Wednesday 29 August 2012

Food and alcohol next, says The Lancet

Time to pull those quotes out again...

Simon Chapman, August 2012:

Look, if the slope is slippery, it's the most unslippery slippery dip I've ever seen in my life. We started banning tobacco advertising in 1976 and there has been no other commodity where there has been anything like a serious move to do what we've done with tobacco.


Deborah Arnott, February 2012

...the “domino theory” i.e. that once a measure has been applied to tobacco it will be applied to other products is patently false. The same argument was used against the ban on tobacco advertising, but 9 years after the tobacco ban in the UK, alcohol advertising is still permitted with no sign of it being prohibited.


So imagine my surprise, dear reader, when I found an editorial in this week's Lancet which celebrated the plain packs campaign in Australia and said...

Like many other milestone tobacco-control legislations such as pictorial warnings on tobacco packets, first adopted by Canada in 2001, and workplace smoking bans, first introduced in Ireland in 2004, Australia's lead in plain packaging will inevitably be followed by many other countries. Indeed, the UK, Norway, New Zealand, Canada, India, and South Africa are already considering taking such measures. Furthermore, the valuable lessons learnt in the fight against tobacco can be taken on board in countering the rampant marketing of alcohol and fast food.

Yessir, it's the most unslippery slippery dip you'll ever see in your life.

2 comments:

Senzar said...

The trouble is, knowing it and stopping it are completely different.

I suspect that it doesn't matter how many times the prohibitionists are shown up for their lying, conniving stance, they'll carry on regardless.

Apart from a few in the blogosphere no-one else is taking any notice. Especially those whose businesses are going to come under sustained attack. They have an opportunity to join together and present a united front to all of this but they won't. Short term profit over long term survival is the order of the day.

The fast food industry, the alcohol industry, the dairy industry are all in line to be regulated into oblivion. So what are they going to do?

Oh yeah, roll over and die.

Ivan D said...

The Lancet is not a scholarly journal but a magazine for medics.

It's political content appears to be increasing proportionally to the declining standards of its editorial and declining public respect for the medical profession.

Chapman could have been simply mistaken about the slippery slope but to believe that you would have to be the kind of person who believes that smoking bans could reduce heart attacks by 25%.

Perhaps the slippery one should team up with the Daily Mail's health editor? They could make sweet propaganda together.