Public Harm England

In this country, the United Kingdom, we have new department created by our Government - the one that promised to prune out lobby groups and sock puppets!  The Department of Health (which we had before) is now advised by Public Health England. It is an  executive agency.

In January 2014 it launched a new offensive on smoking called "Smokefree Health Harms" on television and on billboards across England. These consisted of what I consider criminal nocebos designed to shock and offend. When I complained about the terrible images that British people were forced to take into their subconscious minds by having to look at massive billboards of pools of blood and black tar and TV adverts of black blood circulating in peoples' brains I got a reply from "The Department of Health"

Quote "We received a number of complaints about these ads which included irresponsibility and offence, harm to children and those with haemophobia and concerns about appropriate scheduling and misleadingness.

While we acknowledged that the imagery in the poster ad that showed a pool of blood and tar would be difficult for some passers-by, the anti-smoking context was clear. Although we sympathised with any children who had found the ad disturbing and acknowledged the concern of those with blood-related phobias, the ad was deliberately hard-hitting to raise awareness about the serious health consequences of smoking. In this context, the image was unlikely to be seen as irresponsible by appearing in an untargeted medium.

We concluded that the ads were unlikely to cause excessive distress, or serious or widespread offence." End quote

"Smokefree" is an ideology, a lobby, a group of anti smokers now promoted by The Department of Health's new executive body Public Health England. Politically, this is terrifying because any lobby group might be able to push their agendas - anti meat, anti fat, anti alcohol, anti salt, anti whatever with equally dubious scientific evidence to support them.

The adverts Public Health England produced, paid for by the Government, are visually and scientifically incorrect. "Tar" is not black - smoker's lungs are not black. The "tar" in cigarettes has no colour. It is a chemical - not black tar as we imagine it to be. This is a kind of lie promoted by Tobacco Control. And the mental abuse on viewers of such contaminated images are unimportant to Public Health. "We concluded that the ads were unlikely to cause excessive distress, or serious or widespread offence."

This is not Public health, but Public Harm.

Soon they will be concluding that eating fat makes people fat. Or eating salt give us high blood pressure, or that vaping normalises smoking!