Shortly before I was asked to write this story on the illegal trade in cigarettes, the U.K.’s prime minister, Rishi Sunak, came up with a plan aimed, I assume, at helping to ameliorate the damage done to the country by his and previous conservative governments since 2010. His idea was that all pupils should be made to study mathematics until the age of 18, an aim that included some obvious pitfalls. For instance, given the plan was put in place, increasing numbers of people would come into contact with imaginary numbers, and even numbers that are difficult to imagine, such as 0.0005, which is about the percentage of the population who voted for Sunak to become prime minister.
Even if, like me, you’re not a mathematician, it’s worth keeping your eye on figures that are presented to you. And in this regard, I was intrigued by a press note announcing the publication of a paper by Researchers at the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project, the University of Waterloo, Canada, who were said to have “evaluated the impact of federal and provincial menthol cigarette bans in Canada by surveying smokers of menthol and nonmenthol cigarettes before and after Canada’s menthol ban.” The research study was said to have found that “banning menthol cigarettes does not lead more smokers to purchase menthols from illicit sources, contradicting claims made by the tobacco industry that the proposed ban of menthol cigarettes in the U.S. by the Food and Drug Administration will lead to a significant increase in illicit cigarettes.”
However, even a person with a limited understanding of mathematics would have to wonder whether the study’s findings support this statement, even leaving aside the seemingly important issue that Canada isn’t the U.S. It seems to me that it is a bit of a leap to make the above claim when the number of menthol cigarette smokers who took part in the study seems to have been only 138 (the study included, too, 1,098 smokers of nonmenthol cigarettes, who were used, at least in part, as a “control group”).
As I read things,* menthol cigarette smokers were surveyed in 2016, before the nationwide ban** was brought in, and again in 2018, after the ban was introduced. Of the 138 menthol cigarette smokers who were surveyed in 2018, only 36 reported smoking menthol cigarettes after the ban while brand checks indicated that only 17 were actually smoking menthol cigarettes at that time and that the most recent cigarette purchases of only 13 of those 17 had comprised menthol cigarettes. Again, as I read things, only nine of the 17 bought their menthol cigarettes from outlets on First Nations reserves, but, despite these tiny figures, the researchers present their results to the first decimal place and are happy to conclude that “After Canada’s menthol ban, there was no increase in illicit purchasing of menthol or nonmenthol cigarettes from First Nations reserves.”
The press note seems to push that conclusion further. Its heading, “Study refutes industry claims that ban on menthol cigarettes leads to increased use of illegal smokes,” is not confined to First Nations reserves outlets but presumably encompasses the other outlets covered: convenience stores, the internet, supermarkets and bars/pubs.
This is important, I think. You can imagine somebody in the future quoting the report by saying that 51.2 percent of sales of illicit menthol cigarettes in Canada post the menthol cigarette ban were made on First Nation reserves. That sounds impressive, of course, unless you know that the 51.2 percent figure is based on little more than a handful of purchases.
