How public health and temperance campaigners exploit children

Prohibition and temperance aren't the children of health concerns but rather the offspring of a certain type of christian judgmentalism. But perhaps it shouldn't be a surprise that today's dominant religious faith - heath and wellbeing - has adopted the moralism of a previous age in its desire to have us all live a dull but righteous life so we can live forever. How could you indulge in pleasures that may, as a side effect, shorten your life?

And just as with all good religions, our Church of Public Health creates its myths and legends as convenient fairy tales designed to sway the gullible to the cause of living forever. Here's a classic:

Alcohol is being sold at "pocket money" prices across the UK, with products commonly bought by underage drinkers among the cheapest, research by a campaign group suggests.

The Alcohol Health Alliance said white cider - sold for as little as 16p per unit of alcohol - is favoured by teens.

The story in question combines two entirely separate and essentially unrelated pieces of information into a scary story about how young girls are being sucked into a terrible world of self-destruction, harm and death by the purveyors of booze at those 'pocket money prices'.

The first piece of information tells us that:

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) study of its 35 member countries found that 31% of 15-year-old girls reported having been drunk at least twice, compared with 26% of boys (which is in line with the OECD average).

Note the wording - 'drunk at least twice'. What the research tells us is that some girls self report that they have been drunk on two or more occasions. And that seven out of ten girls say they haven't been drunk on even two occasions. The rest are the rebels who maybe drank a few glasses at Christmas or shared a half bottle of vodka at a sleepover. There really isn't anything to get worried about in these statistics. And let's be clear that they've absolutely nothing at all to do with the other information in the story - the bit about 'pocket money prices':

The Alcohol Health Alliance (AHA), a grouping of more than 40 organisations including medical colleges and health charities, surveyed the cost of 480 products on sale in major supermarkets and off-licences in London, north-east England, north-west-England and Scotland.

Its research found both Asda and Tesco to be selling perry at 19p per unit, while the same drink was available at Sainsbury's for 22p per unit. Morrisons was selling cider at 20p per unit.

Now let's set these temperance folk a challenge. Take a 15 year old girl, give her some pocket money and tell her to go and buy some of that 19p per unit perry in ASDA. It's not going to happen, there is no way they'll be able to blag their way through this one. The girl will not succeed in buying any sort of booze, not even cheap white cider at 'pocket money prices' in any supermarket (or for that matter off license). If the 15 year old girls are drinking it's because they've bought in illegally from a smuggler, stolen it or most like been bought it by someone old enough to make the purchase. And, as the distinct lack of drunk 15 year old girls staggering round our streets tells us, this really isn't common or much of a problem.

So, given that the evidence is that booze at 'pocket money prices' isn't driving high levels of teenaged bozziness, why are the Alcohol Health Alliance and other fussbuckets so keen to make out that it is? Here's a clue:

The chairman of the AHA, Prof Sir Ian Gilmore, the former president of the Royal College of Physicians, said: "In spite of a government commitment to tackle cheap, high-strength alcohol, these products are still available at pocket money prices."

Calling for an increase in duty on cider, Prof Gilmore said: "In addition, we need minimum unit pricing. This would target the cheap, high strength products drunk by harmful drinkers whilst barely affecting moderate drinkers, and it would leave pub prices untouched."

This isn't about those girls at all, it's about 'high strength products drunk by harmful drinkers' who the AHA, as good temperance folk, heartily disapprove of. Now some of these people are pretty unsavoury and can cause problems with their behaviour but they're still adults with choice and agency. And making the booze more expensive won't change much - except they'll eat less, skip the rent (and get evicted) and spend more time panhandling other folk for the wherewithal to buy the newly expensive white cider. The more creative ones might make their own - it's really easy.

What the AHA are doing here is playing the 'for the children' card by hinting that children are the ones supping the white cider and therefore we should do something to stop them. Hence the reference to 'pocket money' and the talk about girls - we're having our emotional strings played here by organisations with over 100 years spent perfecting the demonisation of drinking. Prof. Gilmore and his fellow fussbuckets don't just want to stop 'harmful drinking', what they want is to denormalise drinking, to make it something banned, controlled, taxed, price-fixed and confiscated. They want to take you pleasure away simply because they disapprove of that pleasure.

And to achieve this end, the Church of Public Health will conflate unrelated data, will exaggerate research results, will speak of exceptional cases as if they were commonplace, and - when all this fails - they'll just straight up lie.

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A reminder that prohibition doesn't work

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In a beautiful example of 'baptists and bootleggers', Scott Beyer tells the tale of drinks laws in two US states - Louisiana and Oklahoma. The former has among the most liberal and the latter the most illiberal with controls over distribution, pricing and the manner of sale plus stonking levels of tax on booze. And the result:

Another rationale may be public safety; officials want to limit the availability and appeal of alcohol, so that it isn’t abused. The only problem is that this doesn’t work, any better than 1920s Prohibition did. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Oklahoma is in the upper third of states for its intensity of binge drinking, with Louisiana surprisingly in the middle of the pack. And the Foundation for Advancing Alcohol Responsibility found that in 2012, Oklahoma had the sixth most drunk driving of any state, while Louisiana was outside the top 10. Updated data shows that Oklahoma still has a higher drunk-driving fatality rate than the national average.

