tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-69622514955032915892024-03-19T12:27:43.598-07:00A Menace to SobrietyAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336030628955398657noreply@blogger.comBlogger72125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6962251495503291589.post-50027606748339991692019-02-01T03:57:00.000-08:002019-02-01T03:57:43.017-08:00Chasing unicorns <div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">While training as a young economist, I had to grapple with such concepts as Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which I understood as a broad measure of the monetary value of the goods and services the country produces each year. Then there was the somewhat more difficult concept of “marginal utility”, which I just about know how to distinguish from butter! And then, being a grammar school boy lacking a classical education, my economics tutor taught me a Latin phrase: “Ceteris Paribus”, which means “if all else remains unchanged/equal” – or something like that. Ceteris Paribus provides a get-out-of-jail card for the failed predictions and forecasts of economists because things rarely remain unchanged, although sometimes it seems God put economists on this planet to make weather forecasters look good!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">I understand social science is soft science – it’s not quantum physics – but at least economists are trying to measure something that can be objectively quantified or monetised. However, “public health” campaigners feel no such inhibitions. Recently published research funded by the Medical Research Council sought to quantify how even moderate drinking might reduce “quality of life” and put a monetary value on it – apparently drinking a bottle of wine a week costs £2,400 a year in lost quality of life, while one pint of beer a week equates to £610 a year in lost quality of life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The research analysed the health, wealth and happiness of 141,000 British drinkers aged 37 to 73 and compared alcohol’s benefits, such as making people feel happy or sociable, with the higher risk of depression, insomnia and cognitive decline. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">But this is a curious comparison. In real life people make all kinds of trade-offs between short-term pleasures and long-term risks, usually on the basis the short-term pleasure is very real and very “now”, whereas the increase in risk is often very small and may or may not occur some time in the future. Or, to put it another way: “It won’t happen to me.” Usually, statistically, they are right. How can you compare the actuality of a benefit to the increased risk of a cost?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">When scientists ignore the vast amount of scientific evidence that links moderate alcohol consumption to greater longevity – and less risk of heart disease and dementia compared with life-long abstainers – and abandon what can be sensibly quantified and try to monetise a concept as subjective as “quality of life”, you know they’ve abandoned science and are chasing unicorns.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">They are not alone in this pseudo-scientific endeavour. The annual Halifax Quality Of Life survey has just been published and tells us Orkney is the best place to live in the UK. I like sheep, but not that much. The survey used to say various places in southern England were the most desirable places to live so Orkney’s rise to prominence is recent. About 22,000 people live in Orkney and its population is in long-term decline. Millions of people live in southern England and its population is growing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Pause for thought. GDP may be a rough and ready way of measuring how well the economy is performing but at least it’s measuring something objective. “Quality of life” is an entirely subjective concept and reflects the values of campaigners who use the cloak of science to mask their lifestyle activist intentions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">There are a lot of them doing it. There is the Genuine Progress Indicator, which measures income inequality and suggests if it is growing, a place is getting poorer. Some people will agree with this conclusion and some will disagree but it’s an implicit value judgement that tilts the science. Then there’s the Gross National Happiness Index, which was pioneered by the royal family of Bhutan – clearly experts in equitable development and cultural diversity. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">And isn’t it comforting to know The Lancet is getting in on the act? This formerly reputable medical journal has become a loony-left publication and a mouthpiece for some of the country’s worst lifestyle zealots. The Lancet Commission On Obesity recently published a 56-page report on how to solve the obesity crisis and save the planet – so no lack of ambition! The report is a diatribe against Big Food and declares we should all become vegans but, if we must eat meat or eggs, it should be in tiny amounts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Their enemy is Big Food, which is a surrogate term for capitalism, and their remedy is more state control, higher taxes and more bans. Not only that, they’d like a hand-out from the taxpayer to fund their lobbying of the World Health Organisation to enshrine their puritanical intentions into a Global Treaty On Food.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Driving to work this morning I listened to the Queen song “Flash”, which featured in the film Flash Gordon. In the song the heroine breathlessly says: “Flash, I love you, but we’ve only got 14 hours to save the earth!” Isn’t this essentially the unifying theme of all these unicorn-chasers – moral salvation lies in abstaining from pleasure – and in the process you’ll improve your quality of life and save the planet. Isn’t that nice?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336030628955398657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6962251495503291589.post-11345123568191112582018-12-14T04:17:00.000-08:002018-12-14T04:17:25.487-08:00Christmas rant <div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Well, 2018 has been a tumultuous year by any standards. For the hospitality industry, I can’t remember a time when the threats and uncertainties were so formidable. As well as business rates, minimum wage hikes and a looming huge increase in fees from the PPL/PRS legalised protection racket, we have the huge uncertainties of Brexit and its impact on recruitment and staff shortages. Then there is the ever-present agitation from that other racket – so-called “public health”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Regarding Brexit, I’m a libertarian by instinct as much as intellectual conviction but even I can see sometimes the sheep need a shepherd. If Mrs May’s deal falls, at the risk of being howled down by a demented mob shouting “it’s the will of the people”, I think Parliament needs to reassert its sovereignty and move an amendment to revoke Article 50. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">This Brexit madness has gone on far too long and it needs to stop. Indeed, if our elected representatives hadn’t abdicated responsibility and taken this decision themselves in the first place, we wouldn’t be in this position. Brexit on any analysis will have a hugely negative impact on the hospitality industry.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">As far as copyright organisations are concerned, I’ve written about their antics before and I think it’s time the government reviewed intellectual property law and reconsidered at what point the repeated playing of a piece of music, with all the marketing benefits that has to the performer, publisher and record company, mean it is now in the public domain and the copyright owner can’t go on rent-seeking from it forever. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Copyright organisations have gone beyond musical performances and we’ve now seen the development of the Motion Picture Licensing Company, which collects fees in relation to TV and movie broadcasts in licensed premises and hotels. The copyright racket is a classic Del Boy-type wheeze, using the law to exact a rent without adding economic value – it’s a case of rinse and repeat – the licensed trade is a big cake and everyone wants a slice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Where do I start with the public health racket? Its most emblematic policy, minimum unit pricing (MUP), came into force in Scotland in May and is already unravelling. Despite a 10% increase in alcohol prices across the board, we’ve seen a 15% increase in the value of alcohol sales in Scotland during the first six months of this policy. In volume terms, a 4% increase in the consumption of pure ethyl alcohol in the off-trade. Remember, MUP was meant to reduce consumption in its first year by 3.5% across the whole population and by 7% among problem drinkers?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Now the swivel-eyed temperance fanatics at Alcohol Focus Scotland and Sheffield Alcohol Research Group are saying while consumption may have gone up in Scotland it hasn’t risen as much as it has in England, where we don’t have MUP. So when they said consumption would go down, they really meant it would go up – just not as fast as elsewhere! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">You can almost hear the sound of goalposts being moved and ridiculous excuses being made – “the hot summer or the World Cup made Scots drink more”. Correct me if I’m wrong, but Scotland didn’t feature in the World Cup finals so are we supposed to believe Scots were knocking back more Buckfast while loudly proclaiming their support for the England team? Wouldn’t that be nice?!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">I mustn’t leave out the sugar loons. The mass reformulation of our food supply at the behest of a public health lobby that sees business as vectors of disease and a conspiracy against the public goes on unchecked – and this under a Conservative government that is supposedly on the side of business.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">With my attitude to Brexit I guess I must be an unrepentant member of the “liberal elite” stuck in my ways and in denial of populist democracy but, finally, here’s one that really got me ranting. David Runciman, professor of politics at Cambridge University, has complained the UK’s ageing population is creating a democratic deficit for the young. Is he advocating votes for 16-year-olds? Nope, that’s not radical enough. He wants voting rights for six-year-olds – “provided they can read”. I’m not making this up but if MPs continue to behave like six-year-olds, he may have a point. Merry Christmas!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336030628955398657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6962251495503291589.post-3897703649855551202018-11-02T12:30:00.000-07:002018-11-02T12:30:12.898-07:00LESS IS SOMETIMES MORE<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It has been said that the first duty of a chancellor when delivering a budget is to contrive not to make things worse. It appears that on that measure at least Phillip Hammond has succeeded. So, for our sector we have seen a freeze on the duty levied on beer, cider and spirits, although the duty levied on wine will rise in line with RPI. My guess is the chancellor thought that wouldn’t upset the trade too much as most wine sold in this country is produced abroad, but it is a blow for British wine producers who’ve seen a bumper harvest this year due to the warm weather. Meanwhile, bowing to popular prejudice we will see a new duty band on ciders with an ABV of 6.9% to 7.5% from February 2019. This is designed to tackle the infamous strong white ciders frequently, though by no means exclusively, drunk by chaotic street drinkers. Given that these products have a market share of 0.27% it is hard to see this as anything more than political virtue signalling.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Predictably, health groups are unhappy at the duty freezes. They’ve been campaigning relentlessly for the return of the alcohol duty escalator and bemoaning the revenue ‘lost’ due to its abolition and previous duty freezes. Professor Sir Ian Gilmore, chairman of the Alcohol Health Alliance, described the duty freeze as “a missed opportunity” to use a duty increase to fund alcohol services. By his reckoning, duty freezes have cost the Treasury £4 billion in the last five years and will cost it a further £5 billion by 2023.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But is this calculation of lost revenue correct? It’s based on the assumption that increases in the duty rate will always lead to an increase in the duty take. The same assumption is often made about tax rates in general. And yet when the higher rate of income tax rate was reduced from 50% to 45% the tax-take from it rose from 25% of government tax revenue to 28%. This is an example of ‘Laffer’s Curve’. Art Laffer is the American economist who first observed that if a tax rose beyond a certain point it delivered diminishing returns. The art of setting tax and duty rates, from the government’s perspective, must be to maximise revenue without damaging the incentives to work or invest. Over-burdensome duty rates do both and have the effect of reducing demand for products and reducing the number of jobs the sector can sustain.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, have previous duty freezes and the abolition of the duty escalator led to the loss of revenue that Gilmore cites? The fact is that in every year since the hated duty escalator was abolished alcohol duty has delivered more revenue to the Treasury, not less. Between 2013-14 and 2017-18 the revenue from alcohol duty rose from £10 billion to £11.5 billion – an increase of 15%. Health campaigners make the simple mistake of assuming the volume of alcohol sold would remain unchanged even if prices rose because of increases in duty and that’s where their calculation of lost revenue comes from. This is curious, not least because when they argue for minimum unit pricing they assume the opposite – that consumption will reduce significantly in response to raising prices.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the run-up to the budget health campaigners argued that the pub trade hadn’t benefitted from the abolition of the duty escalator. They sought to drive a wedge between publicans and brewers. It is obvious that duty increases are not the only factor putting upwards pressure on the cost of running a pub, but they are a major factor. Between 2008 and 2013 – the duty escalator years – beer prices to the on-trade rose by 21%. Between 2013 to 2018 - in the five years since the duty escalator was scrapped – beer prices rose just over 11% (Source: HMRC). So, beer price rises to the on-trade have nearly halved since the duty escalator was abolished. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This benefits pubs and consumers and will help safeguard 3,000 jobs that would otherwise have been lost (Source: BBPA).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The announcement of rate relief for the next two years is also welcome, although not a substitute of the root-and-branch reform of business rates that is needed. Given the uncertainty around the outcome of the Brexit negotiations, this is probably as much as the chancellor could promise. So, if not three cheers for ‘Spreadsheet Phil’, we can perhaps offer one and a half cheers!