This is a quite a long read but I think well worth a few minutes of your life while you sit back and enjoy your favourite juice.
[see: http://www.eccauk.org/index.php/new...to-questions-posed-by-rebecca-taylor-mep.html ]
[see: http://www.eccauk.org/index.php/new...to-questions-posed-by-rebecca-taylor-mep.html ]
An answer to questions posed by Rebecca Taylor MEP
(Please note that my blog posts represent my opinion alone.)
Mrs Taylor was kind enough to comment on a previous blog post concerning the ENVI workshop, and expressed the opinion that my contention that the pharmaceutical industry controls certain EU processes may be fallacious. In this post, I attempt to lay out the facts as I see them. They may come as a shock to some people.
Please consider the following points:
1. According to my calculations, in the UK, the pharmaceutical industry earns more than the tobacco industry does from smoking.
2. I would expect that, eventually, 50% to 60% of smokers will switch to an e-cigarette, if sales are not artificially restricted in any way. This means that, globally, over time, pharma's income will be reduced by hundreds of billions of dollars (mainly due to the destruction of the drug market for the treatment of sick smokers). Calculations show that pharma earns at least $100bn annually from smoking, worldwide; perhaps closer to $200bn. Whichever it may be, they will experience a reduction in income of at least $50bn annually (and possibly $100bn-plus). The cigarette industry can mitigate their similar losses by various measures; but the pharmaceutical industry cannot.
A suggestion that they will simply sit back and let us take $50bn - $100bn per year away from them, I find to be rather unrealistic (most especially when item #17, later, is taken into account).
Smoking generates vast incomes for so many recipients. E-Cigarettes cannot replicate that income, but simply turn off the tap.
3. Current medical opinion is that THR products (tobacco Harm Reduction products such as Snus and e-cigarettes) will save countless millions of lives if universally allowed to be sold freely. The science base for this opinion is unchallenged (since it is already proven in Sweden).
4. Sweden is the world leader in the reduction of smoking, the reduction of smoking mortality, and the reduction of smoking morbidity. They reduced smoking by ~50%, by allowing full and free access to Snus. It has saved tens of thousands of lives in Sweden, and is known as the Swedish Miracle; but Snus is banned throughout the rest of the EU. Obviously, this is not for health reasons.
5. Sweden is the only country in the world that has a realistic chance of reducing smoking deaths to an insignificant number. This is absolutely out of the question for any other country. (Smoking prevalence in Sweden falls at about 1% per annum, and in around three years' time, male smoking prevalence will be at the phenomenally low figure of 5%.)
Now why would a committee vote against allowing access to a THR product, the e-cigarette, that if anything will work even better than Snus? Nobody knows - but we have a very good idea why smoking is being protected: it makes vast fortunes for very large numbers of people.
6. The current EU ban on Snus protects pharmaceutical industry income from a similar impact from that in Sweden (a 50% drop in the drug market for treating sick smokers and the drug market for smoking cessation pharmacotherapies). If allowed universally, this would be an unmitigated disaster for pharma.
7. The EU ban on Snus is directly responsible for at least 10% of the 700,000 annual smoking deaths in the EU (since at least 10% of EU smokers would have switched to Snus by now, if allowed, and Snus cannot be reliably demonstrated to elevate risk for any disease and can only cause an unidentifiably small number of deaths). Any argument that less than 10% of EU smokers would have switched by now is not tenable; indeed, a higher percentage is likely, given full and correct information about the risks. (The Snus ban was implemented in 1992.)
8. Since tobacco companies can change from cigarette to Snus production ('smokeless tobacco') without too much trouble, the main industry to suffer is pharma. The EU ban on Snus cannot possibly be ascribed to public health because it is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths.
9. And now an EU committee is trying as hard as they can to ban e-cigarettes. Since ~50% of Swedish smokers switched to Snus, and since we know that e-cigarettes are more popular with smokers than Snus, it is reasonable to conclude that more than 50% of EU smokers will switch to e-cigarettes if allowed free access to a full range of products.