Prohibition doesn't work. Not that our public health friends and their allies among the bootleggers give a toss about all that - high taxes mean more nannying fussbuckets on the public purse as well as more opportunities for smugglers, counterfeiters and assorted other criminal riff-raff to cash in.

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Vegemite - a reminder (if you needed one) that prohibition doesn't work

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OK it's Australia, home to some of the world's most intrusive fussbucketry but it's a lesson:

Australia’s government says Vegemite sales should be limited in some communities to prevent the yeast-based spread being used to make home-made alcohol.

Nigel Scullion, the indigenous affairs minister, said the spread – which is considered something of a national culinary staple – was a "precursor to misery" in communities suffering from alcohol abuse.

He said he was not proposing a ban but wanted to restrict excessive sales of high-yeast products such as Vegemite in “dry” communities – typically remote Aboriginal townships where alcohol sales are banned.

“Addiction of any type is a concern but communities, especially where alcohol is banned, must work to ensure home brewing of this type does not occur,” he said.

See what's happened here? These 'dry' communities (apparently Aussie white people think Aboriginal drink problems relate to some natural predisposition not to 200 years of oppression) do what dry communities always do - they make their own booze. And, as we all know, alcohol is very easy to make.

You see, prohibition doesn't work.

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...more about our sober children

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Top beer writer, Pete Brown has revisited the statistics about children and young people drinking. It's another 'must read' (although sadly they won't bother) for the public health crowd. Here's a sample:

Now the decline is so steep, and so sustained, that there's no getting away from it. Last week's headlines were unequivocal - under-age drinking is no longer cool:

• 39% of pupils said they had drunk alcohol at least once. This continues the downward trend since 2003, when 61% of pupils had drunk alcohol, and is lower than at any time since 1988, when the survey first measured the prevalence of drinking in this age group.
• 9% of pupils had drunk alcohol in the last week. This proportion has fallen from 25% in 2003.

Bouyed by this undoubted good news, the Portman Group undertook some research among parents of school-age children to learn if they were aware of the fact that their children are not drinking. 

Unsurprisingly given the media coverage the issue receives, 9 out of 10 parents had no idea about the 34% decrease in children who have drunk alcohol. The same proportion were similarly unaware of the 33% decrease in the number of kids who think it is OK to drink alcohol on a weekly basis.

 

We have (heaven knows how) spawned the most sober and sensible of generations and Pete Brown is right - a great deal of the credit goes to the drinks industry itself. Sadly, the prohibitionists and denormalisers won't have it that way regardless of the evidence.

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Health fascism on speed - the BMA votes to ban cigarettes (but not for everyone)

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When you were at school, you remember the swottish, science sorts who did all their homework, attended the extra revision classes and got top marks in everything? You know the ones who went on to medical school? Turns out they're pretty dumb after all - at least going by the latest utterly bonkers piece of health fascism proposed by the British Medical Association:

Delegates at the British Medical Association (BMA) annual conference voted in favour of a motion to prohibit smoking to anyone born after 2000.

Now the sharp-witted amongst you will have noted that this is a monumentally stupid idea. After all those people born in the 21st century aren't yet of an age to buy and consume tobacco products. Yet we are reminded that most smokers (nearly all of them I reckon) start smoking before they reach the age when they're actually allowed to smoke. And this means that they're getting cigarettes illicitly - either by the time-honoured method of lifting them from Mum's packet, buying them using false ID, asking someone to buy them for you or purchasing them from the bloke in the van who doesn't care about age, ID or much else.

Do these ever-so-clever doctors really think that anything will change? Except that smoking will become even more hidden and illicit than it is at the moment. From a product subject to quality control, regulation and licensing we will have moved to a product sold surreptitiously to young people in dark alleys - or else simply passed on by grandpa, mum and assorted aunts.

This is health fascism on speed - a sort of frantic, desperate, headline-grabbing proposal designed to give the impression of action rather than actually respond to the question (why do young people start smoking). And as Ian Dunt points out, this policy isn't about children at all:

...this policy, which is targeted at adults by definition, is being defended on the basis of what it would do to help children - the one group who would find themselves outside its remit.

But at least the lobby is finally daring to state its objective: the criminalisation of smoking. From now on, the debate is not about public health. It is about the rights of the individual against the frenzied paternalism of those who would interfere in other people's lives.

Everyone who smokes knows the risks. The health message has been banged into children almost from the day they walked into school - smoking kills you. That some people decide to smoke regardless of this risk says something about people but is a reminder that we all have choice in our lives. And if we choose - for hedonistic reasons - to do something dangerous that is, in the end, entirely our business.

