Friday 29 May 2015

If you're going to make up statistics, at least make up plausible ones, you twats...

From The Guardian:

From 2003-13 – a decade which saw the introduction of a ban on smoking in public places and a rise in cigarette prices – the proportion of all deaths in the 35+ age group estimated to be caused by smoking fell from 19% to 17%...

Fewer than one in five people over 16 smoked in 2013, the lowest proportion since recording started in the 1940s. More than a quarter smoked in 2003...


So if just under a fifth of all adults smoke, and just under a fifth die from smoking, that means that all smokers die from smoking, yes?

Nope:

The British Heart Foundation said tobacco products still killed about half the people who used them and doubled a person’s chance of having a heart attack or stroke.

Unlike non-smokers, who live forever, presumably, placing absolutely zero cost on the social security system or the NHS or anything whatsoever.

Moving on:

The number of prescriptions for treating smoking dependency dropped from a peak of 2.6m in 2010-11 to 1.8m in 2013-14. Cheeseman [policy director at Ash] recognised rising use of e-cigarettes might be a factor, but said people who found quitting smoking most difficult would benefit from properly structured, evidence-based support from the NHS.

When a lot (i.e. all) of the evidence shows that smokers who start vaping tend to smoke a lot less - which is the whole bloody point of vaping - and very, very few non-smokers start vaping.

Mike Hobday [The British Heart Foundation's] director of policy, said: “These figures show current strategies to help people quit smoking aren’t going far enough... The government urgently needs a new strategy to help people stop smoking. With tobacco companies continually raising their prices...

Cigarette prices are dictated largely by the amount of duty on them; the cost net of taxes is around 50p wherever you go in Europe.

... this needs to include an annual levy on these companies to fund tobacco control and stop smoking services to help support people to quit.”

Actual tobacco company profits are a few per cent of the total tax already imposed on a packet of cigarettes.

Chris Woodhall, senior policy adviser at Cancer Research UK, said: “We want to see a tobacco-free country within the next 20 years – where fewer than five per cent of adults smoke. Falling smoking rates among adults and children show that we’re moving in the right direction, but we must do more to realise this ambitious public health goal.”

Tobacco free = fewer than five per cent smoke?

FFS.

11 comments:

James Higham said...

Guardian. Nuff said.

Mark Wadsworth said...

JH it's not just the guardian- most papers regurgitate this nonsense

A K Haart said...

"Unlike non-smokers, who live forever, presumably, placing absolutely zero cost on the social security system or the NHS or anything whatsoever."

A steadily increasing number of us end up with dementia, costing billions.

Mark Wadsworth said...

AKH, indeedy.

But they have already invented the counter-lie to that one.

It can't be too difficult to establish whether there is some sort of correlation between 'having smoked all your life' and 'having dementia in old age' but they didn't bother, they just decided there was.

Random said...

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/29/household-benefit-cap-plunge-40000-kids-poverty-memo
Ah, but what about the children Mark?
Do you hate children? :)

Random said...

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/05/tisa-yet-another-leaked-treaty-youve-never-heard-makes-secret-rules-internet
The secret treaty you've never heard of. Mark, please do a post on this!

Bayard said...

"they just decided there was."

Oh, no, I'm sure they rustled up some policy-based evidence to support it. What about Alzheimer's? That must cost the nation a bob or two. It must be caused by smoking.

Pablo said...

See from 27.30 here:
Newsnight 29th May.

Mark Wadsworth said...

R, neither the people who invented the benefit cap nor the likes of The Guardian understand its ramifications.

R, this treaty is probably the same as TTIP which is more corporatism, what do you think? Has anybody actually read it?

B, yes, must be.

P, excellent!

proglodyte said...

Comparing Greece, Finland and UK -

Similar life expectancy: c.81

Cigarettes smoked/adult/pa

Greece: 2995
Finland 671
UK:750

Alzheimer's/Dementia death rates

Greece: 1.8/100,000
Finland 34.9/100,000
UK: 17.1/100,000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_cigarette_consumption_per_capita
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN
http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/alzheimers-dementia/by-country/

Bayard said...

Anyway, Mark, you are not supposed to analyse the maths like that. You are supposed to skim through the article, say "Arrggh, smoking, evil" and leave it at that. If Guardian readers actually read the articles properly, no-one would have been taken in by San Seriffe.