In August 2005 Tobacco Control
Authorities in Norway published their
first report on the status of the smoking
ban in Norway. Let me
just take you through the highlights of this report to give you an idea what
these tobacco control monkeys are up to.
Firstly, the
report was prepared by the following entities:
Norwegian Institute for Drug and Alcohol Research
Research Centre for Health Promotion at the University of Bergen
The report was
commisioned by the Norwegian Directorate for Health and Social Affairs. From
this we gather that all of the entities involved in doing the survey and writing
the report have clear interests vested in the success of tobacco control. The
report of course reflects this.
Economic
analysis
None of the
entities involved in writing the report seem to have any knowledge about
economics, and certainly not anything as specialized as the hospitality sector.
Any assesment in the report on the economic aspects of the ban will likely be
scant and heavily skewed in favor of upholding prohibition.
Survey
science
The Norwegian
report pretends to be balanced and scientific by presenting a variety of
survey results in the first 14 pages. Let's peek at some of this survey
‘science’. Here from page 7:
"The high level of public acceptance of the ban may be a result
of the prelegislation information drive run on TV and radio and cinemas
which highlighted passive smoking and the basic rights of staff to a clean
working environment. The public trusted the information drive and
said they learned a great deal about the smoking ban."
Okay, these two
sentences are quite enough to analyze some basic tobacco control tricks:
-
prelegislation information
drive: This is an acronym for propaganda.
-
basic rights of staff to a
clean working environment: This is the propagation of an artificial
right. Absolutely nobody has a basic right to a clean working
environment. What exactly is a clean working environment anyway? Do coal
miners have a basic right to a clean working environment? Obviously not.
-
The public trusted the
information drive: Everybody believed the propaganda. There was no
opposition to the propagated view that ETS is harmful. So obviously
everybody believed it.
On page 9 more
superstition is conjured:
"Employees who
believed the smoking ban was put in place
to improve workplace environment increased from 39 % to 47 %."
That is exactly
what the ETS fraud is all about. People need to believe that ETS is
harmful, or they would never agree to a ban. The passive smoke fraud is a
tobacco control trick!
On page 10 the
tobacco control spinners play the 'public support' card:
Figure 3.2 shows that the major support for the ban comes from
people who are not affected by it - the nonsmokers. They have in any case been
subjected to massive amounts of propaganda that even smokers have trouble
dissecting.
Okay, enough on
this particular manipulation. The witch hunt is on in Norway, that is
quite clear. Let’s take a look at the silliest claim that these tobacco
controllers peddle in their 'report'.
Economic
aspects
The reports
admits that sales of draught beer went down by 6 %. Here's the story they
invented, to cover up the fact that is was due to the ban (page 15, Section 5.1,
second paragraph):
"The sale from breweries to supermarkets was more susceptible to
fluctuation compared to bars and restaurants sale, mainly due to the price war
on beer between the supermarkets."
Lie!
These guys are
trying to fob on us a story that people did not go to bars because the beer
prices were lower in the supermarkets. Sure thing - everybody knows that when a
can of Bud drops 5 cents, all the bars are deserted.
Bull Sh*t!
The amazing
thing is that the press, the politicians and even the public will buy this load
of trash. It is really amazing what lies these tobacco control nuts get away
with fabricating.
Tobacco
sales
This is the big
jackpot. Let me demonstrate to you how tobacco control uses the ressources of an
entire society to fabricate lies about how wonderful smoking bans are. We look
at tobacco sales in the wake of the ban.
Exactly
coinciding with the ban, taxes on tobacco products were increased dramatically,
especially for rolling tobacco. From figure 6.6 on page 23, we have the
following claims:
Legal sales of home roll tobacco dropped 33.6 %
Total legal sales of tobacco dropped 14.1 %
Most of the
total sales drop comes from the drop in sales of home rolling tobacco. I do not
believe that all those home rollers are now chewing nicotine chewing gum. What
about smuggled tobacco products? Conveniently no mention is made of this.
According to other parts of the survey, smoking prevalence did not drop as a
whole, so obviously a lot of illicit tobacco is being smoked.
However, this
is of little importance to tobacco control zealots. What has been accomplished
is the fabrication of ‘evidence’ that smoking bans and increased taxation
leads to lower consumption of tobacco.
Tobacco control
fanatics will now be able to cite official ‘evidence‘ from Norway that bans
reduce tobacco consumption by 14 %. It is of course a lie, because smuggling
will have made up the difference.
Net result
Some of these
facts will eventually dawn upon blindfolded politicians, even in Norway, but the
story will never reach the press. Who really cares how many lives are lost or
won in this holy war? Smoking rates have no correlation to lung cancer rates.
The war is holy and sacred, a great source of revenue to tobacco control
‘activists’. That is what matters.
Norway has
played its role for now. The show must steam on.
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