Posts by George Darroch
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
So I quote myself:
If you mean where does the reach of public health end for other harmful activities, I have no idea. There is a societal consensus for the control of tobacco, but there are no such strong consensus for the control of other potentially harmful products and activities, except for illegal drugs. If that changes, then control of those will also change – although action may lag or precede it, as we often see with slow or rapid reactions to particular threats conceived to be against the body and the state.
To make that clearer, and quite explicit. The state will control things, in proportion to their harm. Some things it may overreach on (BZP, ecstasy), other things it will lag evidence on (advertising of food to children, healthy provision of foods in school canteens). In the case of tobacco, it is likely to end up strongly controlled but legal, with provision to smoke in your own home. That is where it ends. In Sweden's case, it ends with state-ownership of alcohol stores. It does not end with the state planning your breakfast and measuring your wine-glass, in case you were wondering.
I really feel like you're arguing in bad faith, Ben, from an ideological position which refuses to engage with the evidence or deal with the pragmatics at hand. I don't have everything to hand, nor do I have the time to pull it all together. I have however read considerably on the subject in the last week (for reasons unrelated to this debate) so it's not all feelings and superstition.
-
They’re an appeal to prejudice
Ben, you're the first person I've ever met, offline or on, who has referred to the evidence on tobacco as an "appeal to prejudice".
-
Consensus is a strange word for a position that is contentious.
You're part of a minority.
In 2010, around two-thirds (65%) of
respondents ‘agreed’ (39%) or ‘strongly
agreed’ (26%) that the government should
do more to reduce the harm done by
smokingNow, being part of the minority doesn't make you wrong, per se. However, it does weaken your ability to argue that is is illegitimate for a democratic government to restrict the use of a harmful and addictive substance that imposes massive costs on its users and on society.
-
It’s quite cost effective, really, because it kills off people mostly after their productive life ends.
That again, is ill informed. Quite apart from the horror inflicted on those who suffer through their last years and those who lose family members much earlier than they otherwise would (13 years earlier, among men, 14, among women), the costs of end-of-life healthcare, particularly for cancers, is extreme. A person in a cancer-ward can easily consume hundreds of thousands of dollars in treatment, equivalent to decades of paid taxes.
-
Just not to the question actually asked.
I thought you were being sincere. So I addressed tobacco.
If you mean where does the reach of public health end for other harmful activities, I have no idea. There is a societal consensus for the control of tobacco, but there are no such strong consensus for the control of other potentially harmful products and activities, except for illegal drugs. If that changes, then control of those will also change - although action may lag or precede it, as we often see with slow or rapid reactions to particular threats conceived to be against the body and the state.
I'm not happy with all of those because I think some don't reflect current evidence, but I don't think that it's inconsistent to say that there should be strong control of some particularly harmful substances and weak(er) control of much less harmful substances. We don't currently regulate activity, we leave that up to individuals, with some provisions for safety, such as lifejackets for boaties, and licenses for pilots. Given the comparatively huge number of deaths attributable to recreational boat use, I think there's a very compelling case to make skippers take basic safety instruction courses.
As a general point, slippery slope arguments are a load of bollocks, as far as I'm concerned. Banning the incitement of racial hatred, for example, is not equivalent to closing the presses and running all publications through the censors office. I respect people who oppose the former, but I don't respect people who conflate them.
-
Where does it end?
With plain-packaged cartons costing $40, that you buy from restricted retailers (chemists, mostly) and are free to smoke in your own home and property... and 2-5% of the population smoking. That's my speculative answer.
-
The taxes and restrictions are motivated entirely by moralizing about the health risks.
To the extent that popularly elected governments take measures to protect the health of their citizens, and those measures impose on the freedoms of those citizens, yes, absolutely.
Whether you view those measures as; paternalistic and unjustified, paternalistic and justified, or non-paternalistic and justified, is a matter for debate. Personally, I consider that there are a mix of the latter two, but that most fall squarely into the last category.
-
, they just want it to be properly, and openly investigated by appropriately qualified engineers.
Sounds fair and reasonable to meFair and reasonable. They're useful concepts.
People I know are better qualified to comment on closing the window of doubt and the possibility of proving a negative.
-
Tobacco related illness. Gods but I hate that expression. Of course everyone dies of tobacco related illnesses: strokes and heart attacks and a lot of cancers are related to tobacco use, and that’s what most people die of anyway, smokers and non-smokers alike.
Well, be prepared to hate it some more.
Smoking tobacco lowers life expectancy by 13 years for males, and 14 years for females. That's the equivalent of taking a New Zealand man and woman, and putting them both in North Korea. Literally, you lose that much life expectancy.
There are very clear and extremely well established causal pathways between tobacco smoking and a very large number of negative health outcomes. I don't have the figures in front of me, but smoking increases the odds ratios of a number of severe health events (cancers, heart attacks, pulmonary diseases) extremely. You're probably aware of this - these are the findings that became clear half a century ago, because it was very hard to ignore something as dramatic as a heart attack. You're probably unaware of the less dramatic harmful effects which have been demonstrated in the last few decades, which are seen with even low levels of consumption.
There are no such established pathways between moderate consumption of common foods, and low-moderate alcohol consumption.
-
Tobacco smuggling in Europe is a big problem.
Google 'tobacco smuggling in the UK'. Here's a couple of examples from the results
It's a problem, in the way that file sharing is a problem - it deprives revenue from those who would collect it (the tax system, and the Government). However, as a public health problem, not so much. Do smuggled cigarettes represent excess consumption? Possibly, but it's hard to imagine that this excess is a large one. And on the other side, measures to decrease the attractiveness of legitimate tobacco decrease the demand overall. This is the major concern of public health professionals. The tobacco industry has been fervent in working up the 'threat' from smuggled tobacco, with findings that in no way match those of independent researchers.