</span><o:p></o:p></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336030628955398657noreply@blogger.com0United Kingdom55.378051 -3.4359729999999912.203021 -86.05316049999999 90 79.18121450000001tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6962251495503291589.post-33494554125594626702018-10-05T03:19:00.002-07:002018-10-05T03:19:59.130-07:00Supping with the devil <div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">It’s an established dogma of the so-called public health movement that partnering with the alcohol industry to reduce harms is tantamount to supping with the devil. It’s not that they think you should use a long spoon, you shouldn’t even be at the meal. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">It was entirely predictable that when Public Health England (PHE) announced a partnership with Drinkaware to jointly campaign for “drink-free days” to reduce heavy drinking and promote moderate consumption, the usual anti-alcohol groups shrieked in horror.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">This alarmist concern resulted in a letter sent to PHE by the Alcohol Health Alliance (AHA) signed by 50 anti-alcohol pressure groups and individuals. The concern arises from the fact Drinkaware is funded by the alcohol industry and therefore, in the view of the AHA, tainted by Big Alcohol. I defy anyone viewing the Drinkaware website to conclude it is an industry shill. The level of paranoia by these single-issue pressure groups verges on the pathological – “don’t fraternise with the enemy” is their credo!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Their view is that partnership working with the alcohol industry leads to the dilution of policies that really work and to the substitution of ineffective policies – such as education. So even though the PHE “low risk” drinking guidelines promote drinking no more than 14 units of alcohol a week interspersed by one or two alcohol-free days, and all these groups are signed up to that advice, if the alcohol industry supports it in conjunction with PHE it is tantamount to heresy. So much so professor Sir Ian Gilmore, chairman of the AHA and a key advisor to PHE, threatened to resign his post in protest. If you point a gun to your head and say: “Do as I say or I’ll shoot” you run the risk your bluff will be called, and it was. Professor Gilmore has resigned!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">It seems to me if the AHA and its membership want to separate itself from the industry that produces the products they profess to be experts on, they will isolate themselves in an academic ivory tower and their policy prescriptions will lack any relevance to the real world in which they are enacted. This bone-headed, know-nothing approach does have one advantage, however, it enables them to make things up in their heads and ensure their own ideological purity by burying themselves deeply in the temperance rabbit hole. This immunises them from any kind of reasoned compromise with an industry they despise as comprised of capitalist bad guys engaged in a conspiracy against public health.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">And, of course, the policies they describe as “best buys” for reducing alcohol-related harm are whole-population policies designed to reduce overall consumption through minimum unit pricing, tax rises and bans on advertising and promotions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Contrast this with the pragmatic approach taken at Walsall NHS Trust. It recognised a disproportionate amount of time and NHS resources were being spent on a small number of “frequent flyers” – people with alcohol problems who turned up at A&E for treatment multiple times. They identified a cohort of just ten patients who were admitted 499 times between them in six months. On average, each patient was admitted twice a week.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Walsall NHS Trust identified 38 frequent flyers whose needs were complex and varied – alcoholism, mental health, family breakdown – and by taking a joined-up approach it was able to achieve a 54% drop in alcohol-related A&E admissions and a 68% reduction in bed days. Overall the trust saved more than £250,000.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Daniel Hodgkiss, patient safety manager at Walsall NHS Trust, said: “We identified a small number of hospital patients with complex needs that were discharged only to return multiple times, which accounted for a very disproportionate number of admissions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">“This was due to a lack of cohesion between social care, mental health services, police and a range of other services. By bringing these agencies together to co-ordinate patient care, we were able to substantially reduce admissions.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">This is the kind of pragmatic approach to alcohol-harm reduction we need to see. An approach that recognises the locus of alcohol-related harms lies with a minority of drinkers, the heaviest drinking 4%, who are people with complex needs and for whom drinking is a symptom as much as a cause of their problems. Why aren’t the AHA, Alcohol Concern and Alcohol Focus Scotland championing this approach instead of throwing their dummies out of the pram because PHE has, for once, adopted a sensible, partnership approach with the industry?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336030628955398657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6962251495503291589.post-21703934808605455872018-09-07T06:47:00.000-07:002018-09-07T06:50:19.355-07:00The big alcohol conspiracy theory <div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">If I could affect one reform to our education system, it would be economics should become a mandatory subject in the National Curriculum. Two reasons – economics is by its very nature a libertarian subject, and, secondly, it would save me lots of time untangling misunderstandings that would never occur in the first place if people who ought to know better had replaced their ignorance of economics with some basic knowledge of it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">A recent study from the University of Sheffield alcohol research team and the Institute of Alcohol Studies is a case in point. This study purported to show the alcohol industry was economically dependent on heavy, harmful, dependent drinking. The study claims the heaviest drinking 4% of the population is responsible for 30% of all consumption and 23% of all industry revenue. The numbers break down as follows – those drinking above guideline levels are estimated to account for 68% of total alcohol sales revenue in 2013/14; 81% of off</span><span style="font-family: "cambria math" , serif;">‐</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">trade revenue and 60% of on</span><span style="font-family: "cambria math" , serif;">‐</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">trade revenue. This represents 77% of beer, 70% of cider, 66% of wine and 50% of spirits sales value.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">If all consumers reduced their consumption to within guideline levels – 14 units a week – alcohol sales revenue would plummet from £35bn a year (2014 figures) to £22bn – a decline of 38%. To mitigate this loss, the authors say the alcohol industry would need to raise prices substantially, for example by £2.64 for a pint of on-trade beer or £12.25 for a 70cl bottle of off-trade spirits.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">The sub-text of this is the industry’s claim to be in favour of moderate consumption is insincere because it’s so highly dependent on excessive consumption. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate if consumers drank “moderately”, defined as no more than 14 units a week, they would be faced with unrealistically high prices if the industry was to maintain its profits at the current level. So, the researchers calculate how much the industry would lose from people drinking less and then work out how much prices would need to rise for profits not to fall.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">Here’s where their basic ignorance of economics kicks-in. They don’t look at profits or even at turnover. Instead they assume consumer spending equals industry income and then slice off 38% because this is what they estimate sales would fall by if everyone suddenly drank no more than 14 units a week. The howler that’s being committed here is £35bn is not the industry’s money. More than £10bn of it goes to the Treasury in alcohol duty and other taxes, and billions more go to off-sales retailers and to pubs, clubs and restaurants. And what is left, about £10bn, is not all profit. Most industries make a net margin of between 7% and 10% and so the loss to the alcohol industry’s profits would be only a fraction of what these researchers claim. And this is before we calculate the cost savings to the alcohol industry that would result from producing less product.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">So does the alcohol industry stand to lose if heavy drinkers all became moderate drinkers? Insofar as heavy drinking is associated with early death, and moderate drinking with extended longevity, the answer is no. If people drinking 50 units or more a week (harmful drinkers) all became light drinkers consuming 14 units a week they would all live longer. The alcohol industry would get the same revenue from them but over a longer period. Since it is unlikely this state of affairs would happen overnight – that any move towards drinking less, but drinking higher quality products would be an evolution – it’s clear the alcohol industry has no conceivable economic interest in the premature death of its customers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">There is therefore no conflict of interest between the industry’s support for moderate consumption and industry profits. Indeed, brand owners do not want their brand values undermined by irresponsible use of their products.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">A total of 21% of UK adults are teetotal while a further 58% drink at or below the low risk guideline of 14 units a week. That’s 79% of people who are at no risk, or next to no risk, from alcohol. The remaining 21% drink at or above 14 units, but only 4% above 50 units a week. The alcohol industry cannot possibly determine the distribution of its products between different consumer demographics – that is a consequence of millions of buying decisions made by consumers on a daily basis. What is equally clear is the industry has nothing to fear from its customers drinking moderately and living longer. Only temperance lobby researchers without even a basic understanding of economics seek to define the alcohol industry as a conspiracy against the public interest.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336030628955398657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6962251495503291589.post-5279574016567308582018-08-10T02:12:00.000-07:002018-08-10T02:12:49.550-07:00IF IT’S NOT IN THE MODEL – IT WON’T HAPPEN!<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It has just been announced that the Welsh Assembly Bill to introduce minimum unit pricing (MUP) in Wales has been given Royal Assent. Predictably, the usual suspects – Alcohol Concern, Alcohol Focus Scotland and the Institute of Alcohol Studies are all crowing about this and calling for its immediate introduction in England. So, the Welsh Assembly government clearly aren’t interested in seeing how MUP works out in Scotland first – so much for “evidence-based policy”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But there never was any real-world evidence for MUP, its supporters rely entirely on the discredited speculative numerology of the Sheffield Alcohol Pricing Model (SAPM). This purports to show how a minimum unit price at different levels will reduce consumption, and the benefits in terms of reduced alcohol-related harms of all kinds will cascade down in a sort of hierarchy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But there were two things that SAPM neglected to model and that economists have identified as likely unintended consequences of this kind of government price intervention. One is market displacement; the other product substitution. Let me explain: market displacement is what happens when consumers wake up one morning and find a popular product has suddenly rocketed in price and they can no longer afford it. Consumers vote with their feet and seek a similar product in the black market. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This happened in Russia in 2010 when the government imposed a minimum price of 220 roubles for a half litre bottle of vodka. Consumption was displaced into the black market where people bought cheap and dangerous moonshine. In response, the Russian Government was forced to reduce the minimum price to 185 roubles in 2012 – approximately the price it was sold at before the government intervened. Consumer responses to government regulation completely neutered the minimum price policy. Will consumers do this in Scotland and Wales? Too early to tell, but anecdotally we know that Tesco’s car park in Carlisle is full of cars and vans with Scottish number plates! Some of these will no doubt rock-up on council estates in Glasgow and flog cheap English booze to price-conscious Scots.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But what of product substitution? Remember all those stories about cheap white cider being sold to vulnerable street drinkers and alcoholics with chaotic lives? MUP will solve all that by pricing these products out of reach of the poor. So, in Scotland a 3 litre bottle of Frosty Jack’s white cider made from apple concentrate and with an ABV of 7.5% was selling for £4.25 before MUP. OMG! Pocket money prices; alcohol cheaper than water – something must be done. Well, now it has been. A 3 litre bottle of Frosty Jack’s in Scotland now costs £11.25 – thanks to MUP - and sales have fallen off a cliff. So, problem solved then? Not quite.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you’re the kind of drinker who necks a 3 litre bottle of strong white cider in one session it’s safe to say you’re not a cider connoisseur. To be blunt, you do it to get off your head – blotto! These people haven’t gone away; they haven’t all signed the pledge. They still want to get blotto but their tipple of choice is now priced out of reach. So, might they seek a substitute product? What else can get you off your head for the night? Well, a gram of the synthetic cannabinoid known as ‘Spice’ sells for just £6. A bag of heroin off the streets of Glasgow can be bought for as little as £8. If you want to understand the effects of Spice on the homeless, visit Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester and see for yourself. And deaths from heroin and other opioids are now at a record high.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, what happens next? Answers on a postcard please. I simply ask: in what rational universe would we contrive for a bag of heroin to be nearly 30% cheaper and a gram of spice 46% cheaper than a 3 litre bottle of cider? Victory for public health! Vindication of the policy of minimum unit pricing!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ah, but you see, these things weren’t in the Sheffield model – so can’t possibly happen – it’s been peer-reviewed you know! And the academics are quietly confident this will all work. This is what can happen when politicians who don’t understand how markets work throw a price regulation into the middle of a free market, and it enters culture. The unintended consequences kick-in. This is what can happen when activist academics, living in ivory towers, persuade dumb politicians that if only they can control the price mechanism they’ll be able to socially engineer the sober society and we’ll all live happier, healthier lives. Meanwhile, back in the real world, I just don’t think it’s that simple.