A magazine distributed to tens of thousands of British schoolchildren by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) promotes tobacco tax cuts, climate change denial, tax havens, and privatising the National Health Service (NHS) – but doesn’t say where the IEA’s money comes from, according to a story by openDemocracy.net.
The IEA, a registered educational charity, is said to send copies of the magazine EA free of charge to every school teaching A-Level economics or business studies in the UK.
‘The influential “think tank” does not disclose its funding but it has received money from British American Tobacco, oil giant BP, Jersey Finance, gambling lobbyists and right-wing US foundations pushing to privatise the NHS,’ said openDemocracy. ‘While articles on many of these topics have appeared in the IEA’s schools’ magazine, it does not disclose these financial links…
‘A shadow cabinet minister has called for the Charity Commission to broaden its ongoing probe of the IEA to include the schools’ magazine.
‘Labour shadow cabinet office minister Jon Trickett said: “It is a debasement of both politics and education when an organisation, posing as a charity, pumps seemingly paid-for propaganda into our schools”.’
“In the interests of transparency and democracy, we need to know who funds these organisations and what exactly their purpose is,” said Trickett. “Because what they say, and what they actually do, too often simply doesn’t match up.”
Tamasin Cave from Spinwatch, which investigates the PR and lobbying industry, was quoted as saying: “we are now awake to the fact that the IEA is not an independent think tank”. “It is a lobby group for private interests,” Cave said. “Most are secret, but we know it is funded by oil giants, the tobacco industry and a tax haven.
“The IEA’s magazine provides a means for these people to feed their propaganda into schools, whether that’s climate change denial, or opposition to public health policies. Just as the public are exposed to it through the IEA appearing on the BBC.”
The story said that, when asked by openDemocracy how the magazine was funded, the IEA would say only that the think tank covered the costs of the 47,000 copies sent to students every year. Although the think tank’s funders are not disclosed publicly, it denies that its editorial content is driven by its donors’ interests.
Tag: Great Britain
Has 'thinking' tanked?
Three million vaping
The number of vapers in Great Britain has topped three million for the first time and is now four times what it was in 2012, according to a story at bbc.co.uk citing the results of a survey by Action on Smoking and Health (Ash).
Most vapers use electronic cigarettes because they have quit smoking, while 40 percent are smokers who are trying to give up.
Ash said the survey of 12,000 British adults suggested smokers were getting the message that switching to vaping could improve their health.
But about a third of smokers had never tried a vaping device and, while increasing numbers of smokers now believed vaping was less harmful than smoking, 22 percent still thought it was as bad or worse.
Among the general public, one in four adults believes vaping is as harmful as smoking.
The survey found that 17 percent of the survey’s participants correctly believed vaping was a lot less harmful than smoking – but 23 percent said they didn’t know which was more harmful. These figures compare with 13 percent and 29 percent last year.
“UK policy is on the right track, with thousands of smokers making the switch to vaping and improving their health, and little sign of non-smokers taking up vaping,” Deborah Arnott, chief executive of Ash, was quoted as saying.
“But even more smokers could benefit if e-cigarettes were licensed as medicines and available on prescription.”
Meanwhile, Alison Cook, director of policy at the British Lung Foundation, said it was really encouraging to see smokers using e-cigarettes to help them quit the much more harmful practice of smoking.
Doctors and pharmacists “should be very clear with people that there is a range of products available and that they can try vaping as a way to stop smoking,” she added.
The top three reasons ex-smokers gave for using e-cigarettes were:- to quit smoking (62 percent);
- because they enjoyed it (11 percent);
- to save money (10 percent).
E-cigs sold to non-smokers
Photo by VapingCheap Nearly nine out of 10 British vape shops are violating an industry code of conduct by agreeing to sell electronic cigarettes to non-smokers, according to a story by Katie Forster for the Independent, citing an undercover investigation.
About 1,700 specialist shops in England, Scotland and Wales are advised by the Independent British Vape Trade Association (IBVTA) to ‘never knowingly sell to anyone who is not a current or former smoker, or a current vaper’. The guidelines aim to stop non-smokers from becoming addicted to nicotine.
Nevertheless, staff at 87 percent of vape shops are either knowingly or unwittingly prepared to sell electronic cigarettes to people who have never smoked or vaped before, according to the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH).
Forster said that the organisation had visited 100 vape shops in February and found 45 percent did not check whether customers smoked or used to smoke.
And in cases where the staff did check, customers were encouraged to start vaping even if they declared that they were non-smokers.
Shirley Cramer, chief executive of the RSPH, said electronic cigarettes had to be seen as “evidence-based quitting aids – rather than lifestyle products”. They should be aimed only at smokers.
