Email
Password
(Forgot Password?)
Pressure is growing for the government to rid cigarette packets of their designs and branding ahead of a parliamentary vote next month.
The Liberal Democrats are trying to reintroduce an amendment to the health bill – due to be debated on the day parliament returns from summer recess – calling for the government to scrap cigarette pack designs.
In Australia, the government's Preventative Health Task Force has advised it to "eliminate promotion of tobacco products through design of packaging" as part of a comprehensive strategy to reduce tobacco deaths. The Lib Dems are calling for a similar move in the UK.
Meanwhile, new research from the University of Nottingham published today showed tobacco branding and packaging send misleading signals to young people and adult smokers. . . .
Simon Clark, director of the smokers' rights group Forest questioned the evidence linking design to smoking habits.
"Very few people, if any, start smoking because they see a brightly coloured packet or the words 'light' or 'mild'," he told politics.co.uk.
"People aren't stupid. They know there are health risks associated with smoking regardless of the branding.
Jump to full article »
Pro-smoking group wants pubs and bars to be allowed separate smoking rooms
Pro-smoking group Forest has renewed calls for the smoking ban to be amended on the two-year anniversary of the legislation today.
The group wants the government to amend the ban to allow separate smoking rooms in pubs and clubs.
Last week the group also launched a campaign called Save Our Pubs and Clubs (SOPAC) - fronted by its patron Antony Worrall Thompson.
Simon Clark, director of Forest, said: "The smoking ban has been a disaster for many pubs and clubs which are currently closing at a rate of 40 per week. "The ban is excessive and although it is welcomed in some quarters, it has had a hugely detrimental effect on many people's lives, socially and economically."
Older people feel "humiliated" when they are forced to stand outside, especially in winter, he added.
Will the real liberals please stand up?
Sunday, May 3, 2009
The Observer reports that "Controversial government plans to ban retailers from displaying cigarettes are likely to be thrown out by parliament this week following intense lobbying from newsagents and tobacco companies".
Don't celebrate too soon. The fact that this story appears in the Observer, part of the Guardian newspaper group, makes me think that this is a rallying call to Labour peers. Also, by playing up the prospect of defeat, the Government will be able to spin it as a morale-boosting victory should they win the vote on Wednesday.
As I said last week, it's the LibDem peers who appear to hold the casting vote. They're the ones with a free vote. Let's hope that, for once, they embrace the word "liberal".
Bernie Ecclestone, 78, the Formula One commercial promoter, discussed the state of the series with Brad Spurgeon of the International Herald Tribune. . . .
Q. After tobacco, technology and financial service companies, where might be the next trend in Formula One sponsorship?
Pharmaceutical companies I'm surprised have not been up front. They all need exposure and credibility. If I go and buy some tablets for something, and if I recognized the name -- "Oh yes they are the people that ..." -- you're more likely to buy it. Also, I'm surprised that the companies that sell, say, corn flakes ... The kids will start thinking they'd rather buy this brand than that brand because they know this brand is Lewis Hamilton.
POLICE officers have been told to go undercover when they nip out for a cigarette break.
Cambridgeshire police chiefs have told officers to "cover up their uniform" as well as deduct the time spent smoking from their timesheets.
The move is to keep the image of the force unclouded by officers hooked on nicotine.
Officers and staff have also been told to clear up any cigarette ends scattered outside police stations.
The move was criticised by Cambridge-based smokers' campaign Forest (Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco), which has its offices in Castle Park.
Spokesman Neil Rafferty said: "This just stigmatises officers and makes them out to be anti-social. Just because an officer smokes does not make him bad at his job.
Liverpool Smokers have paid £98,625 in fines in eight months for dropping cigarette butts on the city’s streets, almost twice as much as last year.
Campaigners such as Forest (Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco) said the figure showed that councils such as Liverpool were at the forefront of “antismoking extremism” and were using the antismoking agenda to make money out of smokers.
Treating smokers costs the NHS in England £2.7bn a year, compared with £1.7bn a decade ago, a report claims.