Yet again we are reminded that the debate isn't about health but about control, about prohibition about other people deciding they know better how we should live our lives. This is the agenda of nannying fussbucketry, the manifesto of health fascism.

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The consequence of prohibition is always crime

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Bhutan banned tobacco. They're about to repeal that ban (h/t Chris Snowdon):

Now the country’s Upper House resolves that ban on import of tobacco must end. In a majority resolution on Monday (3 February 2014), the house said ban on import and sale of tobacco products must end to control the black market.

And as the proposer of the change has put it:

But for the most of us, if we consume tobacco, we will continue to be doing so illegally. That would make us criminals. And because the penalties have now been staggered, expect a bigger black market; expect many more criminals.

Prohibition always, without exception, leads to crime. And the more that people want the product, the more crime. As we move to an age of control that approaches prohibition - for drink, for tobacco and maybe for some food products - remember that the more you tax, the more you exclude people from the market, the more you create a criminal world as the only way for those people to get what they want.

And it's a nasty world filled with violence, with don't care. A world where giving kids booze and fags isn't frowned upon but is a business opportunity. A world where the criminal slowly shoves aside the legitimate and where the complicity of so many in crime breaks down the relationship with the law.

So all you health fascists, be careful what you wish for in your wet dreams of controlling other folks personal choices.

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A St George's Day toast to CAMRA

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What I hear you say? To that supine bunch who've been suckered into backing the New Puritan, prohibitionist, anti-alcohol campaigns - ostensibly in order to "save the pub"?

It seems the members have given the CAMRA bosses a slap:

First, motion 8, proposed by the Liverpool branches, was passed, apparently without any speakers against.

8. This Conference requires that the Campaign should actively challenge the health lobby’s anti-alcohol statements to give a more balanced view.

Then, after what reportedly was a very lively debate, Motion 19 was passed by 276 votes to 201.

19. This Conference agrees that CAMRA is on the wrong side of the argument over minimum pricing. It instructs the National Executive to withdraw its support for this measure with immediate effect.

Progress indeed - perhaps we'll see all these articles, press releases and statements removed from CAMRA's website?

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Now about that cigarette smuggling...

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And its consequences:

Among its most prominent beneficiaries is none other than Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the one-eyed jihadist and smuggler who has claimed responsibility for the mass hostage-taking in al-Qaeda's name.

Nicknamed the Marlboro Man for his lucrative cigarette smuggling empire...

Enjoy the fruits of your prohibition, fussbuckets.

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"Prohibition always leads to supply and demand..." Jake Phillips, 15

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As this little unintended social experiment shows:

Acland Burghley School in Camden, North London, recently decided to implement a "water only" policy in a bid to improve health, pupils' concentration and, as a result, their grades.

However, some entrepreneurial kids have resorted to sneaking in the banned substances and selling them on to fellow pupils at "speakeasies", just like under Prohibition in the US, which ran from around 1920-1933. However, instead of alcohol, the desired goods are cola, lemonade, orangeade and energy drinks.

And the enterprising youngster explain why, too:

"...there is business potential now there's a gap in the market. Gangsters sold alcohol in America when that was banned. Prohibition always leads to supply and demand. That means anyone who sneaks it in can make a lot of money."

It's a shame that their teachers weren't so bright as to realise that this would be the exact result of their ban!

Even where it's pointed out the school's boss buries his head still further in the sand:

“Schools are responsible for showing young people that their own behaviour impacts on their health. We are extremely proud to be Camden’s first water-only school."

Seems nannying fussbuckets never learn!

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#AlcoholAware2012: Young people and drinking...or rather not drinking

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Alcohol Concern are off out from the traps in "Alcohol Awareness Week" with an opinion survey of 16-24 years olds. This leads them gently to agree with the prohibitionists view:

They told researchers that alcohol promotions encouraged excessive drinking, pointing out it was 'cheaper to buy a three-litre bottle of cider than buy a ticket to go to the cinema'.

Yet again we see false comparisons being made. I'm pretty sure that 17 year old Steve isn't going to impress his new girlfriend by saying; "we're not going to the pictures tonight, I've bought three litres of White Lightning. We can sit on the wall of the park and get pissed."

The real figures - the ones that Alcohol Concern prefer not to mention - tell us that this generation of young people is the most sober generation since the 1960s. Alcohol consumption among children has fallen significantly:

13% of secondary school pupils aged 11 to 15 reported drinking alcohol in the week prior to interview in 2010 compared with 18% of pupils in 2009 and 26% in 2001.

In 1998 71% of 16-24 year olds reported drinking in the previous week (that's any drink at all - just the one). By 2012 this figure had fallen to just 48%. This doesn't suggest that we have a problem with young people and drinking - quite the contrary, the strategy of being open about drinking, informing people and using persuasion has worked.