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336030628955398657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6962251495503291589.post-77467829681030434572018-07-27T12:00:00.000-07:002018-07-27T12:00:07.400-07:00HEALTH SCARE OR HEALTH RISK – IT’S ALL IN THE PRESENTATION<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Scarcely a week goes by without a headline-grabbing story about risks to our health that are associated with the enjoyment of food and drink we all thought was perfectly safe. And tabloid editor’s love these stories because anything that feeds public alarm sells papers. Usually the stories are based on epidemiology, which studies the incidence of disease in populations and the risk factors that correlate with them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">An example is a World Health Organisation report that classified processed meat such as bacon and sausages as carcinogens because the cooking process causes the production of acrylamide, which in large doses has been shown to cause cancer in mice. The tabloid headlines included “A bacon sandwich a day causes cancer”; “A bacon sandwich a day ‘increases the risk of colorectal cancer by 16%’ - experts say.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A survey showed that nearly 50% of people in all age groups were aware of this conclusion and around a third of people said they were trying to cut down on consumption. And this was reflected in sales figures. In the four weeks after the publication of the WHO’s report and the headlines accompanying it, sales of packs of bacon in the UK fell by 8.5%, and this appears to have been a stepped change that hasn’t reversed itself. So, were the headlines justified, and what sense should we make of this and similar stories?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One of the most erudite commentators on how supposed risks are communicated to the public is Sir David Spiegelhalter, Professor for the Public Understanding of Risk at the University of Cambridge. He’s written extensively on how to spot the difference between a health risk and a health scare. He suggests that to understand the true scale of a risk, put it into the context of how the supposed risky behaviour would impact on a hundred people. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The bacon sandwich scare is a case in point. Spiegelhalter says that if a hundred people never eat a bacon sandwich, or otherwise consume bacon, ever, then nevertheless, six of them will develop colorectal cancer at some point in their lives. In the alternative, if a hundred people eat a bacon sandwich every day of their adult lives then seven of them will develop colorectal cancer. So, consider the logistics here: a hundred people, each eating a bacon sandwich a day, 365 days a year for, say 50 years, equates to the consumption of 1,825,000 bacon sandwiches! And this is the level of consumption needed to for one extra person in this group of a hundred to develop colorectal cancer. This is a health scare, not a real-world health risk.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For the alcophobes’ of public health, the lesson of this scare and the impact it had on sales of bacon, has not been lost. They recognise that attaching the words ‘cancer risk’ to the consumption of alcohol is a powerful means of scaring people into believing that big risks are involved even in relation to moderate consumption. In relation to breast cancer, which is what drives public health claims that “there is no safe level of drinking”, the lifetime risk of a female ‘never drinker’ developing breast cancer is just under 10%. For women who regularly drink moderate amounts of alcohol it elevates to just over 11%. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In round figures, if a hundred women never drink alcohol in the entire lives, nevertheless 10 of them will develop breast cancer at some point. In the alternative, if a hundred women drink two glasses of wine a day, then 11 of them will develop breast cancer at some point. So, consider the logistics: if a hundred women each drink two 125ml glasses of wine a day, totalling three units of alcohol, every day for 50 years then that is 5,475,000 units of alcohol – which equates 608,333 75cl bottles of wine with an ABV of 12%! And this is the level of consumption needed for one extra person in this group to develop breast cancer. This is a health scare, not a real-world health risk.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The other thing that temperance lobby alcophobes’ understand is that in the public imagination cancer is always fatal. But 90% of breast cancer is not fatal and meta-analysis shows no link between moderate consumption of alcohol and breast cancer mortality, nor its recurrence (Gou et al 2013). A large study which followed up women with breast cancer correlated with better chances of survival if they were regular drinkers before diagnosis. If they altered their drinking after diagnosis this had no link to their chance of dying from breast cancer, but an increase in drinking was associated with an overall increase in life expectancy, largely due to substantially fewer heart disease deaths among those who increased their alcohol consumption (Newcomb et al 2013). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, much more needs to be done to promote public understanding of risk, otherwise the food and drink industry will continue to be subject to misleading scare stories from lazy journalists who fail to challenge the sensationalist claims of nanny-state health scolds.</span><span style="color: #333333;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336030628955398657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6962251495503291589.post-62129322451742615472018-07-06T03:24:00.000-07:002018-07-06T03:24:43.931-07:00Will cannabis kite go up in smoke? <h4 style="line-height: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-weight: normal;">The issue of legalising cannabis has been in the news in recent weeks. It began with the heart-rending story of a small boy having up to 50 epileptic seizures a day and his mother’s wish for him to receive medicinal cannabis oil which relieved his symptoms. The Home Secretary obliged with a temporary licence but made it clear there were no intentions to legalise cannabis for recreational use.</span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The only mainstream political party in the UK that supports the creation of a legal, licensed market for recreational cannabis is the Liberal Democrats. However, pressure for change is increasing, with Canada and nine US states legalising cannabis for “medicinal purposes” or full legalisation. Can change in the UK be far behind?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">What are the arguments? Research indicates about three million UK adults regularly smoke cannabis – 7% of the adult population. The reputation of cannabis as a “soft drug” has become tarnished in recent years because the nature of cannabis itself has changed. Let me explain. Cannabis contains two chemical compounds – tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD) – and it’s the THC that gets you stoned! But THC can also cause mental health problems in a small but significant number of users – particularly people with a history of mental illness. High doses of THC can cause psychotic episodes and paranoia. CBD, on the other hand, acts as a natural anti-psychotic medication and mitigates the chances of the mental health problems that can arise from THC use.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“Traditional cannabis” contained a balanced mix of THC and CBD but in the first decade of this century it was pushed out of the black market by sinsemilla – “skunk” – which has a high level of THC and very little CBD. Mental health referrals began to climb. Between 2006 and 2014 it is estimated the use of skunk declined 25% but THC-induced mental health referrals rose 50%. Skunk is a product of cannabis prohibition because it can be grown indoors using hydroponic equipment and doesn’t need to be smuggled-in across borders.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Those advocating legalisation argue we’ve failed to suppress the mass market for cannabis and a licensed, legal market would be a better way of managing use and reducing harm. However, this is not a simple or one-sided argument. If legalisation is to deliver better outcomes and eliminate the black market for skunk, the government would have to get the licensing model right.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">How might this work? First, government would have to mandate a maximum level of THC (say 15%) and a minimum level of CBD to create a safer product. But the new, legal, “safer” cannabis would also have to be cheaper than black market skunk. There’s plenty of margin to play with as a gram of skunk currently sells for about £10 so there is a margin for producers, retailers and government, which would introduce a cannabis duty and levy VAT. It would also be necessary to ensure the product was easily available at chemists, off-licences and a network of cannabis cafes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">But let’s take a step back. If we enable a new, fully legal industry of intoxication and make cannabis safer to use, cheaper to buy and even easier to get hold of, what would happen to the level of demand? Again, research indicates a 10% reduction in price would trigger a 7% increase in consumption – at a time when it is falling. But it would be increased consumption of a safer product. Police time would be saved and government would gain perhaps £1bn a year in tax revenues.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Here’s where it gets complicated. THC-induced mental health problems didn’t start with skunk – they just got worse. So if consumption of legal cannabis remained the same, the incidence of mental health referrals would fall. If consumption significantly increased, the incidence of mental health referrals would still fall but the absolute number might rise.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">You can see why this is a difficult issue for politicians. On the face of it, if we accept we can’t suppress a mass market in an open society and a failed policy of prohibition just lines the pockets of criminals, licensing sales of a quality-controlled product where we can control strength and ingredients and deliver a revenue stream for government seems a win-win situation. But think how the Daily Mail would spin this. Who would grow and produce cannabis products? The tobacco industry is best placed to do so. And who would retail them – bar or coffee chains? You can imagine the narrative of those opposed to change – Big Tobacco and Big Alcohol are behind this.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">My own view is that, on balance, a licensing system offers a better chance of public protection and harm reduction than the status quo. But politically, I just don’t think this kite will fly in the UK.</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336030628955398657noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6962251495503291589.post-5887746625068413512018-06-22T04:21:00.000-07:002018-06-22T04:21:36.086-07:00Moving the goalposts <div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">I am always intrigued to
hear “public health” labelling any research paid for by the alcohol industry as
“tainted by commercial interests”. What kind of naivety is it that causes
people to believe money is the only source of corruption? Do these people think
there’s an endless supply of benevolent millionaires willing to fund research
into issues they have no opinion on? The fact is, funding has to come from
somewhere and research should be judged on its own merits, regardless of who
funds it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">So it is regrettable, in
my opinion, that a large-scale research project in the US into the health
outcomes of moderate drinking has been abandoned because Big Alcohol was
jointly funding this research along with a large dollop of public money. And
who was objecting? The usual suspects – so-called “public health” bodies and
taxpayer-funded temperance charities whose ideological bias taints their
thinking and just about every piece of research they’ve ever produced. Is it a coincidence
the voluminous research funded by the Institute of Alcohol Studies, for
example, has failed to produce a single piece of work, ever, with anything
positive to say about beverage alcohol? Yet this organisation regularly
receives money from the World Health Organisation and the UN to fund its
“scientific research”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">What methods do the Big
Public Health ideologues use to pursue their objectives and skew research and
public debate? Moving the goalposts is the preferred method of choice and there
are numerous examples. In June 1998, 25 million Americans suddenly became
overweight. Previously the official threshold for being overweight was a body
mass index (BMI) of 27. Your average American at this time had a BMI of 26. On
17 July 1998, the government lowered the BMI threshold to 25 and almost one in
ten adults in the US became part of a new obesity “epidemic” overnight.
Subsequent research has proved a BMI of 27 is optimal for health, while
so-called overweight people, as opposed to obese people, actually live longer
than those of a supposed healthy weight. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Then there is the drive
to reduce sugar consumption. It’s all about “saving the children”. Children are
currently consuming twice their daily recommended limit of five grams of sugar.
However, three years ago the guideline was halved from ten grams to five and
all of a sudden this moving of the goalposts doubled the number of kids at
risk! But at risk of what? Five grams of sugar is roughly 100 calories. The
recommended guideline for calorie consumption for a growing 11-year-old is
2,000 calories a day. Does it really matter whether 100 or 200 of those
calories come from sugar as opposed to some other source?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">In 2014, new drug
Selincro was approved in the UK for treatment of “mild alcoholism”, a
previously unknown medical condition that used to be called “moderate
drinking”. Subsequent research has proved this drug to have no medical efficacy
whatsoever when compared with the results of blind trials involving
placebos. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">In the examples I have given
above, if you want to find a “baddie” look no further than the pharmaceutical
industry, which vigorously promotes diet pills and treatments for newly
invented illnesses.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">My favourite, of course,
has to be the scientifically unjustified lowering of the low-risk alcohol
guidelines in January 2016. This created hundreds of thousands of hazardous
drinkers overnight and provided new impetus for the temperance lobby and its
sock-puppet charities such as Alcohol Concern and Alcohol Focus Scotland – just
when alcohol consumption, binge-drinking and under-age drinking were all
declining and the percentage of teetotallers was growing – particularly among
the young.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Does money corrupt research and policy-making?