Anti-smoking group Ash says the cost would have risen to over £3bn had action to curb smoking not seen numbers fall from 12 million to nine million.
The report's proposals to cut smoking include mandatory plain packaging. The government is consulting on next steps in tobacco control and regulation.
Lobby group Forest argues that smokers pay over £9bn a year in tobacco tax. . ..
The research also reveals that young people are between three and four times less likely to pick a plain pack as a branded one if they were trying smoking for the first time, supporting calls for plain packaging and countering industry claims that plain packs would be more attractive to young people.
Pro-smoking group Forest will today pressure MPs to amend the smoking ban and allow licensed smoking rooms in pubs and clubs.
Speaking at a House of Commons reception hosted by Tory MP Philip Davies the group's director Simon Clark plans to highlight the plight of pubs to an audience of MPs.
Handing them each a complimentary Montecristo No. 2 cigar, he will say: "Many pubs and clubs have suffered serious economic hardship and for many smokers the social impact has been equally severe.
"It is very unfair, especially on older smokers. For some mental health sufferers the impact of the ban has been devastating.
Last week, friends and supporters of the smokers' lobby group Forest raised a doleful cigarette to the first anniversary of the smoking ban in England. On the terrace of a smart private members' club in London's Belgravia, the redoubtable David Hockney - a regular contributor to the letters page of this newspaper on the subject - bemoaned for the umpteenth time the Labour government's curtailment of his liberties, fag in hand.
Across the room, Forest's director Simon Clark - a non-smoker, please note - told me of social lives destroyed and publicans in peril. Clark makes a rather dubious distinction between habit and addiction. "There are some people who are addicted," he told me, "but for many it's a pleasurable habit that they like to do in social situations." And yet the fact is that 70% of smokers say they want to quit.
As a smoker myself, I've always been faintly embarrassed by the pronouncements of this group . . .
What troubles me most about Forest, which is now campaigning against proposed restrictions on the selling of tobacco, is that it completely fails to acknowledge that smoking is a class issue. When cigarettes initially entered the marketplace, it was the upper classes who first took them up. Smoking spoke of wealth and sophistication. But, as the product filtered down through society, it lost its class glamour. By the time that details of the serious health implications of smoking were made public, the rich were already predisposed to giving up. . . .
Last week, Tayside health service drew some criticism when it announced a scheme to encourage smokers in Dundee, where half the population lives below the poverty line, to quit smoking in exchange for grocery vouchers. . . . One of its leading advocates, Cass Sunstein - a former colleague of Obama's at the University of Chicago Law School - has coined the oxymoronic term "liberal paternalism" to encapsulate his theory: while freedom and transparency remain essential, it is possible and legitimate for governments to guide people towards better lifestyle choices when, whether through apathy or befuddlement, they exhibit tendencies to plump for bad ones.
This week, we ask: Should films featuring smoking automatically be given an 18 rating? . . .
by Andy Hull, Chair of Smokefree Liverpool
YES, yes, 1,650 times yes . . . That's the number of young Liverpudlians we reckon are currently smoking as a direct result of seeing "tobacco images" on screen. . . .
by Neil Rafferty, spokesman for Forest, the smokers' rights group . . .
I've seen the anti-smoking extremists up close, so naturally I'm a bit cynical when they say it's all about "the children".
When a film receives an 18 certificate, it excludes not only youngsters but many adults who don't like excessive violence and strong language. That's why film- makers like 15 certificates, because it says, "this is entertainment for grown-ups, but it doesn't go too far".
The extremists know that by slapping an 18 certificate on smoking scenes, more and more film-makers will just stop showing smoking altogether until cinema will depict a world in which smoking does not exis. This is not just censorship - it is intimidation and bullying.
And, if this was to become a reality, how long before scenes of excessive drinking or consumption of fast food are given the 18 certificate "to protect the children"?
THE landlords of a Suffolk pub have become the first victims of the smoking ban - and last night a campaign group predicted that hundreds of pubs across the country will close as a result of the controversial crackdown.
After more than two years running the Greene King-owned Elephant and Castle in Hospital Road, Bury St Edmunds, licensees Marian and Gareth Thomas have decided to call time on their business.