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How come we're living longer?

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Poor old nannying fussbuckets. After an unremitting torrent of statistical garbage about booze, fags and burgers and how they're killing us. Despite dire warnings of the "obesity crisis" and "alcohol pandemic". And following endless uncritical coverage from the BBC and national press...

...it seems us English are living longer, healthier lives!

Healthy life expectancy (HLE) increased by more than two years in the period 2008-10 compared with 2005-07.

The proportion of life spent in good health has increased in England and Wales, but fallen in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The ONS figures also show that more than four-fifths of a lifetime in the UK is spent in good health from birth.

Bit of a pity for the fussbuckets, eh? However, I'm sure they'll be back tomorrow with their calls for bans on this and new controls on that - all to to tune of "it's for the children."

A pox on them!

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Entering an Age of Disapproval

Over the weekend my reaction to the news that David Cameron was insisting on introducing a minimum price for alcohol fluctuated between resignation, anger and cynicism. Resignation at the seeming inevitability of the nannying fussbucket’s victory. Anger that a Conservative prime minister thinks it OK to muck about with prices for the purpose of social engineering. And cynicism in that Cameron appears to be chucking some red meat to the health lobby ahead of the final stages of the Health Bill’s progress through parliament.

With the new week came the dawning realisation that Cameron is merely a mirror of a depressing age – his championing of nannying fussbucketry reflects his penchant for government by dinner party and a resulting tendency for Mumsnet-style kneejerk reactions to perceived problems in “society”.

It’s not just minimum pricing for alcohol, the PM has moaned about chocolate oranges in W H Smiths, the “premature sexualisation” of girls (but for some reason not boys) and has proposed ‘fat taxes’ on the ‘most unhealthy foods’.  Whenever Cameron wants a positive headline he turns to the judgement of other people’s lifestyles and other people’s choices. And in doing this he is simply reflecting the age in which we now live.

We have entered an “Age of Disapproval” – after several decades of growing openness, personal freedom and choice, society has looked at itself and decided it doesn’t approve. Where once liberalisation was applauded, it is now seen as license, as an encouragement to decadent hedonism. We have created a new set of sins – things of which we disapprove.

A few years ago a good night out was something good – a chance to blow away some cobwebs, let our hair down and enjoy ourselves. Now it’s binge-drinking and it's unhealthy - a terrible burden on society and especially on that most sacred of sacred cows, the National Health Service.

There was a time in all our lives when the thing that hit the spot was a full English breakfast – bacon, sausage, fried eggs, hash browns or fried bread, maybe a bit of black pudding and perhaps some beans. After that big night out this great meal set us right again. Now these meals are cancer-giving, artery-clogging and sinful – we disapprove of such indulgence with talk of rising obesity and, you’ve guessed it, the great cost to the NHS of such a terrible diet.

Not so far back in time, we saw smoking as a bad habit but tolerated the smoker – it was their choice after all. We liked the fact that places made provision for smokers while allowing non-smokers space as well. Today, smoking sits as the thing we disapprove of the most. And we don’t stop at condemning the sin – we ostracise and exclude the sinner as well, casting them out into the cold and rain, making them second-class citizens, like pariahs.

Everywhere we look, we see disapproval – complaints about the covers of so-called ‘lads mags’, frowning criticism of models for being too thin and condemnation of mothers for putting a cream egg in their child’s lunchbox. Politicians, doctors, scientists, journalists and pundits fall over each other to express disapproval of the choices other people make. And this disapproval is followed by calls for action to prevent such evil from spreading – whether we’re talking about school dinners, the ‘sexualisation’ of children or me having a very large whisky at the end of a long day.

Right now the pendulum is swinging away from personal choice and private freedom towards a controlling state and society. The “Age of Disapproval” chalks up a new victory with each passing day – with every one of these little wins making society a little less free and life for so many a little less pleasant.

But this is fine for the New Puritans, prohibitionists and healthy living fanatics – it means that people are directed towards an approved, purposeful and sober life and away from indulgent, hedonism and pleasure for the sheer joy of its experience.

It isn’t a better world. It is a dreary, depressing, controlling culture where we may live a little longer but that extra will be free from pleasure, without the chance of indulgence.

It truly is an “Age of Disapproval”.

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Prohibition doesn't work does it? More evidence from Bradford...

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The sale of 'illegal' cigarettes and tobacco is growing - according to this article it 'costs' the HMRC "£10 million a day". We all know it's growing and we all know the reasons - high rates of duty and the ease of smuggling. Here's one example from a court case in Bradford:

Steven Brocklehurst, for Mahmad, said his client took over the shop in May last year, at which time it became apparent there were people who, on going abroad – particularly to Poland – would buy tobacco as part of their duty free allowance and sell it on to the shop owner.

“Clearly it was a process that had been going on for some time with the previous owner,” Mr Brocklehurst said. 

