Plymouth Stop Smoking Service has 15 staff in its team and Mr Moody recognises concern about the cuts planned by the Government.
Assuming that sort of employment level is typical, the smoking cessation industry must employ in excess of 2000 people across the UK. And that is before we count the employees of ASH and other anti-smoking organisations. That's 2000 plus vested interests to look after, 2000 plus salaries to find and 2000 plus voices absolutely committed to sustaining the New Puritan message.
But there's a bigger interest - spotted by VGID here at an anti-smoking conference:
Big pharmaceuticals businesses aren't sponsoring anti-smoking conferences because they are noble organisations looking to help the poor old smoker quit. No, these businesses are there because anti-smoking - sorry, the medicalising of nicotine delivery - is a massive multi-million pound profit stream for these companies. And their marketing departments are all over the event:
Day One: Monday 14th June 2010
Room 1
How to interpret a scientific paper and make your own conclusions
Craig Beck and Imran Khan, Medical and Scientific Relations, Pfizer Ltd, Tadworth, UK
Room 2
Lose the Smoker in You: A community approach to quitting in New Parks, Leicester
Louise Ross, Tobacco Control Delivery Manager, NHS Leicester City, UK and Kay Harris, Head of Local Marketing, Pfizer Ltd, Tadworth, UK
The New Puritans are joined by an industry committed to medicalising almost everything - not just nicotine and alcohol but a range of foods as well. Plus this is an industry working hand in glove with the unaccountable (and very lucrative) medical profession to invent new conditions that can be treated with drugs:
Sex researchers, for a long time locked outside the hallowed halls of the health establishment, were suddenly inundated with offers of fine food, flattery and funding, from the friendly folks in pharma, and a new science of sexual medicine was born. Over the next 10 years companies with obligations to shareholders to widen the numbers of people defined as sick, and narrow the solutions offered to them, would not just sponsor the science of FSD (female sexual dysfunction), on occasions they would actually help to create it.
The drugs industry is funding the anti-smoking, anti-alcohol agenda. And it is doing so because it sees profits - it really is that simple.
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1 comment:
"The medicalising of nicotine delivery" - that's the main underlying plot and good choice of words in defining it. Almost laughable to see such blatant pharmaceutical logos as sponsors too, hiding in plain daylight in full view, but nobody seems to see much these days, willfully I might ad. Easier to feed a prejudice than confront it I suppose.
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