BIG TEMPERANCE VS BIG ALCOHOL

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

And yet IOGT and its virtue-signalling fellow-travellers are worried about Africans knocking-back a pint of Heineken’s lager!

STRAIGHT STATISTICS MATTER

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.

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: “Do I want that glass of wine or do I want to raise my own risk of breast cancer?” 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.

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.

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. 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.

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.

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. And again, crucially, there was a much higher chance of death from cardiovascular disease among the non-drinkers.

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 diagnosed) not studies of mortality (how many women die). 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.

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.”

This is why straight statistics matter.

MUP – implications of the Supreme Court decision

MUP – implications of the Supreme Court decision 

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.

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. 

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.

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!

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.

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.

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?

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.

LISTENING TO THE DRINKERS’ VOICE

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’.

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.

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.

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.

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:

https://drinkersvoice.org.uk/campaigns/donate/

This initiative is needed, and long overdue. Please get behind it. Further information about DV is available on their website www.drinkersvoice.org.uk

Drinkers' Voice

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

“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.”

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.”

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 here.

This initiative is needed, and long overdue. Please get behind it. Further information about Drinkers’ Voice is available on its website.

Compromise better than cliff edge in Brexit negotiations by Paul Chase

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?

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:

– In the managed house sector, including pubs, bars, nightclubs and casual dining, 37% of the workforce are non-British nationals

– 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

– In London, non-British nationals make up 64% of the hospitality and tourism workforce, of which 46% come from other EU countries

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The shape of things to come by Paul Chase

As I write we await the outcome of the House of Lords investigation into the workings of the Licensing Act 2003. One of the things it was considering was whether “protecting and promoting public health” should be added as a fifth licensing objective. I don’t know what their Lordships will conclude on this issue, although rumour has it they will not recommend this. But that hasn’t stopped Public Health England (PHE) from publishing “Public Health and Licensing Guidance”, subtitled “A simple guide for responding to applications as a responsible authority”. Directors of public health have been included as responsible authorities under the Licensing Act since 2013, so many in the “public health” community may consider this guidance long overdue.

So, we have a guidance document consisting of some 27 sides of A4 that explains to local public health practitioners how to object to a licence application based on one or more of the four existing licensing objectives, notwithstanding that “public health” isn’t one of them! As the document explains on page seven: “Although the licensing objectives do not include a health objective, there is a health and well-being angle to each of them. It is also possible for a director of public health to have an independent and supporting role as a responsible authority. The above provide some examples that do not cover the full range of opportunities for public health involvement, but outline some composite examples of actions that have been taken by responsible authorities that directly draw on the connection of health to the existing objectives.”

The reference in the second sentence of the paragraph quoted to “the above” refers to examples regarding how a director of public health might smuggle in a health objection as an objection based on, say, public nuisance: “…a representation requesting noise-related conditions or objecting to an extension of hours for an application using evidence on the health impacts that sleep deficit can have on the local residents.” Or evidence from: “...last drinks survey data, A&E and ambulance data indicating a high number of alcohol poisoning cases coming from a particular premises, or from within its near vicinity.”

You can see right here the difficulty in relating general evidence to a particular application for a premises that hasn’t yet opened or had its hours extended. You can also see the implicit assumption of PHE is local directors of public health should be looking for reasons to object. In fact, the guidance document proposes a traffic light system based on “red” and “green” applications. A “red” application – one that would need to be looked at with a view to making a representation – would include any application for off-licences, any application for hours after midnight or before 8am, anything within a cumulative impact policy, nightclubs, premises reviews by other responsible authorities and high volume or “vertical drinking” establishments.

Whereas a “green” application – one that would be of low concern to public health – might include applications for restaurants before midnight, food venues before midnight, theatre bars before midnight, changes to the designated premises supervisor and Temporary Event Notices as the director of public health does not have the remit to respond to these.

Clearly these benighted nannies don’t want the citizenry up and drinking after midnight – and even then only in posh eateries or theatre bars – but preferably not at all! When your starting point is it’s the availability of alcohol that makes people drink it, and that population levels of consumption drive alcohol harm, then it should come as no surprise the starting point for directors of public health in relation to any application for a new licence is “how can we stop it”? The purpose of the traffic light system is merely to sift out applications where an objection would stand little chance of success.

