes the plaything of political lobbyists.

Our thanks to englishrussia.com for the poster.

Tags: alcohol, Gorbachev, prohibition, The Lancet

Move over tobacco there’s a new bad boy in town..

Tobacco has a rival for being the baddest guy in town.  Not alcohol. Not chocolate. Not Fat.  It’s sugar !

A report over on the BBC website tells us that  Prof Robert Lustig, from California Universitry (obviously), argues in the journal Nature that sugar is the new demon.  Sugar he says is as damaging and addictive as alcohol or tobacco and new policies such as taxes are needed to control soaring consumption of sugar and sweeteners. According to the professor

“It [sugar] meets all the criteria for societal intervention that alcohol and tobacco meet.”

The BBC report goes on to say… “The researchers acknowledge that they face “an uphill political battle against a powerful sugar lobby“.  But…“with enough clamour for change, tectonic shifts in policy become possible”.

Can you see just how wonderfully well the anti-tobacco industry’s little tricks can be so easily adapted to other food stuffs . Tell people its “addictive”, talk about  “evil corporate companies” (Big Tobacco must more impressive than “powerful sugar lobby” but heh), create a “clamour for change” (that’ll be another two universties agreeing with the first one and all their mates making loud noises). And hey presto you have more than enough to convince the Government that it has to “take action”.

Any suggestion that tobacco control is not leading a huge pack of health lobby groupies, eager to apply any anti-tobacco  successes to their own particular cause and using much the same methods to achieve them, is just laughable.. These Sugar guys are practically using the whole anti-tobacco script unedited goddamnit!.

Of course this report is from a Californian University (I think the same one that had their dabs all over a tobacco plain packaging report some time ago). But don’t get too complacent here in the UK.

Dr Peter Scarborough of the British Heart Foundation,  has already come out today saying that taxing only one type of food could have unintended consequences, such as people cutting back on fruit and vegetables to save money for other purchases. But…(my emphasis)

“If you tax fat, salt and sugar, combined with subsidies for fruit and vegetables, you’ll get healthier diets.”

So that is a fat tax, a salt tax AND a sugar tax. When will it end? I guess when we all put our foot down and say no.

Tags: Prof Robert Lustig, sugar tax, tobacco. plain packaging