Freedom to Choose's Work
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ECD: The anti-smoking lobby receive funding from the government and the pharmaceutical companies. How do you compete for a voice with these really well-funded organisations?
David: I think, I believe, Forest is reasonably well funded by the tobacco manufacturers. It's not only the funding issue which is the thing, that we are up against, but the mainstream media, television and radio that really don't want to hear the other side of the story.
For example, I probably write two or three emails a week to the BBC and various newspapers and you very rarely even get a response. I wouldn't say it is a conspiracy to exclude people who are pro-choice on smoking, they do seem to be extremely sympathetic towards the government and also the department of health and ASH [who are funded by the government].
ECD: It wasn't so long ago that I personally thought that people who talked about passive smoking being rubbish were conspiracy theorists.
David: Yeah, sure, I try not to sound that paranoid, but I take your point.
ECD: Well, you tend to assume that when people in positions of authority tell you things they are true. It was only when I started working for an e-cigarette business and I started reading studies that I began to realise how much we had been lied to.
David: Exactly, anyway to answer your first question obviously the internet and the blogosphere are our main weapon. I've noticed that a lot in research - there is a quote from Jerome Arnett, he's a pulmonologist in South Carolina, he’s got a very specific wording of it, if you google it comes up in about 40 places in the world where it ends up being quoted. (David may be referring to the study
Scientific Evidence Shows Secondhand Smoke Is No Danger.) I think one of the things we have been particularly in successful in fighting ASH on is the junk science, and also the economic effects of the smoking bans.
ECD: So you think you are making a difference, you and other website like FORCES.
David: Sure. I think that leading on from the work we have done on the blogosphere it is now slowly beginning to be picked up in the mainstream media as well, which is very useful to say the least. I have been interviewed on the radio a couple of times myself, and I have also noticed that some stories are being picked up in the Guardian.
You know, by the blogosphere, by a series of osmosis it is now reaching to the very top.
ECD: Have you got an example of that - about it reaching to the top?
David: Yeah indeed, now it was Chris Snowdon who did something which was picked up in Spiked writing about Jill Pell. And by the way, Chris Snowdon is not a member of Freedom to Choose directly, he's a historian and author.
After the smoking ban came in Professor Jill Pell tried within the first year to argue that heart attacks had been reduced by 17% as a result of the smoking ban and most politicians think that too. They just read the press release and they believe that rubbish as well. That's an example of how the blogosphere has seeped through to main stream media.
He actually used the freedom of information act to request the specific heart attack figures out of the health ministry and what he proved was the reduction in heart attacks was unaffected by the smoking ban and in fact in the second year of the smoking ban the number of heart attacks, for the first time in ten years, actually rose.
ECD: So, if you follow their logic the smoking ban is actually causing heart attacks?
David: Well, exactly yeah. And Jill Pell fiddled the figures, something she eventually admitted too, she omitted the months of January and February, which have the highest rates of heart attacks, and it was basically pure publication bias.
Following on from that, Freedom to Choose is now getting enquiries form television companies, from media companies and also from newspapers as well. I'm sure it is a matter of time before we go really mainstream.
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