Not nearly as much as ideological bias</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336030628955398657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6962251495503291589.post-49858634311756878322018-05-10T09:28:00.002-07:002018-05-10T09:28:40.716-07:00THE HAMMERS ARE OUT<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
The 1<sup>st</sup> May 2018 was an historic day, we’re told. This was the date that minimum unit pricing (MUP) of alcohol came into force in Scotland. The SNP government spent the day congratulating itself for ensuring that Scotland was the first country in the world to introduce MUP, despite having spent years telling us that Canada had already introduced it, and its success there was part of the “evidence base” used to justify its introduction in Scotland. The other part of the “evidence” was the speculative numerology provided by the now-infamous Sheffield University alcohol pricing model.<o:p></o:p></div>
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That numerology produced some very specific predictions about what MUP at 50p per unit would achieve in Scotland. In the first year alone, it is supposed to achieve the following results:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]-->60 fewer alcohol-related deaths<o:p></o:p></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]-->1300 fewer alcohol-related hospital admissions<o:p></o:p></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]-->3500 fewer alcohol-related crimes<o:p></o:p></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]-->A reduction of 3.5% in alcohol consumption per head<o:p></o:p></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]-->A reduction of 7% per head for “harmful drinkers”<o:p></o:p></div>
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So, 354 days to go and counting…<o:p></o:p></div>
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How will the achievement of these outcomes be measured? NHS Scotland is charged with overseeing this evaluation, but the anti-alcohol zealots from Sheffield and Stirling Universities will conduct much of the research. The academic reputation of the Sheffield University group depends on the real-world outcomes of MUP in Scotland vindicating the years of research and lobbying effort they’ve put in to this. The alcohol research departments at these universities have been lobbying for MUP since 2009, so I expect this to be little more than an exercise in the kids marking their own homework.<o:p></o:p></div>
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And hard on the heels of MUP in Scotland comes the announcement that the UK government will produce a new alcohol strategy, and they have commissioned Public Health England (PHE) to evaluate minimum pricing. PHE is little more than a four billion pound a year lobbying group which, since its inception in 2013, has been campaigning for MUP. If Big Alcohol produced research casting doubt on MUP it would immediately be called-out as a conflict of interest. But Big Temperance? They just get away with it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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What is heart-warming to see are the beginnings of the Scottish consumers’ revolt over MUP. Twitter is awash with images of Scottish consumers visiting supermarkets in Carlisle and Berwick on Tweed to buy slabs of beer not subject to minimum pricing. And online sales despatched from England are booming too – Amazon is reportedly doing a roaring trade! These sales appear to be for personal consumption, but how long will it be before White Van Man realises there’s a tidy profit to be made from giving Scottish consumers what their own government denies them?<o:p></o:p></div>
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There are elements of the on-trade in Scotland who think that the health lobby must be thrown some red meat, and if MUP appeases them that’s a price worth paying. But bullies always come back for more. Already health campaigners are calling for a ban on off-licence sales after 8 p.m., separate aisles for alcohol sales in supermarkets, banning new pubs and bars from opening in “stress areas” and the introduction of a Social Responsibility Levy to fund alcohol services. This levy is a tax that would be paid by all sections of the trade, not just supermarkets. Please remember the end-game here, which is to de-normalise alcohol use, reduce sales and availability from all sections of the trade, and achieve prohibition by stealth. It is not about tipping people out of the living room and into the tap room; it is most emphatically not about “helping pubs”.<o:p></o:p></div>
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When you look at the escalation of demands from the health lobby in Scotland just in the past week since the introduction of MUP, it’s clear that whether it works or not is almost beside the point. Minimum pricing is the thin end of the wedge, and now the hammers are out.<o:p></o:p></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336030628955398657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6962251495503291589.post-61595214580492127272018-05-02T08:03:00.001-07:002018-05-02T08:03:34.398-07:00THE DEAD LICENSEES’ FUND<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I support the recent call from Tim Page, chief executive of CAMRA, for industry trade bodies to do more to combat the tide of anti-alcohol propaganda from so-called “public health”. This often takes the form of research undertaken or funded by anti-alcohol charities, but how are these charities themselves funded?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In England the two main neo-prohibitionist charities are Alcohol Research UK (ARUK) and Alcohol Concern (AC). These two announced a merger in December 2016, and the shiny, new organisation that will combine supposedly objective alcohol research from ARUK with the anti-alcohol campaigning of AC will launch later this year. So, why is this merger happening?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">AC lost funding from the UK government after it withdrew from the government’s voluntary alcohol responsibility deal in 2012. Since then they’ve survived on handouts from the Welsh Assembly government and the National Lottery fund, plus some money from big pharmaceutical companies that produce “treatments” for alcoholism, like Selincro. This wasn’t enough to sustain them, so a merger with ARUK, which has very similar charitable aims, provided a solution.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, how is ARUK funded? ARUK’s research is paid for by the money earned from an investment fund that is managed for them by an asset management company called Investec. The investment fund was established in 1981 through the Licensing (Alcohol Education and Research) Act, following the winding up of the ‘Licensing Compensation Scheme’. This Scheme was effectively a tax levied on licensed premises that was established under the 1904 Licensing Act to provide compensation for the owners of licensed premises that were closed through no fault of their own, but where it was deemed that the density of licensed premises in an area was too high. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Scheme was not popular. Temperance campaigners at the time called it “the Licensees’ Benevolent Fund” but the trade dubbed it “the Licensees’ Burial Fund.” It didn’t take long for the Scheme to fall into abeyance, but it was not until the 1981 Act that half of the residual funds were transferred to establish the Alcohol Education and Research Council. In 2011, the AERC was wound up and the investment fund was transferred to a new charity, Alcohol Research UK - ARUK. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On their website ARUK say they “will not accept funds, in cash or in kind, from the alcohol industry.” But: “Alcohol Research UK may accept donations from people who were formerly but are no longer employed in the industry and do not have a significant residual financial stake in it (e.g. through shareholdings).” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In practice this means ARUK won’t accept money from companies or people involved in the alcohol industry unless they’re dead! Living off a “Dead Licensees’ Fund” is leeching of the first order. Now they’re joining forces with the preachers of AC. This union of Leechy and Preachy is a marriage of financial convenience between the closet prohibitionists of ARUK and Poundland prohibitionists of AC and it may yet turn out to be an uneasy alliance. I think government should act to take back ARUK’s funding from the compensation scheme and give it to the Licensed Trade Charity, which helps people who have retired from the licensed trade and have personal or family problems.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And talking of preachiness provides an ideal segway to Alcohol Focus Scotland (AFS), Scotland’s alcohol charity. This organisation exemplifies the kind of batshit-mental extreme anti-alcohol zealotry that arises when campaigning and research are glued together by the swivel-eyed moral certainty of true believers. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Having championed minimum unit pricing in Scotland on the basis that it will be “good for pubs”, they are now calling for pubs to be closed, or not opened in the first place. AFS funded research, published this week, that made fatuous correlations between the density of licensed premises and crime rates. It found that in areas with the most pubs, clubs and off-licences crime rates were four times higher and alcohol hospitalisation rates and deaths twice as high as in areas with a low density of premises. It would probably turn out that there was a similar correlation between high crime rates and the density of street lighting, since the high density of anything except sheep is more likely in urban areas, but don’t let that stand in the way of a good headline! “Alcohol availability boosts crime rate” said the BBC news website.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Pause, sigh, breathe: we’ve been here before – this is a variant on the “availability drives consumption” argument that is constantly pushed by AFS, AC and ARUK. As the IEA’s director of lifestyle economics, Chris Snowdon, put it: “<span style="background: white;">Suppliers respond to demand. If the ‘public health’ lobby could get this simple fact into their skulls they would be halfway towards understanding how the world works, and three-quarters of the way towards understanding that commercial activity is not a conspiracy against the public.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background: white;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And who funds AFS? Yes, it’s the SNP government – to the tune of £500,000 a year of Scottish taxpayers’ money. These faux charities can’t get sufficient voluntary donations, so whether its live taxpayers or dead ones, we don’t really get a choice, do we? </span><span style="color: #020202;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336030628955398657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6962251495503291589.post-58663331296537040032018-04-20T07:24:00.000-07:002018-04-20T07:24:06.248-07:00PURITANISM IS A VIRUS – AND IT’S SPREADING!<div style="background: white; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With minimum unit pricing (MUP) set to be introduced in Scotland in May, the puritans of the health lobby have been emboldened to push this policy out to the rest of the UK. The Welsh Assembly has been debating this issue in recent months and commissioned the Sheffield Alcohol Research Group (SARG) to produce a Welsh version of their model that depicts the effects of MUP at different price levels on consumption, harms and how many lives can be “saved” if MUP is introduced.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The SARG research predict 66 lives will be saved a year in Wales if a 50p minimum price is introduced. This assumes that people will respond to the imposition of higher prices in ways that seem implausible to many. One of the persistent criticisms of the SARG model are the assumptions it makes about ‘price elasticities of demand’ – assumptions about how much people will reduce their consumption in response to an increase in price. There are approximately 1,500 alcohol-related deaths a year in Wales so it seems unlikely that it will be possible to measure whether this claim of 66 lives saved annually is fulfilled or not.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The media has feigned shock at the claim that 75% of alcohol consumed in Wales is drunk by 22% of the population, who are defined as hazardous or harmful drinkers. And within that number are 3% who are the very heavy drinkers - accounting for 27% of alcohol consumed. Why this should surprise anyone is beyond me – “Shock, horror – most alcohol is drunk by people who drink the most” is a “dog bites postman moment” and a statement of the blindingly obvious.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Let’s put these figures into perspective. About 20% of Welsh adults don’t drink at all. 58% drink at or below the government’s low-risk guideline of 14 units a week (less than a pint of beer a day). So, that’s 78% at no risk or virtually no risk. Only 22% consume more than 14 units a week including 3% “harmful drinkers” – defined as drinking 50+ units a week for men, and 35+ units a week for women. Only in the oddball world of the activist academics of SARG is a person drinking a couple of pints a day classified as a “hazardous drinker”.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The focus of harm-prevention really ought to be on the 3% of harmful drinkers, yet the Welsh Government has accepted that minimum pricing won’t help these drinkers, who most likely have an alcohol dependency. MUP is a policy which the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said will raise the price of 70% of off-trade sales. So MUP isn’t targeted at people at greatest risk, but at those who, by the standards recognised by most people, are light to moderate drinkers.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">MUP isn’t about targeting those most at risk, it’s about denormalising the use of alcohol and pricing it out of reach. The minimum price will only ever go up. Those reading this who are thinking: “Good, about time we bashed Tesco” need to realise three things: Firstly, that denormalising the use of alcohol will affect all sections of the trade. Secondly, making alcohol more expensive in the off-trade may reduce consumption a bit, but it will also reduce consumers’ discretionary spend overall and that is likely to mean less money to spend on going out. The notion that MUP will tip people out of the living room and into the tap room is a health lobby lie. Thirdly, now that the genie of minimum pricing is out of the bottle, how long will it be before government regulators – national or local - apply a higher MUP to the on-trade?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Talking of which: the government in the Isle of Man is now considering introducing MUP. C</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">hief Constable Gary Roberts appeared at the opening of the triennial licensing courts, which sees licensees applying to renew their alcohol permits. Addressing the court, Mr Roberts said a new substance misuse strategy from the government looks likely to introduce a minimum price per unit for alcohol.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br /><o:p></o:p></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">He told the licensing bench such a move would “save lives and help the on-licence trade regain its vibrancy.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">The same lies are being perpetrated by health lobby puritans wherever this “silver bullet” policy is proposed. It is always presented as a pub-friendly proposition, when in reality it is the thin end of the wedge. If even a rinky-dink assembly like the Tynwald can introduce this for the off-trade, what odds would you take for it being introduced by the UK Parliament for England – and then spreading to the on-trade, because a city council like Newcastle decides it’s needed to curtail binge drinking in the night-time economy.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">For those who think I’m scare-mongering, I have three words: the smoking ban.