So these nice Eastern European folk were funding their trips home by gaming the margins between UK prices and Polish prices - a margin made up almost entirely of tax. And the problem is growing - here's the chap from West Yorkshire Trading Standards:

“The fact that so many cheap, illicit cigarettes are on sale is seriously undermining Government efforts to encourage people to quit smoking. In addition those who deal in illicit tobacco are evading tax which has an obvious damaging effect on legitimate business and the wider economy.” 

And look at the downside risks - 60 hours community work and a fine of less than two grand.

Denormalisation - prohibition by another name - simply doesn't work, does it!

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The price of prohibition....

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We are all familiar with the impact of prohibition - organised crime, alcoholism, poisoning and an ever more frantic failure of public authorities to control. And there are parts of America where - because of the wholly racist idea that Native Americans can't hold their drink - prohibition is still in place:

The tribe lives on the Pine Ridge reservation, a 3,500 square mile area which has an estimated population of between 28,000 and 40,000, and includes the site of the Battle of Wounded Knee

It is one of the poorest places in the United States with 80 per cent unemployment and an average estimated life expectancy of between 45 and 52, the shortest in mainland North America.

Alcohol has been illegal on the reservation since 1832 but is readily available in Whiteclay, which is just 200ft from the edge of Pine Ridge. 

Now the problem here is that business people in Whiteclay have realised that, because the authorities on the reservation ban booze, there's a great opportunity to flog its residents drink. Or more to the point, sell it to 'criminals' who bootleg the beer onto the reservation for illegal resale.

And it isn't watery lager they're smuggling but stronger brews (at least 10% ABV):

According to local people two of the most popular drinks on the reservation are Hurricane malt liquor and and Evil Eye malt liquor. 

This is not a consequence of the retailer nor is it the fault of the manufacturer - it results entirely from the stupidity of prohibition. And suing drinks companies for millions of dollars won't solve the problems of the reservation - indeed problems with alcohol aren't the cause of those problems but are rather a symptom. I'm guessing - don't know for sure - that for most of the reservation's residents, life is not very pleasant. No work, poor schools, isolation, loneliness and the departure of anyone with the wit and skills to get on in life.

But it's much simpler to blame someone else - especially if that someone's a big multinational drinks company!

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Tenets of the New Puritans #1: denormalisation and social direction

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The essence of the New Puritan faith is not prohibition – the adherents of the Church of Public Health do not wish to ban pleasure, any more than their Puritan antecedents wished to do so merely that such pleasure should be approved, communal and uplifting::

From the rich array of popular pastimes in Tudor-Stuart England…the reform-minded founders of New England drew selectively, transplanting only those "lawful recreations" compatible with their errand into the wilderness. Cock-fighting, horse racing, and ball games were out; reading and writing were in. Far from offering release from social duty, recreation was rationalized to serve official ends. Puritans socialized at public worship, town meetings, funerals, and executions. Integrating work and play, they enjoyed a "productive party" -- a barn-raising or quilting bee -- that epitomized the ideal of "useful recreation". Such civic events "expressed the communal spirit of a covenanted people".

The aim of the New Puritan is re-education – to bring about an epiphany of good behaviour. And while they make common cause with prohibitionists – and will support bans – New Puritans prefer the process of ‘denormalisation’.

However, as recent observers have noted, through the widespread implementation of tobacco ‘denormalization’ strategies, tobacco control advocates appear to have embraced the use of stigma as an explicit policy tool. In a recent article, Ronald Bayer (2008) argues that the mobilization of stigma may effectively reduce the prevalence of smoking behaviors linked to tobacco-related morbidity and mortality and is therefore not necessarily antithetical to public health goals.

While the ‘denormalisation’ strategy is most developed in the world of anti-smoking campaign, we see it begin to creep into anti-alcohol campaigns :

One of the key issues coming out of this research is the lack of any evidence showing that normalising the use of alcohol is a good prevention strategy" says Professor Doug Sellman of the University of Otago, Christchurch, who was invited to write an accompanying commentary.

"In fact the opposite is the case. The less alcohol is normalised in family life, and particularly when parents avoid being at all intoxicated in front of their children or supplying them with alcohol, the better the prevention of alcohol problems in young people will be" he says.

And with  ‘junk food’:

The issue of junk food and its consequences is a major challenge for 21st-century society, one which requires actions that are concrete, complementary, and immediate. Concerned by the urgent need to address it, and boasting a solid track record in the promotion of healthy eating habits and denormalization in the tobacco industry, the RSEQ1 is now involved in denor¬malizing junk food in schools.

Thus we see these “harmful” behaviours ‘denormalised’ while at the same time we are urged – and this is especially the case with young people – to seek “value” from leisure activity. Take this Chapter on “Youth Work Ethics”:

The young people decide that this is the way they want to spend Friday evening. It will be a good time. They have been looking forward to do it. It is a chosen and planned part of their life.