I hope the House of Lords and the government will not introduce a health licensing objective – much less a “health and well-being” objective – and if you read the PHE guidance document you will see how often that word is insinuated into the text. The system we have works well as it is, and scarce resources need to be directed at those who really are drinking at unhealthy and damaging levels, not at making mischief through gratuitous objections to individual licence applications based on an objection to beverage alcohol as such, rather than any real local concerns.

VIRTUE SIGNALLING – PART 2

In my last article I wrote about “virtue signalling” – the tendency of some people to adopt modes of thought or action as a means of signalling to others how virtuous they are – regardless of whether their actions have any operative significance. The tendency to say “me too” in respect of utterly vacuous policies like sugar taxes, minimum alcohol pricing, plain packaging of cigarettes and health warnings on bottles of booze, is a way of signalling which side of the moral divide you’re on in respect of a range of apparently disparate issues which are in fact connected, in that they represent a kind of new puritanism.

Almost without exception virtue signalling is about gesture politics. It is an easy way of appearing to do something that doesn’t require too much effort. It almost always involves imposing bans, taxes or regulations. And more often than not it signifies a moral disapproval that is rooted in a kind of crude anti-capitalism. Not all of this meddling is restricted to what we eat, drink or smoke. But a lot of it is.

Which brings me to “vaping”. I’m not a smoker and never have been. I spent 23 years running licensed premises in which people were allowed to smoke tobacco and I just took it for granted. When the smoking ban was first mooted I felt then as I feel now: that it should be up to operators to decide whether to allow it or not; or whether to have a smoking room; in essence, give people a choice. But it was not to be. I don’t intend to rehearse the whole debate about smoking and second-hand smoke, but I do think that the advent of vaping has created a dilemma for the virtue signallers who walk amongst us, and the smoking debate has been resurrected in a different form.

The Welsh government is proposing to ban vaping in enclosed public spaces – to treat vapers like smokers. The ban is supposed to kick-in sometime in 2017. But health minister Mark Drakeford has recently told the Welsh Assembly’s health and social care committee that vaping would be allowed in wet-led pubs that don’t serve food, and where unaccompanied children are banned. But it appears uncertain exactly what this means. As Assembly member Darren Millar put it: “Many wet-led pubs serve pickled eggs, pork scratching and packets of crisps on the bar. Are these pubs included in the ban or not?”

What is it that gets into people and makes them feel it is necessary to get into the granular detail, the tick-and-tock of other peoples’ lives in this way? There is a division of opinion amongst the public health community with the British Medical Association, Public Health Wales and the Centre for Tobacco Control Research all favouring a ban (and not just in Wales). But Cancer Research UK, the British Heart Foundation Wales and Action on Smoking and Health are all opposed. The reason for this division is that while most people see vaping as a means by which people can enjoy the recreational use of nicotine without inhaling the carcinogens in tobacco, others say it is a gateway to smoking, not a way of kicking the habit. Overwhelmingly the research demonstrates that it is a way of giving up, not a way of starting.

But here’s where the health and moral aspects of this issue get intertwined. Nicotine is a drug; and it is seen as a drug of addiction. So should people be encouraged to use it at all? And insofar as vaping represents a private sector solution to a public health problem - that is something that makes some in the public health racket feel very nervous indeed. So better to signal that vaping is just a less-bad way of smoking by treating vapours as smokers, but maybe with a few concessions.

What makes this kind of restriction even more of a piece of virtue signalling nonsense is that in the vast majority of pubs and bars vapours go outside with smokers in any event. Some operators insist on that as a matter of policy, and I understand why. It is difficult to explain to your customers why one way of enjoying nicotine is permitted inside, but the other requires you to leave the building. It creates control dilemmas for operators and their staff. So, why not do with vaping what we should have done with smoking – leave it to the operator to decide what their policy is in relation to vaping, and leave it to customers to decide where they want to drink.

Paul Chase