</span></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336030628955398657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6962251495503291589.post-19269530856348351462018-04-20T07:22:00.000-07:002018-04-20T07:22:06.624-07:00BIG TEMPERANCE VS BIG ALCOHOL<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The recent announcement of a partnership between Dutch brewing giant Heineken and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has drawn a scream of protest from the alcophobe fanatics of Big Temperance. Heineken has agreed to aid the Global Fund by providing its experts on supply chain logistics, to better deliver medicines and health care products to people living in African countries to help the fight against these three major killer diseases. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This has prompted an Open Letter to the Global Fund from IOGT International and over 70 other alcohol health charities and NGOs, calling for the Fund to immediately end its partnership with Big Alcohol. IOGT International is the International Order of Good Templars by another name – an anti-alcohol group with its roots in the nineteenth century temperance movement. IOGT is also a dominant presence in the UK’s Alcohol Health Alliance and had members on the Public Health England committee that fiddled the revised low-risk alcohol drinking guidelines. These are the people leading the fight against Big Alcohol in Africa. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The crux of their argument is that alcohol (not just alcohol abuse) is a major cause of ill-health and that drinking it makes people disinhibited and therefore more likely to have unprotected sex, leading to more HIV/AIDS infections, so a big conflict of interest, they claim, between the Global Fund and Heineken. But this argument is a mere smokescreen for people who think it more important to stop the spread of alcohol use than the spread of AIDS, TB and malaria. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Global Fund gets 95 per cent of its revenue from governments – taxpayers - around the world. Only 5 per cent comes from private donations, including companies. They administer a $4 billion annual budget. Any sensible person would welcome the help of a wealthy global brewer. To be sure, this is not entirely an act of selfless philanthropy, Heineken want to sell their products in Africa and to present themselves to African governments’ as good corporate citizens. But there is a powerful reason, from a health perspective, why Heineken and other global drinks’ producers should be encouraged to make their products more widely available in African countries, and at a price local people can afford. That reason can be summed up in one word: moonshine.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Anyone who knows anything about alcohol abuse in Africa will tell you that the problem is not the legal market for well-known brands, which many Africans can’t afford anyway, but the illegal market for moonshine. Every year, countless numbers of Africans risk their health and their lives drinking illegal alcohol. The illicit brewing market in Africa is worth an estimated $3.5bn a year. With names like “Kill me quick”, “The dog that bites” and “Goodbye Mum”, African moonshine has a frightening reputation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Over the years, thousands of Africans have been killed, blinded or rendered sterile by drinking these lethal concoctions. In one of the worst recorded cases, 128 Kenyans died and a further 400 were harmed after drinking a particularly poisonous batch of illicit booze. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In Libya, where alcohol has been banned since early in Gaddafi’s rule, a bottle of Chivas Regal can cost more than $100, so Libyans drink a local concoction called “bokha”. There was recently a major health crisis related to poisoned bokha. Someone had added methanol to a batch and some 1,500 patients flooded into Tripoli’s hospitals within a few days.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The World Health Organisation says that about half of all the alcohol drunk in sub-Saharan Africa is produced illegally, with 85% of consumption in Kenya and 90% in Tanzania coming from the illicit market.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Barley, the essential ingredient in beer, is still not grown in many parts of Africa. High taxes and poor supply chains have also pushed up the price of legitimate goods. Toxic homebrew plugs the gap in the market. Africa's booming cottage industry is made up of clandestine breweries, where maize and sorghum is fermented, using water that itself is often filthy. The alcohol content is bolstered, using anything from embalming fluid to stolen jet fuel. The resulting grog may sell for as little as 20 US cents a glass. But for the poorest Africans, living on a couple of dollars a day, it is often the only way of blotting out their troubles.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is the folly of trying to ban legal means of accessing properly produced, quality-controlled beverage alcohol products. All that happens is that the demand is met by illicit supply of poisonous concoctions that can kill or blind people on the spot.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And yet IOGT and its virtue-signalling fellow-travellers are worried about Africans knocking-back a pint of Heineken’s lager!</span><o:p></o:p></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336030628955398657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6962251495503291589.post-69875763808812959502018-04-20T07:20:00.003-07:002018-04-20T07:20:35.689-07:00DRINKING BY NUMBERS<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As the ‘public health’ hysteria over alcohol and the clamour for minimum pricing in England continues, it’s useful to get an overview of the issues by looking at some straight statistics. I increasingly think that the Office for National Statistics (ONS) is an oasis of calm objectivity in a sea of opinionated, emotionalised subjectivity emanating from alcophobic activists. So, I’ve been looking at stats published in 2017 by NHS England which are based mainly on ONS data and some from Public Health England.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What do these numbers tell us about alcohol use and abuse and its consequences? First, the much-vexed question of alcohol-related hospital admissions: there were 339 thousand such admissions in England, representing just 2.1% of all hospital admissions - which has changed little in the last 10 years. This statistic is a measure of the number of hospital admissions where an alcohol-related disease, injury or condition was the primary reason for the admission, or where it was a secondary diagnosis related to an external cause, e.g., an alcohol-fuelled fight. This is known as the “narrow measure” of alcohol-related hospital admissions; it is a record of “admission episodes” – not people admitted, which is a much lower figure.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The so-called “broad measure” records 1.1 million admissions, but includes primary diagnoses plus admissions where an alcohol-related condition was a secondary diagnosis, i.e., not the reason for the admission. The important distinction between the two measures is that the narrow measure is a count of actual admissions to hospital for an alcohol-related cause, whereas the broad measure includes that count, but provides further information about alcohol-related conditions that a patient may have had in addition to the reason for their admission. This provides an indication of the health burden that alcohol misuse has across the whole population. Newspaper headlines often confuse the two to create alarmist headlines.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, 2.1% of hospital admissions caused by alcohol misuse isn’t a crisis, it isn’t growing like topsy, and it won’t bankrupt the NHS.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 2015 there were 6,813 deaths that were related to the consumption of alcohol, 65% of which were for alcoholic liver disease (4,428). Alcoholic liver disease sufferers drink at the very top end of the harmful drinkers’ spectrum. Harmful drinkers are classified as men drinking over 50 units a week, or women drinking over 35 units a week. Most of those dying from alcoholic liver disease drink around 200 units of alcohol a week or more – the equivalent of a bottle of scotch a day. Every one of these deaths is an avoidable tragedy, but just over 25 million adults in England drink alcohol at least once a week, so harmful drinking and deaths from it arise from the product being abused by a very small minority.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The number of adults in England who report drinking alcohol in the previous week has fallen from 64% in 2006 to 57% in 2016 – a fall of nearly 11%. The UK ranks 19<sup>th</sup> out of 31 countries in terms of annual alcohol consumption per head at just over 9 litres. </span><o:p></o:p></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336030628955398657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6962251495503291589.post-90678061722739828592018-04-20T07:19:00.000-07:002018-04-20T07:19:36.778-07:00THE ARCHITECTURE OF CHOICE<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Old ideas are sometimes relaunched by employing a new language to disguise or mystify what they’re about. And so it is with puritanism. There’s no doubt that we’re seeing a resurgence of puritanism in a variety of disguised forms. The essence of puritanism is that pleasure is bad for you. Since many of our pleasures involve consuming things, this translates into consumption is bad for you. The locus of puritanical concern has, of course, been alcohol, and latterly processed foods with a high content of salt and sugar. And sugary drinks have also featured recently, with the introduction of a sugar tax looming many producers are reformulating their products – Irn Bru and Ribena seem to be getting a lot of attention on Twitter!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, what’s behind this? What the New Puritans of Public Health want is to alter “the architecture of choice”, to nudge or coerce consumers into making ‘healthy choices’. The argument goes like this: people make free choices about whether to buy products in a market place, but are these choices really free? If products like alcohol, fizzy drinks and highly processed foods are everywhere available, then people are exercising their freedom to choose in an ‘intoxogenic’ and ‘obesogenic’ environment. In other words, free choice is exercised within a deterministic framework which the person making the choice cannot influence. And anyway, the argument goes, cunning marketing and advertising makes people buy things they don’t need by persuading them to want them!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I sometimes think that public health puritans live in a parallel universe. What they term the intoxogenic and obesogenic environment is merely the retail distribution system by another name. And since all of us are born into a society that existed before we did, and will exist after we’re gone, all choice is exercised within a deterministic framework. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, how do public health puritans plan to alter the architecture of choice? Taking alcohol as an example, their measures include raising alcohol duty by more than inflation every year and introducing minimum unit pricing (MUP) – these are measures which reduce affordability, or “economic availability” as they often call it. In addition, they propose changes to the way in which the retail distribution system handles the product. This has been tried elsewhere, for example, in Australia you can’t buy alcohol from supermarkets, only from separate liquor stores. The same applies in Canada where most liquor stores are owned and operated by the government. Effectively the off-trade is a nationalised industry. In Scotland, where MUP will be introduced on the 1<sup>st</sup> May, there are demands being made to have separate alcohol aisles and checkouts for alcohol in supermarkets. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">All these attempts at reconstructing the architecture of choice either make people poorer by raising prices, or they make shopping a more inconvenient and miserable experience. The likely effect will be to drive such sales online. So, changing the architecture of choice really means taking choice away or making it more expensive and more inconvenient. All in the name of healthy choices.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At some point I think there will be a consumer rebellion against this. The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that MUP at 50p in Scotland will have a dramatic impact on prices. Some cider products will rise in price by as much as 90% and 70% of the alcohol units bought in the off-trade will see prices rise. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Will these price rises tip people out of the living room and into the tap room? The Scottish Licensed Trade Association certainly think so. They’ve been campaigning for government price intervention in the off-trade since the abolition of resale price maintenance in 1964. But it is simplistic to think that the price of alcohol is the only, or even the main thing that determines peoples’ decisions about whether to stay in or go out, and that the supermarket is the enemy of the on-trade. This is just crude Tesco-bashing and it ignores the fact that society has changed beyond recognition from the mid-1960s. Satellite TV, Netflix, computer games, the huge development of fast-food home delivery – all these things have transformed the home into a place to escape to, not from. It’s easy to get caught up in fighting yesterday’s battles whilst turning a blind eye to the complexities of the modern world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am aware of the problem of pre-loading, but I think this is more a product of later closing than cheap supermarket booze. And there is a new enemy on the horizon – one that threatens both sides of the trade: a puritanical public health lobby that is happy to drive a wedge between the on-trade and the off-trade. We can speculate whether MUP will or will not shift drinking back towards the pub and the bar, but we will know for certain whether this is the case in Scotland within the next 12 months.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336030628955398657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6962251495503291589.post-9489388931779078892018-04-20T07:16:00.002-07:002018-04-20T07:16:32.501-07:00STRAIGHT STATISTICS MATTER<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In my last article I launched the CPL Nanny State Annual Awards for Fake News and Phoney Statistics. Several people contacted me and asked was this tongue-in-cheek, and did misleading statistics really matter, given the environment in which we live where information on social media sites like Twitter have a shelf-life attuned to the concentration span of a mouse. The answer is that whilst our awards night will be light-hearted and enjoyable, the impact of fake news and phoney statistics can be very serious indeed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As an example, take the now-infamous quote from Professor Dame Sally Davies, England’s Chief Medical Officer of Health: “There is no safe level of alcohol consumption.” And to illustrate the point she asks women to consider: <span style="background: white; color: #545454; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">“</span><span style="background: white; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">Do I want that <em><span style="font-style: normal;">glass of wine</span></em> or do I want to raise my own <em><span style="font-style: normal;">risk</span></em> of breast <em><span style="font-style: normal;">cancer</span></em>?”</span> Notwithstanding the fact that she meant to say: “Do I want that glass of wine or do I want to avoid raising my risk of breast cancer?” it is the alarmist and misleading nature of the warning that is so damaging. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am very sensitive to the emotional nature of anything connected with cancer, because it touches the lives of almost every family in the country, including my own. But let me explain why Professor Davies’ quotes are so misleading and why they raise women drinkers’ concerns unjustifiably.