But the "something nasty" that happened after 1999 is explained by Rose who left this comment on my post. I reproduce it here.
"What happened then? Something really, really nasty"
Six months before that letter was sent to the Publican.
WHO LAUNCHES PARTNERSHIP WITH THE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY TO HELP SMOKERS QUIT
30 January 1999
"The strength of the Partnership Project lies in the fact that it has brought together three major pharmaceutical companies, Glaxo Wellcome, Novartis Consumer Health and Pharmacia & Upjohn, all manufacturers of treatment products for tobacco dependence"
http://www.who.int/inf-pr-
Highlights from a letter to GlaxoSmithKline from Clive Bates
7th March 2001
"ASH has worked closely with both Glaxo and SmithKline Beecham staff and always welcomed the active collaboration. I hope to continue this with the merged company. We have worked with GSK under the auspices of the WHO-Europe Partnership Project on tobacco dependence and at various one-off opportunities. ASH was instrumental in securing greater government commitment to smoking cessation products in the NHS National Plan and we have helped with PR for both Zyban and Niquitin CQ."
"Every time a smoker switches to ‘lights’ as an alternative to quitting the market for smoking cessation is diminished.
Most of the measures that drive people to want to quit smoking and use GSK products are exactly those that are opposed by tobacco companies.
Such measures include:
Restrictions on smoking in public places and workplaces"
"ASH has a small shareholding in GSK and I will be attending with others to question you and the Chairman on this situation."
Yours sincerely
Clive Bates
http://www.ash.org.uk/files/
WHO Europe evidence based recommendations on the treatment of tobacco dependence - 2002
"This was a three year project, funded largely by three pharmaceutical companies that manufacture treatment products for tobacco dependence,.."
"They were commissioned by the World Health Organization and have drawn on the experience of a number of European countries, including the four original target countries of the partnership project: France, Germany, Poland, and the UK."
http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/
Though the aim was to get people to use pharmaceutical smoking cessation products, you can't stop people allegedly harming themselves if they don't want to, so governments had to be given a compelling reason to explain and implement the bans and only the alleged perils of secondhand smoke would do.
Article 8.1 of the FCTC, the UK ratified the treaty on the 16 Dec 2004
‘Parties recognize that scientific evidence has unequivocally established that exposure to tobacco smoke causes death, disease and disability’. Parties therefore agree to adopt and implement, in areas of national jurisdiction , effective legislative, executive, administrative and/or other measures providing for protection from exposure to tobacco smoke in indoor workplaces, public transport, indoor public places and, as appropriate, other public places. Such protection must be in place five years after the FCTC comes into force for a Party."
http://www.fctc.org/index.php?
Here's the official announcement, one line hidden in mass of text.
"On the same day as these statistics were published, the UK ratified the World Health Organisation Framework Convention on Tobacco Control."
http://www.gov-news.org/gov/
It's taken years for me to find out what happened to us.
Rose
The fairly recent Article 14 spells it out.
ReplyDelete17 March 2011
"In an effort to reduce tobacco use, the EU and its Member States have signed up to the WHO's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).
The FCTC's Article 14, through its recently adopted guidelines, demands action to promote cessation of tobacco use and provide adequate treatment for tobacco dependence. Countries who have signed up to the FCTC therefore have a legal obligation to implement the recommendations of Article 14."
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/219321.php
When out of the blue, the market, as it usually does, provided a solution to the problem of smoking bans and secondhand smoke in the form of e-cigarettes it was a huge threat not only to drug sales but the whole process of denormalisation.
This study explains how we were deliberately turned into social outcasts to force us to give up smoking so that we could then rejoin polite society.
Markers of the denormalisation of smoking and the tobacco industry
"..internationally, the term is also used to encompass efforts challenging notions that smoking ought to be regarded as routine or normal, particularly in public settings.
Hammond et al state that “social denormalisation” strategies seek “to change the broad social norms around using tobacco—to push tobacco use out of the charmed circle of normal, desirable practice to being an abnormal practice”
http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/17/1/25.full
Which contains such choice headings as -
Smokers as malodourous
Smokers as litterers
Smokers as selfish and thoughtless
Smokers as undereducated and a social underclass
All of which we have been subjected to in various campaigns since this study was finished in 2007.
He also notes that -
"As smoking becomes increasingly denormalised and communities vocal about their dislike of smoking, there is abundant evidence that smokers internalise this negativity."
Which I think is what we see manifested in some comments from vapers who try to distance themselves from the emotional damage most of us have suffered by repeating these same allegations to prove themselves somehow different.
The unexpected appearance and rising popularity of vaping seems to have really set the cat amongst the pigeons and various factions of TC don't seem to know which way to spin, having been condemned to take a certain view by their own previous statements.
RCP London : Press Releases : 2008
"New medicinal nicotine products:
Encourage development and marketing of new medicinal nicotine products that are more acceptable and satisfying alternatives to smoking than current products:
Encourage development of products that deliver doses of nicotine as quickly as cigarettes
Remove unnecessary restrictions and regulations that currently inhibit development of new, more effective cigarette substitutes
Make these products widely available to smokers at competitive prices"
http://pressrelease.rcplondon.ac.uk/Archive/2008/End-tobacco-smoking-by-2025
Which sounds exactly like an e-cigarette to me.
Rose
VERY well done Rose! Many thanks for the huge amount of research you're always doing!
ReplyDelete:)
Michael