Public Health Ignorance
Steve Cross
Article Published: 2009/11/22
Forces International columnist Pat Nurse attended a meeting last week to complain about a graphically violent UK National Health Service video that showed a smoker being beaten to death.
There were many things about the video and the NHS response that were disturbing in a so called civilised society and Pat's report of the meeting covers them well, but there is one particular myth they offered to excuse their use of violent discrimination that deserves more attention.
The NHS Primary Care Trust (PCT) stated that - "70% of smokers say they want to quit and the PCT has a duty to help them."
As Pat quite rightly pointed out - what about the other 30% that say they don't want to quit? Should those millions of people be subjected to violent discrimination simply because they don't feel they need "help" from the National Health Service? Apart from that we can look further by breaking down the PCT statement; firstly, "70% of smokers say they want to quit" and then, "the PCT has a duty to help them".
The "70% want to quit" claim is immediately suspect, not only is it a nice round figure but it also appears in all sorts of places:
The World Health Organisation for example quotes that "70 percent of teen smokers worldwide want to stop smoking".
The American Cancer Society says that of the "44 million smokers in the United States, 70 percent say they want to quit".
The National Health Service say that in England "Seven out of ten smokers say they want to give up".
The World Bank say studies show that in Canada "70 per cent of smokers say they want to quit".
And according to the Medical Journal of Australia, in that country "70% of smokers are planning to quit".
Really?
All of these different types of people, in different countries, on different continents, with different outlooks on life yet in each case exactly 70% of them want to quit smoking? This is a fine example of how the global anti smoking movement select data to fit a predetermined result.
The real problem with the NHS 70% claim however is that whatever the real figure is of people who say they want to quit it is completely meaningless on two counts:
1.) Between the 1950's and the 1970's male smoking rates in the UK fell by almost half; people who "wanted to quit" did so in their millions with absolutely no State "help" and without the need of ineffective Nicotine Replacement Therapy. So it is clear that if people really want to quit they will and it is also clear that there is a world of difference between saying it and actually wanting to do it.
2.) After more than three decades of anti smoking propaganda and health scare stories on every TV channel and in every newspaper or magazine; after smokers have been labelled as child abusers, beaten up, refused medical care; after they have been refused employment because of their smoking status, after they have been banned from smoking anywhere in cinemas, buses, trains, planes, offices, warehouses, restaurants, work vehicles, pubs and clubs; after being banned from all of these "publicly accessible" places and forced outside in all weathers they have been fined for littering, abused for smoking in doorways and reported for making a noise................. Well after all of that who would be surprised if a lot of smokers gave the required response when asked if they wanted to quit? That was the whole idea of the anti smoking "denormalisation" program after all.
Finally, if we accept that the PCT has a "duty to help" people who say they want to stop an habitual activity, how exactly does an incitement to violence "help" those people? If someone walked into the NHS and said they wanted to quit drinking would the PCT produce a video that showed a person drinking in a bar being violently beaten to death?
I'm not sure what saddens me most to be a part of the human race - the fact that in the 21st Century a Government institution would produce such a video or the fact that the excuses they offered for having done so are clearly just repetition of propaganda without the slightest inclination of any kind of thought process.
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