10. For the sake of argument, let's say that only 50% of smokers are likely to switch to ecigs. Since no one can show any potential for harm from e-cigarettes; since no disease vectors are apparent; since no elevation of risk for any disease can be statistically demonstrated for Snus consumption* (Prof PN Lee, Prof B Rodu, and many others); since there is no scientist in existence who thinks that e-cigarette use will entail more risk than Snus consumption: then if 50% of smokers switch, there will be at least a 49% reduction in disease and death from smoking.
* Limits on statistical methods in these circumstances mean that a 1% or smaller elevation of risk cannot be seen, so, for fairness, we must allow for a 1% effect.
11. Who on this earth would try to legislate against a ~50% reduction in smoking death and disease? Who would want to prevent something described as the single greatest advance in public health since the invention of antibiotics?
12. The answer is not the 'public health community', or 'anti-smoking campaigners'; or even the cigarette trade (since many of them are even now moving into ecigs as fast as they can).
13. A clue: the vast market for chemotherapy drugs, COPD drugs, vascular drugs, cardiac drugs, and other treatments for sick smokers is one of pharma's biggest income channels (it is at least ten times the size of the $4bn annual market for smoking cessation interventions). In addition, many other drug markets receive a massive boost from smoking, such as diabetes drugs, due to smoker sickness. Pharma stands to lose hundreds of billions of dollars due to e-cigarettes. Over some years, we can see that pharma will lose trillions of dollars if smoking is reduced by 50%.
14. As unpalatable as it may be, pharma controls EU processes in relevant areas, just as it has an iron grip on the W.H.O. (ask any scientist familiar with the issues), and elements within the UK's Dept of Health. No action will ever be taken that harms pharma income; pharma's interests will be aggressively protected at every stage, in every process, and for every purpose.
15. You can rightly suggest to me that I have no proof of any 'inducements' being offered or accepted; but when every single action of these agents is directly opposed to and immensely damaging to public health in any and every area where pharma's income will suffer - what other possible explanation can be valid? Some sort of group madness? Mass hypnosis?
16. We do of course know that one particular EU committee member solicited a bribe of several million Euros (otherwise he would not have been sacked by President Barroso within 30 minutes of the OLAF report being made available). I believe that an MEP would be in a position to question JM Barroso in person on this issue, if required. However, we cannot assume that just because one person is guilty, many others are.
By a strange twist of fate, it seems that the new TPD rewrite was the personal project of this very gentleman.
17. It has been suggested that a respectable business would not act in such a manner. This may be true. However, when discussing the pharmaceutical industry, it needs to be recognised that - from a legal and official standpoint - we are not talking about a respectable industry, we are discussing the world's largest-scale criminals. This comes as something of a shock to many people; but it is only necessary to google terms such as 'pfizer fraud', 'abbot labs fraud', 'gsk fraud', 'bbc pfizer fines', and so forth, to find that they have have had to pay fines of astronomical amounts for their large-scale criminal fraud and criminal corruption - indeed, the world's largest criminal fines, in total.
As an industry, they have had to pay fines of many billions of dollars for their criminal acts, including corruption; this is a matter of fact and not in dispute. The pharmaceutical industry cannot be described as 'respectable' by any possible interpretation of the meaning of the term; they are the world's largest-scale criminals, and corruption is one of their most commonly-used tactics - unless many courts are entirely wrong. I accept that a court may occasionally make the wrong decision, but when considering the most corrupt industry on the face of the planet (judging by the scale of the fines given) then perhaps it is not quite so likely.
The pharmaceutical industry are the world's largest-scale corruptors; they have paid the world's largest fines for it; an executive was reported to say that such fines are, "Simply the cost of doing business". The courts tell us that it is a regular, normal tactic for them; indeed, a core part of their business strategy.