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Firstly, the implication is that one glass of wine a day will raise a female drinkers risk of breast cancer, and to most people that means raising their risk of dying from it because in the popular imagination cancer = death. The good news is that If you are a middle-aged woman you have just a 0.3% chance of contracting and then dying from breast cancer over the next decade. And this chance is the same whether you drink alcohol or not. <span style="letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">There is slightly more chance that as a light-to-moderate drinker your eventual and inevitable death will be from breast cancer, but only because light-to-moderate drinkers are much less likely to die prematurely from heart disease, and you must die from something, eventually.</span><span style="font-size: 16pt; letter-spacing: -0.05pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">An analysis of various causes of death of middle-aged and elderly Americans (Thun et al 1997) found that, of the 251,420 women in the study, 0.3% of the non-drinkers and very light drinkers died from breast cancer, over the 10 years of the study’s duration. And the same percentage applied to the moderate to heavy drinkers. These were women drinking 1 to 4 standard drinks a day. In America a ‘standard drink’ is about 14 grams of undiluted alcohol, so approximately 1.4 units. So, a woman drinking 1 to 4 standard drinks is drinking between 1.4 to 5.6 units of alcohol a day and has the same chance of contracting and dying from breast cancer as that of a non-drinker.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In a smaller mortality study (35,000 women, Fuchs et al 1995) the chance of death from breast cancer during the 12-year follow-up period was 0.4%, and this was identical for non-to-light drinkers and moderate-to-heavy drinkers. <span style="letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">And again, crucially, there was a much higher chance of death from cardiovascular disease among the non-drinkers. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Reading all this confused me somewhat. I was sure that there were numerous population studies that showed drinkers had a one percentile higher chance of getting breast cancer (from just under 10% lifetime risk to just over 10%), and there are, but these are studies of “incidence” (how many women are <i>diagnosed</i>) not studies of <i>mortality</i> (how many women <i>die</i>). So, women who drink alcohol have a slightly higher chance of being diagnosed with breast cancer, but if they are, they have slightly less chance of dying from it. That didn’t seem to make sense. So, I did a bit more research. It turns out that around 90% of women who are diagnosed with breast cancer don’t die from it, partly because medical science cures many of them, but also because many of the diagnoses are incorrect. Research also shows that women who drink alcohol are more likely to screen more for breast cancer than non-drinkers (Mu and Mukamal 2016), so you would expect them to be disproportionately represented in the diagnostic figures arising from screening activity. So, the link between drinking and the incidence of breast cancer is a statistical correlation, not a causal link – it is, in fact a self-fulfilling prophecy.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, here’s what Professor Dame Sally Davies should have said: “When asking ‘do I want that glass of wine, or should I not drink at all’, women should balance a slightly elevated risk of getting breast cancer, which may be explained by the fact that drinkers are more likely to screen for it, with the actual elevated risk of cardiovascular disease associated with not drinking at all.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: -.05pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is why straight statistics matter.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336030628955398657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6962251495503291589.post-126482606680645392018-01-26T05:15:00.000-08:002018-01-26T05:15:15.737-08:00Nanny State Annual Awards for Fake News and Phoney Statistics <h4 style="line-height: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Nanny State Annual Awards for Fake News and Phoney Statistics <o:p></o:p></span></h4>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRqMIgLTRSJrUuIZ5zpifokSbtvJY_vzJedUOevAhStDI5x_FE6VprnCTctvpS-Vv80i3vP_IsTIYV8BzM9ymM9SjdZUGl18Uk2zsL5-4pAZTI1J4udvyfrlPC7HSNsT4UBI8qw3c5m8M/s1600/FakeNewsLogo_Colour.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="198" data-original-width="829" height="76" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRqMIgLTRSJrUuIZ5zpifokSbtvJY_vzJedUOevAhStDI5x_FE6VprnCTctvpS-Vv80i3vP_IsTIYV8BzM9ymM9SjdZUGl18Uk2zsL5-4pAZTI1J4udvyfrlPC7HSNsT4UBI8qw3c5m8M/s320/FakeNewsLogo_Colour.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">I am pleased to announce the launch of the CPL Nanny State Annual Awards for Fake News and Phoney Statistics. The awards will go to the person or organisation that has perpetrated the most gratuitous porky or porkies, fake news or phoney statistics, in relation to public health. I invite readers to submit examples of fake news and phoney statistics – whether it be in relation to alcohol, sugar, obesity, carcinogenic burnt bacon – or any other claim made by nanny-statists that is designed to foment moral panic, frustrate modern life or otherwise deter us from doing anything pleasurable, on the dubious basis that it is better to die of boredom than anything else.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">There will be three categories of award in relation to alcohol, sugar and obesity.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">A few examples of fake news and phoney statistics from the past:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">“There is no safe level of alcohol consumption.” And: “Do I want the glass of wine or do I want to raise my own risk of breast cancer?” Both quotes are from professor Dame Sally Davies, chief medical officer of health – even though she did get the wording a bit mixed up in the second quote, we know what she meant!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Another example would be chief nanny Dr Sarah Wollaston MP, chairman of the health and home affairs committee, who conducted a PR stunt in parliament on Monday (22 January), to campaign for minimum unit pricing (MUP), a policy she’s been championing for years. At the committee hearing she quoted the fake statistic: “The cost of alcohol is at least £21bn a year.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">At this hearing a couple of the usual suspects gave “evidence” – professor Sir Ian Gilmore from the Alcohol Health Alliance and professor Nick Sheron – both ardent alcophobes who support MUP. The usual lie that MUP won’t affect moderate drinkers was repeated – Gilmore stated its introduction at 50 pence a unit would cost moderate drinkers “just £1.72 a year”. To be fair, professor Sheron was nearer the mark when he estimated the cost at £60 to £150 a year!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Another recent example of fake news is the comment made by Richard Horton, the Marxist editor of the Lancet: “Liver disease is on a trajectory to become the biggest cause of death in England and Wales.” This fake fact is designed to scare us off drinking alcohol. In fact, the Office for National Statistics states liver disease is tenth on the list, causing half as many deaths as prostate cancer and an eighth as many deaths as heart disease.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">But the best recent example of fake news in relation to alcohol came from – yes you guessed it – The Sun newspaper, which came up with this magnificent headline: “Boffins claim one pint a day can give you dementia.” As Chris Snowdon, director of lifestyle economics at the Institute of Economic Affairs, put it: “That public health lie went around the world before the truth even got its shoes on.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The prize for all three categories will go to the perpetrator of the porky we select and will consist of a trophy and a bottle of cheap booze with the label removed and replaced with a health warning, and wrapped in plain packaging, of course.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">All suggestions should be sent to me at <a href="mailto:paul.chase@cpltg.com">paul.chase@cpltg.com</a> by the end of February 2018 and should contain the quote and attribute it to the person or organisation being quoted. All quotes should be from 2017 and when we’ve picked the winners all contributors and their chosen porky perpetrators will all meet in a disreputable bar for an award ceremony and a night of responsible drinking.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336030628955398657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6962251495503291589.post-33640445288452786782017-12-15T06:26:00.005-08:002017-12-15T06:26:35.394-08:00Alcohol policy and the ‘public health’ succubus <h4 style="line-height: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is no doubt the neo-temperance health lobby’s victory over minimum unit pricing will embolden them to campaign even harder for other measures designed to take the retail sale of alcohol down the tobacco route. During the coming year, we can expect the following:</span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">– Implementation of minimum unit pricing in Scotland with the price set initially at 50p per unit (they’re consulting on the level as I write)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">– Legislation to introduce minimum pricing in Wales (the process has begun already)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">– Further agitation to introduce it in England (probably not this side of Brexit)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Further action to raise duty on higher-strength products (the UK government has already committed to introduce higher duty levels on high-strength cider regardless of its method of production but I suspect it won’t stop with cider)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Long-term neo-temperance can be expected to campaign for: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">– Tighter controls on alcohol advertising because they mistakenly believe advertising drives market volume not brand or category volume<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">– Calls to end alcohol producers’ sponsorship of football and other sports<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">– Health warnings on labels and beer fonts such as “alcohol is linked to seven types of cancer”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">– Graphic photographs depicting alcohol-related health problems<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">– Plain packaging in the name of “save the children”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">– Agitation for a ‘health’ licensing objective. The UK government has ruled this out in its response to the House of Lords review of the Licensing Act 2003 but health authorities will continue trying to smuggle in health objections to licensing applications disguised as public safety or crime and disorder objections<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Public funding and sock puppets</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The collusion between the organisations of neo-temperance and Public Health England (PHE) will continue. The most blatant example of this collusion was the way in which PHE and the Institute of Alcohol Studies, whose members and fellow travellers packed the so-called independent Guidelines Development Group, pressured the Sheffield Alcohol Research Group to massage the figures to produce the new “low-risk” drinking guidelines of 14 units of alcohol per week.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The relentless scaremongering of Alcohol Concern and Alcohol Research UK (ARUK) will continue. These organisations have now merged because Alcohol Concern has found feasting in the public funding meadow has become more difficult. ARUK, of course, relies on legacy funding from investments made when it inherited money from winding up of the Licensees Compensation Scheme, which was a licensed trade levy established in 1904 to compensate licensees whose premises were closed because the authorities decreed there were too many licensed premises in their area.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Alcohol Focus Scotland and Balance Northeast continue to be a pair of taxpayer-funded sock-puppet charities and they will also continue with their relentless anti-alcohol campaigning. However, the daddy of them all is PHE. This organisation is not a charity but an executive agency of the Department of Health that enjoys organisational autonomy from government. In other words, a quango. PHE says it exists to “protect and improve the nation’s health and wellbeing and reduce health inequalities”. I don’t know about you but I always thought most of that was done by the NHS – but no! In April 2013, PHE was set up and lists as it its major achievements the campaigns it has run over alcohol misuse, supporting the introduction of a sugar tax and fighting the obesity “epidemic”. Its goals and world view on beverage alcohol are identical to those of the neo-temperance lobby, as witnessed by its presiding over the “low-risk” guidelines fiasco.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What does PHE cost the taxpayer and how many people does it employ? Its funding from the taxpayer is more than £4bn a year and it employs 5,500 people! About £3.3bn of this money is distributed to local councils, which are meant to shoulder the main burden of promoting public health and wellbeing in their areas, a job they should never have been given in the first place. Stick to emptying the bins guys! It seems to me most of PHE’s expenditure is a monumental waste of money. In terms of the money it retains for its own activities, its main role is to spend government money lobbying for policy change from government. If it was closed, would we miss it? We never needed it before 2013 but now it is apparently indispensable. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Closing PHE and taking back control of that £4bn a year would enable us to put nearly £77m a week into the NHS. I think someone should get that painted on the side of a bus!</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336030628955398657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6962251495503291589.post-11087763557102588092017-11-17T05:17:00.000-08:002017-11-17T05:17:55.130-08:00MUP – implications of the Supreme Court decision <h4 style="line-height: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">MUP – implications of the Supreme Court decision <o:p></o:p></span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">So now we finally know! The Supreme Court confirmed, in its judgement on Wednesday, the Scottish government’s legislation to introduce a minimum unit price for alcohol is lawful, and does not offend against European Union competition law. I don’t intend to look in detail at the legal arguments that underpin this decision, but rather to examine the broader question and its implications – where we go from here.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Interestingly, the Supreme Court states minimum unit pricing (MUP) has two objectives – to reduce the consumption of alcohol in a targeted way, that is, the consumption of hazardous drinkers living in poverty in deprived communities; and to reduce consumption at the level of the whole population. Except insofar as reducing consumption of any numerically significant demographic will contribute to a fall in average, per capita consumption, it is hard to see how MUP can be both a targeted measure and, at the same time, a whole population measure. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The paternalistic nature of both MUP as a policy and the nature of the legal judgement itself, is evidenced by the fact it is explicitly stated this is a measure directed at people on low incomes notwithstanding the fact that hazardous drinking is predominantly a problem located in the moneyed, middle classes. They apparently can look after themselves, because a minimum price of 50 pence per unit isn’t going to affect the products they buy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The underlying moral judgement is if people on low incomes who buy cheap alcohol, but don’t drink hazardously, now have to pay more, then that is an acceptable trade-off in terms of reducing the hazardous drinking of the poor. Paternalism is alive and well!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">So what happens now? The Scottish government has minimum pricing legislation already in place and now needs to do two things – enact secondary legislation (a Scottish Statutory Instrument – SSI) and then amend licensing law to make it a mandatory condition on all premises licences in Scotland that alcohol may not be sold at less than the minimum price. There will presumably be a “big bang” date when this will come into effect, probably in the first quarter of 2018.