Velvet Glove, Iron Fist

I wasn't going to write about the tobacco ban again for a while, but the ludicrous spectacle of prohibitionists purporting to be champions of liberty has set me off.  > Their logic is that...

https://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2024/04/libertarian-prohibitionists-youve-heard.html

You won't want to miss the new episode of The Swift Half in which I talk to broadcaster and Guardian super-columnist Adrian Chiles about drinking.

https://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2024/04/a-swift-half-with-adrian-chiles.html

Proving that there is no end to 'public health' hysteria, some quackademics in South Korea are warning that unopened cigarette packs put nicotine into the atmosphere and need to be regulated. I w...

https://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2024/04/the-hazards-of-unopened-cigarette-packs.html

Rishi Sunak wants tobacco prohibition it to be his legacy. As I say in Spiked , I hope that's what it becomes.   > Today, MPs will vote on the Tobacco and Vapes Bill. The result ...

https://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2024/04/sunaks-legacy.html

Tim Stockwell, who has been running a one man crusade against the benefits of moderate drinking for 20 years, has been on a bit of a media tour recently. He got a feature in the New York Times ...

https://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2024/04/tim-stockwells-relationship-with.html

The Impact Assessment for the Tobacco and Vapes Bill is laughable, relying on nonsense figures from ASH and ignoring the impact on the illicit trade. I've written about it for The Critic where I...

https://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2024/04/the-tobacco-and-vapes-bill.html

I've seen a few posts like this recently, claiming that 'Big Tobacco' used its mysterious, fiendish tricks to manipulate food when some of them bought food companies in the 1980s.    > Fun�...

https://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2024/04/big-tobacco-meets-big-food.html

I had your friend and mine Simon Clark, the indefatigable leader of FOREST, on the Swift Half last week. We talked about his career fighting for liberty. Check it out.

https://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2024/04/a-swift-half-with-simon-clark.html

In the Notes & Queries section of last week's Observer , a reader asked:  > Why is alcohol advertised openly in the UK, without pictures on the > packaging highlighting the med...

https://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2024/04/why-is-alcohol-regulated-differently-to.html

If you told me that there was a massive pile of cash to be dished out to 'public health' academics and asked me to guess which two people would be first in line for it, I would say Anna Gilmore a...

https://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-nanny-state-trough.html

I caught up with Martin Cullip and Lindsey Stroud on their podcast Across the Pond last week. I was with them in Panama in February to shadow the big WHO anti-nicotine conference. We looked back ...

https://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2024/03/looking-back-on-who-and-looking-forward.html

There's a good article in the wine trade press titled 'How Neo-Prohibitionists Came to Shape Alcohol Policy' by Felicity Carter looking at temperance groups masquerading as 'public health' NGOs....

https://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2024/03/temperance-20.html

I forgot to mention that we've started a new series of The Swift Half with Snowdon. Check out the entertaining episode with the anarcho-capitalist Charlie Amos here . The Canadian historian Dan...

https://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2024/03/dan-malleck-on-drink-drugs-and.html

Our old fiend Greg Fell has been busy getting billboards banned in Sheffield in what even he admits is a pointless endeavour.    > There are over 130 directors of public health in ...

https://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2024/03/greg-fell-britains-most-pointless-man.html

Last week, former public health minister Steve Brine wrote in support of Sunak’s tobacco ban for Conservative Home . Like nearly everyone who goes to the Department of Health, Brine went nativ...

https://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2024/03/same-old-ash.html

Australia's umpteenth attempt to ban e-cigarettes has been warmly applauded by the renowned wowser and imbecile Simon Chapman. Nicotine-containing vapes have always been illegal in Australia. Imp...

https://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2024/03/prohibition-problem-gambling-and.html

Menthol cigarettes were banned in the EU in May 2020 and, as usual, the UK government decided against using its new freedoms outside of the bloc to allow more freedom to people in the UK. A stud...

https://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-menthol-cigarette-ban-another.html

The 'Good Law Project' has suddenly started going after the dull but worthy charity GambleAware. Why? As I explain in this article for The Critic, it looks like a case of follow the money.   ...

https://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2024/03/follow-money-in-campaign-against.html

Annemarie Ward, CEO of the addiction recovery charity FAVOR doesn't hold back in this interview with The Herald . Unlike most Scottish health organisations, she is not funded by the state - and i...

https://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2024/03/fighting-scotlands-sockpuppet-state.html

So the UK is set to have one of the world's highest vape taxes to go alongside a ban on disposable vapes and the gradual (or not so gradual) prohibition of tobacco. I've written about the Tories'...

https://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-vape-tax.html

There is an epidemic of kids smoking pipes and cigars, if you believe the people at SPECTRUM. As I explain in The Critic , you shouldn't.    > As a rule of thumb, any sharp rise or�...

https://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2024/03/pipes-and-pipemen.html

While I was in Panama recently for the Good COP conference, I met lots of interesting people. I interviewed two of them for the IEA podcast: David Williams, President of the Taxpayers Protection ...

https://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2024/02/panama-conversations.html

  A Tasmania anti-smoking activist called Kathryn Barnsley has made a grotesque banner lying about e-cigarettes and has been telling vapers to look forward to getting mouth cancer. It is ba...

https://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2024/02/normal-for-tasmania.html

It was a pleasure to sit down with Amul Pandya recently for a thoughtful chat on his Meeting People podcast. We discussed the abuse of statistics, social media, Rishi's tobacco ban, low grade pol...

https://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2024/02/a-depressing-conversation-with.html

Jim McCambridge, a 'public health' zealot whom we have encountered before , is involved in a strange employment tribunal after York University found him guilty of bullying and harassment. He now ...

https://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2024/02/mccarthyism-as-protected-philosophical.html