18. It is fair to ask if it could be the tobacco industry that is exerting the influence that results in such massive damage to public health. There are several reasons why it does not seem accurate to blame them:
a. Many organisations have published lies and propaganda about THR products such as e-cigarettes. In the past, the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries were easily identifiable as the culprits, since the materials either came directly from their spokepersons or from persons known to be funded by those specific industries. However, about two years ago, the tobacco industry's opposition to e-cigarettes largely ceased. At the same time, pharmaceutical industry-funded opposition redoubled in effort.
b. The tobacco industry can now be clearly observed moving into the e-cigarette market. They are hardly likely to work against a product they are buying into.
c. It is fair to ask if there could be an industry split between cigarette traders, smokeless tobacco traders, and those who are moving into ecigs. We have seen evidence of this in some areas but on the whole, it is rather easy to identify pharma as being behind the opposition to e-cigarettes.
d. Bans on e-cigarettes in any given country, like bans on any commerical threat to pharma, are obtained by the pharmaceutical industry's legal arm within government: the pharmaceutical licensing agencies within the departments of health in that country. These agencies are notorious for their susceptibility to regulatory capture by the pharmaceutical industry. Such agencies don't act for the tobacco industry, they normally have no relationship with them.
19. There is an entirely valid argument that must be considered: government pressure. Multiple governments may have pressured multiple MEPs to vote to protect smoking, due to the catastrophic loss of revenue that will inevitably occur when ecigs remove half of cigarette sales. Indeed, an Italian MEP has, only this week, suggested that smoking should be protected for this very reason; and we have heard unsubstantiated rumours that Italy will act soon to protect smoking for this reason.
As a very simple example of this: the UK government is a 90% stakeholder in cigarette sales, and will see a 50% reduction in revenues if/when smoking is reduced by the projected amount that e-cigarettes will cause. The loss will conceivably be £10bn per year (that is ten billion pounds annually).
So it is probably fair to ask, "Has the UK government ordered UK MEPs to protect smoking against commercial threats?", in order to explain the otherwise unexplainable assault on public health. I believe that UK MEPs would be best placed to answer that question. I think it an entirely valid one, given the economic timebomb that e-cigarettes represent; nevertheless, I do not think that UK MEPs would vote to kill hundreds of thousands of citizens simply to protect the UK economy (although I invite any MEP to prove me wrong).
20. Following on from this line of questioning, it may also be reasonable to ask if any single party (or EU party grouping) has been instructed to bloc vote against THR. We could only identify such blocs by their actions in the EU committees. It does beg the question: "Why would a political party instruct their representatives to act in a way that will be directly responsible for millions of deaths?". No one knows the answer to this, if this situation were to exist.
21. It is understandable why the issue of a 'conspiracy theory' might be brought up. Let us be quite clear on this: there is no conspiracy. All we have to do is look at the facts, which are in plain view:
a. In 2010, in Washington DC, there were more pharmaceutical industry lobbyists registered than Congress representatives.
b. Their registered lobbying spend that year in DC was $264m (two hundred and sixty-four milliondollars).
c. Pfizer employs a professional researcher specifically to publish studies that attempt to denigrate e-cigarettes. The sum of $850,000 was paid for studies that principally included watching YouTube videos of ecig users in order to attempt to derive some form of negative information.
d. Pharma appears to have virtually unlimited funds for lobbying and other expenditure for opposing e-cigarettes. Just one firm can pay almost a million dollars to someone to watch YouTube videos in the hope of finding something usable in their propaganda war. You can imagine what funds are available in total. Or rather - you can't; the figures are incomprehensibly vast. (Imagine what you would spend if threatened with a loss of several hundred billion dollars.)
e. Pharma's basic business model involves 'lobbying' those in power to see things their way. There is what appears to be an unlimited amount of money for it.
f. Pharma has paid the world's largest fines for corrupting officials.
There is no conspiracy here - it is simply business as usual.
22. In closing might I suggest that a web search for 'regulatory capture' be carried out. Wikipedia has, for once, quite a reasonable page on it.
If regulatory capture does not exist, then we might legitimately ask: why would committees act directly opposed to the science and directly opposed to the interests of public health (though just in cases where pharma's income will suffer), and in a manner that will eventually kill millions of UK citizens (according to Prof Britton of the RCP) and therefore tens of millions of EU citizens?
I suggest, however, that there is no need to look any further.
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