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">I am opposed to MUP because I think it is a bad policy, not because I think it is unlawful – but if the Supreme Court had decided it was unlawful that would have been helpful, but it didn’t, so we’re stuck with it now, at least in Scotland and soon in Wales too. In England the government, obsessed as it is with Brexit, is still taking a “wait and see if it works” approach. The Scottish legislation contains a requirement for ministers to evaluate the effect of MUP in five years’ time and it automatically lapses after six years (the “sunset clause”), unless Scottish ministers specifically order its continuation. Two points come to mind. Firstly, if the evaluation is carried out by the Sheffield Alcohol Research Group – the same people who massaged the statistics to produce the new “lower-risk” drinking guidelines – then I have no faith in this being a proper, objective evaluation. And as for the possibility that Scottish ministers would in any circumstances allow this measure to lapse, don’t hold your breath.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Some intriguing issues arise with regard to enforcing MUP. I imagine some enterprising individuals will establish cheap booze supermarkets in English border towns so a lively cross-border trade can arise. This trade will enable consumers to engage in a domestic form of “booze cruise” and it will inevitably fuel “white van man’s” supply of the illicit cheap booze market north of the border. It’s an ill wind that blows no-one any good! And think of the monumental task of enforcing minimum price legislation in every street corner convenience store in Scotland. The big supermarkets will put a system in place, but will small store owners even know how to calculate how many units of alcohol there are in a can of beer or a bottle of vodka?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">I have four big fears. Firstly, MUP will spread to the rest of the UK. Secondly, now we have government price-fixers in the sector we will never get rid of them. Thirdly, MUP will become a modified form of alcohol duty escalator – there will be agitation for the minimum price to rise by inflation plus 1%. Fourthly, this will spread from the off-trade to the on-trade. Those in the Scottish Licensed Trade Association who support MUP, because they see it as harmless Tesco-bashing, will have a lot of explaining to do if local licensing authorities, freed from the constraints of competition law, start fixing a £1 per unit price for pubs and bars in their area. It is only a matter of time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336030628955398657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6962251495503291589.post-47659723968958462252017-10-20T03:25:00.001-07:002017-10-20T03:25:58.673-07:00Alcohol and cancer – again! <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Barely a day goes by without some new “threat” to our health being announced by epidemiologists or other health campaigners. For these people, the meaning of life appears to be the elimination of anything enjoyable in order to achieve maximum longevity. Key to this is the elimination of “risk factors” from our diet and lifestyles. The key technique used to frighten us all into abstinence is to concentrate on cancer risks. Here an old trick is used – take a very small baseline risk and measure the increase to that risk that arises if you engage in “heavy” drinking. The effect of this is to give prominence and publicity to very large percentage increases in very small baseline risks.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Alcohol Health Alliance (AHA) has taken to Twitter to publicise its message that alcohol = cancer = death. The Twitter headline reads: “Alcohol is linked with at least seven types of cancer” and then lists them on a handy infographic of the body as mouth and upper throat; larynx; oesophagus; breast; liver; and bowel cancers.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Of course, a “link” is not the same thing as a “cause” but they would like you to think it is. This scare-mongering is entirely consistent with a revision of the low-risk drinking guidelines on the basis there is “no safe level of consumption in respect of the epidemiological risk of developing cancers”, and “the cancer risks of drinking is a game-changer”. It is, of course, accepted that excessive consumption of alcohol is causally related to a small number of cancers – but the risk is dose-related.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Taking oral cancers as an example, what is the overall risk caused by drinking alcohol? According to Cancer Research UK, about 7,300 oral cancers are diagnosed in the UK a year. Of those, tobacco smoking was identified as the cause in 65% of cases. Alcohol consumption accounted for 30% of these –2,190 cases. In total, 30 million adults in the UK drink at least once a week. Of those, 2,190 of them develop an alcohol-related oral cancer – that is 0.007% of regular drinkers. And remember, these figures include very heavy drinkers as well as moderate and light drinkers – so don’t be panicked into abstention just yet.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Every such death is a tragedy but the actuarial risk is tiny. The proposition anything that raises the epidemiological risk of a cancer “isn’t safe” is therefore problematic. In everyday life people make trade-offs. They don’t ask “is this product or behaviour safe?” they ask “is it safe enough?” We do this all the time and not just in relation to food and drink. We don’t ask whether driving a motor vehicle is safe, we ask is it safe enough? In other words, do the benefits of driving justify me in taking the risks? When we are told tobacco-smoking results in the premature death of half of all smokers, that may deter people from starting or persuade existing smokers to quit. However, if you were told 0.021% of regular drinkers die from an oral cancer, would that put you off? It is this kind of epidemiological paranoia that leads health cranks to call for abstinence, and lowering of the lower-risk drinking guidelines is but a staging post on that journey.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /><br />However, what is missing from the AHA’s misleading messaging is any reference to the beneficial effects of moderate alcohol consumption. The life-prolonging effects of moderate alcohol consumption are on a firm scientific footing. Despite the AHA and its cronies’ science denial, Sir Richard Doll (the epidemiologist who discovered the link between tobacco smoking and cancer) has revealed there have been dozens of studies in the past 30 years that have vindicated the J-curve that illustrates the benefits of moderate drinking in terms of greater longevity for moderate drinkers compared with “never-drinkers”. If science indicates that alcohol conveys significant life advantages, why does the AHA act as though alcohol is evil?</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336030628955398657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6962251495503291589.post-3771991790689339892017-09-25T05:22:00.002-07:002017-09-25T05:22:45.774-07:00LISTENING TO THE DRINKERS’ VOICE<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
Back in 2013 I discussed with industry trade bodies and leading drinks’ producers the possibility of starting a lobby group that would campaign against the constant litany of scare stories coming from the health lobby. Partly as a result of that discussion a group of drinks’ producers started the Alcohol Information Partnership (AIP) about 18 months’ ago. This organisation, headed-up by its Director General Dave Roberts, does a great job in answering the bogus statistics and one-sided research peddled by so-called ‘public health’. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The problem with AIP is that it is too easy for critics to dismiss it as the voice of Big Alcohol – which is manifestly true and AIP makes no bones about that fact. What has been missing from the alcohol-society debate is the authentic voice of the ordinary drinker. Until now. <o:p></o:p></div>
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A couple of weeks ago, a new organisation was launched called Drinkers’ Voice. This is a Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) initiative that aims to get the voice of the moderate drinking majority heard in this debate. CAMRA is in an ideal position to launch this initiative precisely because they are the biggest consumer group in Europe, are often highly critical of big brewers and cannot possibly be portrayed as drinks’ industry shills. The initiative has begun well and DV provided the media with a poll which highlighted that 70% of UK drinkers don’t take any notice of the CMOs revised drinking guidelines, because they’re not based on science and have no credibility with ordinary drinkers.<o:p></o:p></div>
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There have been articles on DV published in the Sun on Sunday, the Sunday Times and the Telegraph as well as a TV appearance by Amy O’Callaghan, DV’s spokesperson, on Sunday Live. DV will be a grassroots organisation with spokespeople in communities across the country who are passionate about their freedom of choice and their right to drink in a sociable and moderate way. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="background: white;">Creating a grassroots organisation of this kind is a bold move and CAMRA, and their chief executive Tim Page, are to be congratulated on taking the lead. To influence the wider alcohol policy debate we must influence the public opinion on which politicians’ ride. This is a fledgling organisation and it needs money. The decision has been made not to accept donations from the drinks’ industry, for obvious reasons. It is being crowd-funded by donation and if you would like to support Drinkers’ Voice as an individual you can donate via the following link: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://drinkersvoice.org.uk/campaigns/donate/"><span style="font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 107%;">https://drinkersvoice.org.uk/campaigns/donate/</span></a><b><span style="font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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This initiative is needed, and long overdue. Please get behind it. Further information about DV is available on their website <a href="http://www.drinkersvoice.org.uk/">www.drinkersvoice.org.uk</a> <o:p></o:p></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336030628955398657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6962251495503291589.post-37264638720373919992017-09-25T05:20:00.000-07:002017-09-25T05:20:29.131-07:00Drinkers' Voice <div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Back in 2013 I wrote a discussion paper titled “The Industry Perception – a Discussion”. In that paper, which I delivered to a group of trade body representatives and industry insiders, I made the following points – public and political perception of our industry is driven by individual experience of licensed premises, medical temperance campaigning, media distortion of issues and problems, and our failure to engage with the public in the alcohol and society debate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">And I indicated we were in this position because of a failure on two levels. Firstly, a failure to examine, analyse and deconstruct the medical temperance narrative, or to construct a counter-analysis regarding the causes of alcohol-related harms; and secondly a failure to recognise the serious nature of the resurgent temperance threat and lead a co-ordinated response to it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The difficulty that others at the meeting pointed out to me is we, as an industry, are famously fragmented, so agreeing common positions on some of these issues was going to be difficult. There is no doubt since 2013 our trade bodies have recognised the serious threat posed by medical temperance and the constant litany of scare stories, dire warnings and phoney statistics that have accompanied their never-ending campaign to de-normalise the use of beverage alcohol. And there is now a coherent counter-narrative to medical temperance, which I have tried to play my own modest part in creating.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The difficulty in the past has been finding a suitable vehicle for expressing this narrative, particularly given the fact any drinks’ industry initiative would automatically be dissed as an attempt by “Big Alcohol” to promote its own agenda. What has been missing from the debate has been the voice of the ordinary drinker – until now.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Two weeks ago saw the launch of a new lobby group called Drinkers’ Voice. This is a Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) initiative designed to give the ordinary, moderate drinker a voice in the alcohol and society debate. CAMRA is in an ideal position to launch this initiative precisely because it is the biggest consumer group in Europe, is often highly critical of big brewers and cannot possibly be portrayed as drinks’ industry shills. The initiative has begun well and Drinkers’ Voice provided the media with a poll that highlighted 70% of UK drinkers don’t take any notice of the chief medical officer’s revised drinking guidelines, because they’re not based on science and have no credibility with ordinary drinkers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">There have been articles on Drinkers’ Voice published in the Sun on Sunday, the Sunday Times and the Telegraph as well as a television appearance by Amy O’Callaghan, Drinkers’ Voice’s spokesperson, on Sunday Live. Drinkers’ Voice will be a grassroots organisation with spokespeople in communities across the country that are passionate about their freedom of choice and their right to drink in a sociable and moderate way. As Drinkers’ Voice put it itself:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">“We believe it is important that people understand the benefits of drinking alcohol as part of a healthy lifestyle. We want people to talk about how enjoying a drink with friends enhances their wellbeing, and how scientific evidence shows that moderate drinking can help heart and cognitive health.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">And then: “You’ll know that for too long this debate has been dominated by the anti-alcohol lobby, which has sought to de-normalise drinking and restrict people’s access to alcohol. As a result, we have seen the UK’s alcohol guidelines reduced last year without credible evidence to justify it. As the poll shows, this has widened the gap between government’s instruction and people who want to just enjoy a drink.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Creating a grassroots organisation of this kind is a bold move and CAMRA, and its chief executive Tim Page, are to be congratulated on taking the lead. To influence the wider alcohol policy debate we must influence the public opinion on which politicians’ ride. This is a fledgling organisation and it needs money. The decision has been made not to accept donations from the drinks’ industry, for obvious reasons. It is being crowdfunded by donation and if you would like to support Drinkers’ Voice as an individual you can donate</span><a href="http://propelinfo.us4.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=5d9a50271909eb47fb925995f&id=3473577625&e=4f562d394b"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif;"> here</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">This initiative is needed, and long overdue. Please get behind it. Further information about Drinkers’ Voice is available on its </span><a href="http://propelinfo.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=5d9a50271909eb47fb925995f&id=396951bcd5&e=4f562d394b"><span style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif;">website.</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336030628955398657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6962251495503291589.post-9338208116435392132017-08-11T05:53:00.001-07:002017-08-11T05:53:49.175-07:00ALCOHOL STATISTICS – A QUESTION OF CONTEXT AND REPORTING
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The issue of alcohol-related harm and how it gets reported
to the public is one that concerns me. We’re all very busy, so we tend to
absorb headlines and not question the numbers or the conclusions based on them.