Their parents are pleased about the youth project. Their child (who they worry about) is making a good choice: they learn more about life in good ways, they meet new friends, their horizons are widened, and so on. Their child is also not making a bad choice: they are not getting drunk, falling into fights, at risk of dying, and so on.

Read those words – see the directions involved: “it will be a good time”, it is “chosen and planned” and the young people “learn more about life”. The New Puritan denies the possibility of pleasure for reasons of pure hedonism – fun for fun’s sake, if you will! Entertainment must only be entertainment with a purpose – the frivolity of mere fun is sinful. Or, as adherents to the Church of Public Health will say, ‘not in the interests of wider society’.

So youth work – activity taking place outside of formal education – seeks to indoctrinate young people with the tenets of the New Puritan faith: communalism, judgmental environmentalism, the stigmatising of sinful pleasures and the avoidance of risk.

This suppression of adventure, of exploration and of enterprise is carried forward by the New Puritans into their attitude to adult entertainment – the requirement for social meaning in art and literature, the preference for the uplifting story and the morality play, and the use of documentary to bend opinion towards purposeful pleasure and the denormalisation of hedonistic behaviour.

And educationalists grasp this in what they present to learners:

This unit helps students understand how artists can be influential in shaping human values. It does so by addressing social and global issues such as poverty, starvation, crime, discrimination, sickness, war and the environment. Students are encouraged to consider the subjective and expressive currents in art of our time in relation to these issues.

The idea that painting, music, reading and theatre are escapes from our workaday lives does not figure in the New Puritan’s mindset – these things are tools for passing on selected, preferred social values up to and including the denormalisation of those activities that are not approved.

That people continue to enjoy themselves – to reject the prescribed pleasures from the Church of Public Health in favour of hedonism remains a glint of sunlight in an otherwise bleak society. What we can hope for is that, as was the case in New England all those years ago, the search for real pleasure will triumph over the direction and denormalisation directed by our elders and betters:

“Pursuing pleasure for its own sake, New Englanders seized on solemn occasions as pretexts for parties. Austere funerals turned into lavish affairs; "ordination balls" celebrated the installation of ministers; execution days took on "a carnival atmosphere". Notwithstanding jeremiads from the pulpit, alcohol was ubiquitous; under its influence, militia drills could descend into drunken brawls and corn-huskings into trysts. "The tavern became the new meetinghouse": a centre of news, politics, trade, and entertainment. In the more permissive atmosphere of the eighteenth century, men and women flirted at singing schools, drank and danced in alehouses, devoured romantic novels, and engaged in a good deal of premarital sex.”

*The two New England quotes are from a review "Leisure and Recreation in Colonial New England" by Bruce Daniels

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Tenets of the New Puritans #1: denormalisation and social direction

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The essence of the New Puritan faith is not prohibition – the adherents of the Church of Public Health do not wish to ban pleasure, any more than their Puritan antecedents wished to do so merely that such pleasure should be approved, communal and uplifting::

From the rich array of popular pastimes in Tudor-Stuart England…the reform-minded founders of New England drew selectively, transplanting only those "lawful recreations" compatible with their errand into the wilderness. Cock-fighting, horse racing, and ball games were out; reading and writing were in. Far from offering release from social duty, recreation was rationalized to serve official ends. Puritans socialized at public worship, town meetings, funerals, and executions. Integrating work and play, they enjoyed a "productive party" -- a barn-raising or quilting bee -- that epitomized the ideal of "useful recreation". Such civic events "expressed the communal spirit of a covenanted people".

The aim of the New Puritan is re-education – to bring about an epiphany of good behaviour. And while they make common cause with prohibitionists – and will support bans – New Puritans prefer the process of ‘denormalisation’.

However, as recent observers have noted, through the widespread implementation of tobacco ‘denormalization’ strategies, tobacco control advocates appear to have embraced the use of stigma as an explicit policy tool. In a recent article, Ronald Bayer (2008) argues that the mobilization of stigma may effectively reduce the prevalence of smoking behaviors linked to tobacco-related morbidity and mortality and is therefore not necessarily antithetical to public health goals.

While the ‘denormalisation’ strategy is most developed in the world of anti-smoking campaign, we see it begin to creep into anti-alcohol campaigns :

One of the key issues coming out of this research is the lack of any evidence showing that normalising the use of alcohol is a good prevention strategy" says Professor Doug Sellman of the University of Otago, Christchurch, who was invited to write an accompanying commentary.

"In fact the opposite is the case. The less alcohol is normalised in family life, and particularly when parents avoid being at all intoxicated in front of their children or supplying them with alcohol, the better the prevention of alcohol problems in young people will be" he says.

And with  ‘junk food’:

The issue of junk food and its consequences is a major challenge for 21st-century society, one which requires actions that are concrete, complementary, and immediate. Concerned by the urgent need to address it, and boasting a solid track record in the promotion of healthy eating habits and denormalization in the tobacco industry, the RSEQ1 is now involved in denor¬malizing junk food in schools.