The couple, who had their plans for a smoking shelter outside the pub turned down, claim the smoking ban was the final straw.
The news prompted Forest, the campaign group for smoker's rights, to warn the pub could be the first of hundreds nationally to be hit by the ban, and warned rural areas looked set to be the worst affected of all.
g Tobacco.
When was it founded? It was launched in 1979 by a former Battle of Britain fighter pilot (and pipe smoker) Sir Christopher Foxley-Norris who died in 2004. Legend has it that he was standing on the platform at Reading station in Berkshire, puffing on his pipe, when an old biddy walked up and demanded that he put it out. He was so annoyed that he decided to get a few like-minded individuals together and launch a campaign to defend smokers' rights. The rest, as they say, is history. . . .
Who funds you? Most of our money is donated by tobacco companies. A smaller sum comes from Friends of FOREST (ordinary smokers and the occasional wealthy benefactor). Contributions from the latter are increasingly important because funds have become increasingly tight in recent years as companies such as Philip Morris decided that placating government is more important than defending the hard-pressed consumer.
OK, but aren't you still just a mouthpiece for the tobacco industry? Not at all. We speak our mind as we see fit and we guard our independence jealously - whatever the cost. In 2001, for example, our decision to pursue a successful campaign against Customs and Excise (see Cross-Channel Shopping) cost us dearly when the tobacco company Gallaher decided that because of our work in this area it would withdraw funding. C'est la vie. We represent smokers (who want to smoke) and tolerant non-smokers, not the tobacco industry. . . .
Now that Scotland has banned smoking in enclosed public places and England, Wales and Northern Ireland are about to follow suit, what future is there for FOREST?
Good question. We may have lost this battle but we don't intend to go away. We will never give up arguing that people should be allowed to smoke in some indoor public places (it's called freedom of choice) but the reality is that the debate is moving on. Already some people are calling for a ban on outdoor smoking and there is a deliberate, publicly-funded campaign to "denormalise" smoking. This can only lead to further discrimination against people who smoke and our role is to combat those who want to promote intolerance and illiberal policies designed to target a substantial minority of the population.
Few now expect the new regime to be introduced without any legal challenges. Alan Chalmers, employment partner at the law firm DLA Piper, warns that employers may be forced to ban smoking breaks for workers who want to pop outside for a cigarette. "There has never been a right to smoke at work and employers are not required to provide facilities for their staff to smoke outside, even if smoking has previously been permitted in the workplace," he says. "The smoking ban may lead to an increase in complaints from non-smokers that smokers get extra breaks. If smoking breaks are allowed, employers should have a policy making it clear what is acceptable and what is not."
There are also cultural concerns raised by the ban. Sunday is expected to be the last day of the shisha café, a place where customers smoke the Arabic water-pipe in which fruit-scented tobacco is burnt using coal, passed through an ornate water vessel and inhaled through a hose. The last five to 10 years have seen a rapid growth in the number of these cafés across the country, particularly in Manchester and Birmingham.
On Monday night, the journalist and broadcaster Andrew Neil was the guest speaker at a special event organised by the pro-smoking group Forest to mark the introduction of the ban. He was joined by Antony Worrall Thompson and David Hockney. Forest, which describes the ban as illiberal and draconian, said the event was "possibly the last opportunity for you to eat, drink and smoke at major indoor public event anywhere in the UK".
Pro-smoking group FOREST will tonight make a last-ditch stand against the smoking ban in England by calling for exemptions for pubs and private clubs.
The group will urge the government to allow designated smoking rooms in some pubs and allow private clubs to devise a policy in line with their member's wishes at a dinner for celebrities and MPs at the Savoy Hotel in London.
Simon Clark, director of FOREST, will tell around 400 guests, including MPs and peers: "We have lost the battle but we haven't lost the war. The smoking ban is out of all proportion to the risk from second-hand smoke."
The event - Revolt In Style: A Freedom Dinner - will be hosted by TV chef and restaurateur Antony Worrall Thompson.