That’s understandable when it comes to members of the public, but rather less
so when applied to journalists writing stories. While the pursuit of a
sensational headline may be what drives the tabloids, we ought to expect more
from companies such as the Guardian and the Telegraph than the kind of lazy
journalism we’ve seen recently.</div>
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What seems to drive so-called “public health” is the
determination to relay simple messages repeatedly so they become “established
fact” – things that “everybody knows”. The way in which they make claims about
alcohol as a cause of cancer, and how that gets reported in the press is a case
in point. The evidence of a link between drinking beverage alcohol and most
cancers is extremely weak. Even where such a link has been established the
numbers are usually vanishingly small. Here are some examples:</div>
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In England and Wales in 2014 there were 6,754 deaths from
cancer of the oesophagus, of which just 26 – 0.4% – were recorded as having
been caused by drinking alcohol. The biggest link between alcohol and cancer is
in relation to liver cancer, but it is still extremely rare. There were 4,442
liver cancer deaths in 2014 of which 439 were alcohol-related – 9.9%. (Source:
Office for National Statistics data).</div>
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The public often confuses alcohol-related liver cancer with
alcoholic liver disease. The two are not the same. Alcoholic liver disease
accounts for about 65% of deaths caused by excessive alcohol consumption.
Contrary to what sensationalist headlines in the Guardian and the Telegraph
said recently, in which it was claimed such deaths would “soar” in the next
five years, the reality over the past five years is deaths from diseases caused
by alcohol are stable. In 2011, there were 8,748 such deaths and in 2015,
8,758. The average is 8,597 per year. (Source: Office for National Statistics
data).</div>
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If 65% of these deaths arise are from alcoholic liver
disease, then that is about 5,588 deaths per year. Each of these deaths is an
avoidable tragedy. But most of them were in men (65%); most were people aged 55
to 65 years old, and the average level of consumption was 200 units of alcohol
per week – the equivalent of a bottle of scotch a day. So, the picture that
emerges is one of a discrete group of alcoholics who are drinking vast quantities
of alcohol over many years and dying prematurely. It is only when you
understand these sorts of specifics you realise that whole population measures
such as minimum pricing will not impact on the delinquent drinking behaviour of
this minority of consumers.</div>
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Talking of delinquent behaviour – the latest drink-driving
statistics have just been released. According to the Department for Transport
(DfT) there were 1,170 serious injuries or fatalities in 2015 as a result of
drink-driving. This is up from 1,070 in 2014 – an increase of 9.3%. But if you
separate deaths from drink-driving from the combined figure they fell by 17%
from 240 to 200. Confusingly the DfT defined the increase of 9.9% in the
combined figure as statistically significant, but the decrease of 17% in
fatalities as statistically insignificant, merely representing the
“continuation of a period of stability”. </div>
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Predictably, campaigners are calling for a reduction in the
drink-drive limit to bring England and Wales in line with Scotland, where the
measure has had a devastating effect on pub businesses. The problem is not so
much a dearth of accurate information, but the way in which lobby and research
groups frame the dissemination of information and how it gets picked up and
used in the media.</div>
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By Paul Chase </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336030628955398657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6962251495503291589.post-39904429137219666972017-07-28T03:50:00.000-07:002017-07-28T03:50:08.008-07:00Compromise better than cliff edge in Brexit negotiations by Paul Chase<div style="line-height: 18.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Will Brexit actually happen? New Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable doesn’t think so. Speaking on the Andrew Marr show, he said: “I’m beginning to think Brexit might not actually happen.” Tony Blair weighed in, expressing the view it would be stopped – and should be stopped. Are these opinions the wishful thinking of a bunch of “remoaners” or are they on to something?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Certainly in the cabinet there is a clear split between those around chancellor Philip Hammond who want a “soft Brexit” – putting the economy and jobs first – and those who want a “hard Brexit” and believe reducing immigration trumps all other issues. The issue of immigration control is one of huge significance for our sector because of our reliance on immigrant labour – and not just in London. Consider the following statistics:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">– In the managed house sector, including pubs, bars, nightclubs and casual dining, 37% of the workforce are non-British nationals<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">– Across hospitality and tourism as a whole, 24% of the workforce is made up of non-British nationals, with 55% of those coming from outside the EU and where immigration controls are already in force, while 45% are from other EU countries where there are no restrictions on the right to work or live in the UK<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">– In London, non-British nationals make up 64% of the hospitality and tourism workforce, of which 46% come from other EU countries<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I think there is a growing realisation among those who voted “leave” without knowing the destination that a hard Brexit would come at huge economic cost, and without a £350m-a-week bonus for the NHS.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What might a soft Brexit look like or might we decide, having glimpsed the destination, to stay in the EU after all? I think we will leave but it will be a gradual and nuanced affair. The talk of transitional arrangements, based on the difficulty of agreeing everything by March 2019, gives a steer regarding the direction of travel.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I suspect a transitional arrangement may look something like the “Norwegian model” – an “off-the-shelf” Brexit package based on the relationship Norway has with the EU. Its main elements are we would have tariff-free access to the single market for our goods and services but not be part of EU political institutions or subject to “ever closer union” or pressured into joining the single currency. We would not be part of the common agricultural policy or the common fisheries policy so would regain control of our territorial waters. We would still pay into the EU’s budget but probably about half the current rate. We would not be part of the Customs Union and therefore free to strike our own trade deals with the rest of the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What’s not to like? Crucially, the price to be paid for access to the single market would be more than just financial. We would have to abide by EU trade laws and be subject to European Court of Justice (ECJ) judgements; and we would have to agree to free movement of people – subject only to a temporary break clause in the event immigration was causing an acute social or economic problem. Being rule-takers but not rule-makers would mean we’d have no influence over how free trade within the single market might develop.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The points about the ECJ’s jurisdiction and free movement of people are the real sticking points. I suspect this will be sold to us as a transitional arrangement, with the final shape of the “leave deal” to be determined further down the line.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, deadlines have a habit of slipping and one suspects a transitional arrangement scheduled to last two years could well be extended to three or four years, at which point the politicians would hope we’d all moved on and the transitional arrangement would quietly become permanent. This is shaping up to be that most British of arrangements – a compromise that satisfies neither side. However, it might just save our sector and others from an economic and recruitment cliff edge. Either way, I think a hard Brexit is dead unless the hardliners are bent on a strategy of keeping their hostage in Downing Street while trying to provoke a breakdown in negotiations and a walk-out of British officials from the talks. I, for one, favour a compromise rather than a cliff edge.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02336030628955398657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6962251495503291589.post-29371030099235402772017-07-14T05:58:00.000-07:002017-07-14T05:58:43.743-07:00Illiberal anniversaries
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We’ve just had the tenth anniversary of the ban on smoking
in all enclosed public places, and much has been written about its effect on
pubs. Also, in a couple of weeks’ time, the UK’s Supreme Court will consider
the legality of the proposed introduction of minimum unit pricing (MUP) in
Scotland. Here’s my take on both:</div>
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Firstly, as a lifelong non-smoker I personally much prefer
smoke-free pubs. And if I were going to die in a ditch defending the right of
individuals to make free choices, the right to set fire to a paper tube
containing tobacco and inhale the smoke wouldn’t be my starting point. But it
is nevertheless the case an awful lot of hypocrisy is attached to the reasons
given for the smoking ban. This was never really about protecting people
against second-hand smoke, and the statistical case for the ill-health effects
of second-hand smoke was always pretty dubious in any event. This was about
stopping people from smoking by criminalising their behaviour if they did so in
certain circumstances. The alleged ill-health effects of second-hand smoke on
the rest of us were never more than a fig leaf.</div>
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Has the smoking ban been bad for pubs? Most commentators
agree it has. If they are correct then I am forced to conclude the ban was
introduced on the basis of a false prospectus when the real reason for it was
to force smokers to quit, and the impact that has had on the pub trade is
regarded by anti-smokers as acceptable collateral damage. The fact the template
for pursuing the smoking ban has now been replicated by those who are similarly
opposed to alcohol leads me to suspect the two groups of people have much in
common.</div>
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There was no decline in smoking after the smoking ban in
2007 and I would suggest the drop in smoking prevalence since 2012 is mostly
attributable to vaping. The “public health” community is very divided on the
issue of vaping because it finds it hard to accept a private sector solution to
a public health problem – one that involves enabling people to enjoy nicotine
in a safer way is preferable to simply banning something.</div>
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I think there are many reasons why pubs have closed over the
past ten years – supermarket pricing, the shift towards home drinking and the
growth of home entertainment, a fall in the number of young people who drink
alcohol – to name but a few. Some have called for a review of the smoking ban
and the reintroduction of ventilated smoking rooms in pubs. I think it would be
a mistake to refight yesterday’s battles, particularly when there are plenty of
battles we need to fight today. Reversing the smoking ban is a lost cause and
we need to reserve our powder and shot for more immediate problems.</div>
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One such problem is the possibility of MUP being declared
“legal” by the UK’s Supreme Court. The Court is due to consider this matter on
24-25 July, with a decision published probably in the autumn. I’ve written more
on the subject of MUP than any other single issue, at least in part because its
introduction has become such a totemic issue for the neo-temperance crackpots
of so-called “public health”. I’m opposed to MUP because I believe it’s a bad
policy that will penalise responsible drinkers, and will not impact on problem
drinkers who are overwhelmingly located in in the moneyed middle classes, not
because I think it is unlawful. If it turns out it does offend against EU
competition law then as far as I’m concerned that would be very helpful.</div>
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A minimum price for a unit of alcohol was introduced in
legislation passed by the Scottish Parliament in 2012. Since then it has been
the subject of legal challenge by the Scotch Whisky Association and others who
argue the measure acts as the equivalent of a quantitative restriction on EU
trade, for example, by penalising efficient wine producers who are able to reflect
their efficiencies in the price charged for their product. It would appear the
European Court of Justice (ECJ), and indeed the Scottish courts accept this is
the case, but argue for a “public health” exemption. The ECJ has stated it is
ultimately for the domestic courts of any member state to decide whether MUP is
a proportionate measure, the health benefits of which couldn’t be achieved by
some other, less trade-restrictive measure, such as duty rises.</div>
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The Scottish inner Court of Sessions concluded it was a
proportionate measure and it met the test set by the ECJ, and it is that
decision that is now being appealed and the UK’s Supreme Court will rule on. My
gut instinct is the appeal will fail and this will open the door for MUP in
Scotland, where it is already law. Wales and Northern Ireland also want to
introduce this measure and if they do it would be very difficult for England
not to follow suit. I fear this is another anniversary we may be marking in the
future, and not one that should be a cause for celebration by the trade.</div>
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