The Hysteria of Tobacco Control

I’ve been contemplating the panic of Tobacco Control tonight. It is all very strange.

First, we have the strange decision of a Scottish MSP (Member of the Scottish Parliament) to do his own ‘consultation’ about his intention to introduce a Bill in the Scottish Parliament to ban smoking in cars where children are present. It appears to be the case that he is obliged to do so. (I suppose that he would not do so, if he was not obliged to do so).

Anyway, he has produced his consultation. He invites contributions. You can tell him what your opinion is here:

jim.hume.msp@scottish.parliament.uk

This event is a bit weird. There is no on-line form that you can complete. You have to email Mr Hume, and tell him what your answers to his questions are.

So let’s see the questions:

Questions
1. Do you support the general aim of the proposed Bill? (as outlined in Part 1
above.) Please indicate “yes/no/undecided” and explain the reasons for your
response.
2. Do you agree that legislation is a necessary and appropriate means of
addressing the issues identified?
3. What (if any) would be the main practical advantages of the legislation
proposed? What (if any) would be the disadvantages?
4. Do you agree that a ban should apply to smokers while in a car with children
under 16 years of age?
5. Do you agree that the age of an offender shall be anyone aged 16 or over?
6. Do you agree with making the fine for an offence (£60) in line with offences for
failing to wear a seat belt and the use of a hand-held device while driving?
7. What types of vehicles should the ban apply to? Do you believe that these
proposals should include convertible cars irrespective of whether the top is
down?
8. What is your assessment of the likely financial implications (if any) of the
proposed Bill to you or your organisation? What (if any) other significant
financial implications are likely to arise?
9. Is the proposed Bill likely to have any substantial positive or negative
implications for equality? If it is likely to have a substantial negative
implication, how might this be minimised or avoided?
10. What lead-in time should be allowed prior to implementation of the ban and
how should the public be informed?

11. Do you have any other comments on or suggestions relevant to the proposal?

You can easily see how leading these questions are.

Here are my responses:

Q1. No.

It will not have any effect whatsoever, apart from the dangers of accidents caused by people looking over their shoulders.

Q2. No.

The legislation would be superfluous.

Q3.

There would be no advantages – only disadvantages. In addition to the dangers as stated above, the question of method and cost of enforcement would be high without any significant gain in health.

Q4.

There should be no such ban.

Q5.

As per Q4.

Q6.

As per Q4.

Q7.

The question is too ridiculous to deserve an answer.

Q8.

The question of the cost of accidents caused by this proposal would be interesting to know, but not really possible to guess at.

Q9.

I do not understand the relevance of this question.

Q10.

As per Q4.

Q11.

It would be difficult to know where to start to inform you. Suffice to say that the science that you rely upon is junk. Let us take Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

In England and Wales, there were only 130 deaths out of some 700,000 live births in 2010. All but a minuscule number occurred before the age of one. To what extent would infants less than one year old be ferried around in cars? To claim that SIDS could possibly be caused by smoking in cars is almost criminal in its ignorance.

Mr Hume. I seriously believe that you are bordering on psychopathic. You really ought to be clever enough to realise that what your text states is nothing more than propaganda of the worst kind. Do you not know about the McTear Versus Imperial Tobacco Company? You ought to since the Case took place in Scotland and concluded in 2005. Here is a link to my summary of the Judge’s Opinion, which contains a link to the actual Opinion itself, all 600 pages of it. If you read it, and you should, you will see that your friends in Tobacco Control could not even bring any evidence that smoking itself causes lung cancer at all, never mind that SHS has such effects.

https://boltonsmokersclub.wordpress.com/the-mctear-case-the-analysis/

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It seems that he said Mr Hume has promised to reveal the text of the responses, but is that credible? The Zealots have been fiddling the evidence for far too long for them to change their spots now.

NO! NO! NO! Mr Hume will obey his instructions. He is a charlatan. He is a thief and a vagabond, He put up for election as a secret prohibitionist. How many Members of the Scottish Parliament are also nominees of Tobacco Control? It really is very, very obvious in retrospect.

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But all is not going to plan. The politicians are behaving as instructed (idiots!); the newspapers are also being good; but there are problems. The PEOPLE are not being good.

Tonight, at the pub, I witnessed two persons enjoying ecigs outside! I could hardly believe it! Why on earth did they not enjoy their ecigs inside? It can only be that ‘fear’ has created ‘obedience’. It is a matter of fact that I have seen people inside the pub enjoying ecigs – but almost always as surreptitiously as possible.

But that is OK! There needs to be a GRADUAL reversal of the Zealots’ ‘quit or die’ paradigm. Ecigs have emerged as the arch enemy of TC. They take control out of the hands of the Zealots. The ‘Quit or Die’ paradigm has been disrupted. TC ABSOLUTELY MUST GAIN CONTROL OF ECIGS. That is the reason for the Tobacco Directive insistence. Poor Ms Soubry was a stupid, passing-through, tool of Andrew Black – you could see it throughout the events in the committee meeting which readers will be aware of. Damn it! Ms Soubry thought that the ecig question had been removed from the Directive! How stupid could the Political Tart get?

[Is that not a nice phrase to describe all the Zealots who put up for election as MPs at the behest of TC? They are almost all women. They are Political Tarts. I suppose that you could also call MPs like Williams ‘Political Tarts’. Why not?

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I cannot help but feel that a lot of the Zealots who are MPs were deliberately introduced into the Commons. It is easy to see how that could be done. Pick a few constituencies which are ‘safe’ (Labour, Conservative and Liberal) and use ploys to introduce your candidate. So simple! A tiny bit of trickery, in the form of candidates being DOCTORS, and away you go.

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In the past, I have read the deliberations of Parliament about various tobacco control initiates. I have yet to see any justification other than EMOTIONS. The epitome of the junk science/emotion based clap-trap is the attempt by a Member of the Scottish Parliament to introduce a ‘private member’s bill’ to ban smoking in cars ‘with children present’. The whole thing is so obviously contrived as to be comical. For example, Mr Hume claims that SHS in cars causes Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

I would not even know where to start to deny such a stupid statement. How do you ‘prove’ that ‘one plus one’ does NOT equal three? SIDS deaths are also known as ‘cot deaths’ – they do not occur in cars.

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How do these people get elected? It can only be that no one else gives a damn.