Thus we see these “harmful” behaviours ‘denormalised’ while at the same time we are urged – and this is especially the case with young people – to seek “value” from leisure activity. Take this Chapter on “Youth Work Ethics”:

The young people decide that this is the way they want to spend Friday evening. It will be a good time. They have been looking forward to do it. It is a chosen and planned part of their life.

Their parents are pleased about the youth project. Their child (who they worry about) is making a good choice: they learn more about life in good ways, they meet new friends, their horizons are widened, and so on. Their child is also not making a bad choice: they are not getting drunk, falling into fights, at risk of dying, and so on.

Read those words – see the directions involved: “it will be a good time”, it is “chosen and planned” and the young people “learn more about life”. The New Puritan denies the possibility of pleasure for reasons of pure hedonism – fun for fun’s sake, if you will! Entertainment must only be entertainment with a purpose – the frivolity of mere fun is sinful. Or, as adherents to the Church of Public Health will say, ‘not in the interests of wider society’.

So youth work – activity taking place outside of formal education – seeks to indoctrinate young people with the tenets of the New Puritan faith: communalism, judgmental environmentalism, the stigmatising of sinful pleasures and the avoidance of risk.

This suppression of adventure, of exploration and of enterprise is carried forward by the New Puritans into their attitude to adult entertainment – the requirement for social meaning in art and literature, the preference for the uplifting story and the morality play, and the use of documentary to bend opinion towards purposeful pleasure and the denormalisation of hedonistic behaviour.

And educationalists grasp this in what they present to learners:

This unit helps students understand how artists can be influential in shaping human values. It does so by addressing social and global issues such as poverty, starvation, crime, discrimination, sickness, war and the environment. Students are encouraged to consider the subjective and expressive currents in art of our time in relation to these issues.

The idea that painting, music, reading and theatre are escapes from our workaday lives does not figure in the New Puritan’s mindset – these things are tools for passing on selected, preferred social values up to and including the denormalisation of those activities that are not approved.

That people continue to enjoy themselves – to reject the prescribed pleasures from the Church of Public Health in favour of hedonism remains a glint of sunlight in an otherwise bleak society. What we can hope for is that, as was the case in New England all those years ago, the search for real pleasure will triumph over the direction and denormalisation directed by our elders and betters:

“Pursuing pleasure for its own sake, New Englanders seized on solemn occasions as pretexts for parties. Austere funerals turned into lavish affairs; "ordination balls" celebrated the installation of ministers; execution days took on "a carnival atmosphere". Notwithstanding jeremiads from the pulpit, alcohol was ubiquitous; under its influence, militia drills could descend into drunken brawls and corn-huskings into trysts. "The tavern became the new meetinghouse": a centre of news, politics, trade, and entertainment. In the more permissive atmosphere of the eighteenth century, men and women flirted at singing schools, drank and danced in alehouses, devoured romantic novels, and engaged in a good deal of premarital sex.”

*The two New England quotes are from a review "Leisure and Recreation in Colonial New England" by Bruce Daniels

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Tenets of the New Puritans #1: denormalisation and social direction

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The essence of the New Puritan faith is not prohibition – the adherents of the Church of Public Health do not wish to ban pleasure, any more than their Puritan antecedents wished to do so merely that such pleasure should be approved, communal and uplifting::

From the rich array of popular pastimes in Tudor-Stuart England…the reform-minded founders of New England drew selectively, transplanting only those "lawful recreations" compatible with their errand into the wilderness. Cock-fighting, horse racing, and ball games were out; reading and writing were in. Far from offering release from social duty, recreation was rationalized to serve official ends. Puritans socialized at public worship, town meetings, funerals, and executions. Integrating work and play, they enjoyed a "productive party" -- a barn-raising or quilting bee -- that epitomized the ideal of "useful recreation". Such civic events "expressed the communal spirit of a covenanted people".

The aim of the New Puritan is re-education – to bring about an epiphany of good behaviour. And while they make common cause with prohibitionists – and will support bans – New Puritans prefer the process of ‘denormalisation’.

However, as recent observers have noted, through the widespread implementation of tobacco ‘denormalization’ strategies, tobacco control advocates appear to have embraced the use of stigma as an explicit policy tool. In a recent article, Ronald Bayer (2008) argues that the mobilization of stigma may effectively reduce the prevalence of smoking behaviors linked to tobacco-related morbidity and mortality and is therefore not necessarily antithetical to public health goals.

While the ‘denormalisation’ strategy is most developed in the world of anti-smoking campaign, we see it begin to creep into anti-alcohol campaigns :

One of the key issues coming out of this research is the lack of any evidence showing that normalising the use of alcohol is a good prevention strategy" says Professor Doug Sellman of the University of Otago, Christchurch, who was invited to write an accompanying commentary.

