It is rare to find a story in the press that condemns the anti-smoking lobby. Today we have two! Curiously, they both appear in Scottish papers that generally tend to be supportive of the anti-smoking lobby.
In The Daily Record, we have an article on how ASH Scotland and the Scottish Parliament have failed in their mission to conquer the smokers by admitting that smoking prevalence is on the rise. As always it is the poor who are blamed for this: they buy tobacco products and smoke them, you know! Worse, they enjoy doing so, which is reason enough for the WHO, ASH and the politicians to stamp it out. If some of the public comments are to be believed, the poor too should be stubbed out as well. The Politicians, of course, are not going to put their hands up and admit they have it all wrong; their policies create the circumstances whereby poverty flourishes, and ASH makes smoking history.
Therefore, the WHO, ASH and the politicians all get an ‘F’ on their report cards.
Joining them are the BMA who are condemned for not only getting it all wrong but also for blatantly failing to check their facts in order to do so, the author of the article, Brian Monteith says “At no point did any of these self-proclaimed august and reputable bodies seek to check their facts.”, it then compounds that error by withdrawing one statement of fiction and replacing it with another.
As the article asks, why should anyone believe doctors when their representatives cannot get their facts right, and who, as one commenter notes seem unwilling do anything about the numbers of patients who die at their hands in any given year?
It is time to ‘call time’ on the massive amounts of money that the WHO, ASH, and the BMA receive. We can always spend it on saving lives by improving the quality of our hospitals and relieving the many pressures on the medical staff by reducing administration staff in favour of doctors, nurses and equipment.