"In fact the opposite is the case. The less alcohol is normalised in family life, and particularly when parents avoid being at all intoxicated in front of their children or supplying them with alcohol, the better the prevention of alcohol problems in young people will be" he says.

And with  ‘junk food’:

The issue of junk food and its consequences is a major challenge for 21st-century society, one which requires actions that are concrete, complementary, and immediate. Concerned by the urgent need to address it, and boasting a solid track record in the promotion of healthy eating habits and denormalization in the tobacco industry, the RSEQ1 is now involved in denor¬malizing junk food in schools.

Thus we see these “harmful” behaviours ‘denormalised’ while at the same time we are urged – and this is especially the case with young people – to seek “value” from leisure activity. Take this Chapter on “Youth Work Ethics”:

The young people decide that this is the way they want to spend Friday evening. It will be a good time. They have been looking forward to do it. It is a chosen and planned part of their life.

Their parents are pleased about the youth project. Their child (who they worry about) is making a good choice: they learn more about life in good ways, they meet new friends, their horizons are widened, and so on. Their child is also not making a bad choice: they are not getting drunk, falling into fights, at risk of dying, and so on.

Read those words – see the directions involved: “it will be a good time”, it is “chosen and planned” and the young people “learn more about life”. The New Puritan denies the possibility of pleasure for reasons of pure hedonism – fun for fun’s sake, if you will! Entertainment must only be entertainment with a purpose – the frivolity of mere fun is sinful. Or, as adherents to the Church of Public Health will say, ‘not in the interests of wider society’.

So youth work – activity taking place outside of formal education – seeks to indoctrinate young people with the tenets of the New Puritan faith: communalism, judgmental environmentalism, the stigmatising of sinful pleasures and the avoidance of risk.

This suppression of adventure, of exploration and of enterprise is carried forward by the New Puritans into their attitude to adult entertainment – the requirement for social meaning in art and literature, the preference for the uplifting story and the morality play, and the use of documentary to bend opinion towards purposeful pleasure and the denormalisation of hedonistic behaviour.

And educationalists grasp this in what they present to learners:

This unit helps students understand how artists can be influential in shaping human values. It does so by addressing social and global issues such as poverty, starvation, crime, discrimination, sickness, war and the environment. Students are encouraged to consider the subjective and expressive currents in art of our time in relation to these issues.

The idea that painting, music, reading and theatre are escapes from our workaday lives does not figure in the New Puritan’s mindset – these things are tools for passing on selected, preferred social values up to and including the denormalisation of those activities that are not approved.

That people continue to enjoy themselves – to reject the prescribed pleasures from the Church of Public Health in favour of hedonism remains a glint of sunlight in an otherwise bleak society. What we can hope for is that, as was the case in New England all those years ago, the search for real pleasure will triumph over the direction and denormalisation directed by our elders and betters:

“Pursuing pleasure for its own sake, New Englanders seized on solemn occasions as pretexts for parties. Austere funerals turned into lavish affairs; "ordination balls" celebrated the installation of ministers; execution days took on "a carnival atmosphere". Notwithstanding jeremiads from the pulpit, alcohol was ubiquitous; under its influence, militia drills could descend into drunken brawls and corn-huskings into trysts. "The tavern became the new meetinghouse": a centre of news, politics, trade, and entertainment. In the more permissive atmosphere of the eighteenth century, men and women flirted at singing schools, drank and danced in alehouses, devoured romantic novels, and engaged in a good deal of premarital sex.”

*The two New England quotes are from a review "Leisure and Recreation in Colonial New England" by Bruce Daniels

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Public Health? Evidence-based? Who are you trying to kid, Mr Goldacre?

There is a problem with the so-called public health profession. No, it’s not that they want to ban all our pleasures – we can deal with that through reasoned argument and by ignoring them. The problem is that the public health folk do insist on using (or rather misusing) evidence that is wholly or partly incorrect.

So I had to smile – wanly I admit, but smile nevertheless – when one of the apologists for the nannying fussbuckets writes about health claims in national newspapers:

It seems that the majority of health claims made, in a large representative sample of UK national newspapers, are supported only by the weakest possible forms of evidence.

Now this is undoubtedly true – even of the Guardian – but does it mean that Mr Goldacre is prepared to accept that much of the newspaper coverage of alcohol is both inaccurate and partial? And that the actual evidence for passive smoking causing more risk than, for example, pollen or diesel fumes is pretty thin?

Somehow I expect Ben and his mates will carry on pimping for public health fanatics – a bunch of people who cheerfully twist any statistic to promote their prohibitionist agenda. And who weep not a single tear when over 500 people lose their jobs because of the latest public health gimmick. A gimmick supported by what a judge called “little better than guesses”.

And, Ben, this statement of yours is almost certainly untrue:

People who work in public health bend over backwards to disseminate evidence-based information to the public.

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