Dear Scumbag...

Following the publication of the BMAs ludicrously constructed and depressingly authoritarian report entitled "Under the influence- The damaging effect of alcohol marketing on young people" I decided to write the lead author a little a letter...

Dear Sir George

I am writing to ask for an explanation regarding the inadequacies of your team’s recently published report “Under the influence- The damaging effect of alcohol marketing on young people”.

Firstly, from a close reading, it appears to me as though little scientific evidence has been consulted at all in what has been sold to the media as a scientific study. On page eight the report claims that: “During the 1990s, the prevalence of harmful alcohol use increased among both men and women in the UK, and in particular in the 16 to 24 age group.” However you do not site a source for this statistic and thus I do not know whether the prevalence of harmful alcohol did indeed increase. Furthermore, of what significance is it that prevalence of harmful alcohol may have increased in this period where, as you admit, “the figures peaked in 2003-04” and have been falling since?

The effect of all this is that your report bears little resemblance to a scientific study. Rather it reads like a manual for alcohol prohibition. This is illustrated by the use of normative language throughout the report; such as, on page two, where you recommend that: “specifically, as a part of a comprehensive alcohol control strategy, the UK Governments should: implement and rigorously enforce a comprehensive ban on all alcohol marketing communications…” etc. Surely science is by definition objective? If so, it is not the place for a truly scientific report to say that anything should be the case but rather to simply outline what currently is the case.

In addition, as a further insult to science, your report happily quotes data showing that “In 2007, over a third (37%) of adults (aged 16 and over) in Great Britain were found to have exceeded UK recommended guidelines for regular drinking in the previous week”. However, you have clearly chosen to completely neglect the fact that these guidelines were “plucked out of the air” as the product of an “intelligent guess” by Richard Smith, a member of the Royal College of Physicians working party that produced the guidelines (the quotes in this sentence were taken from the Times Online). By using these fallacious guidelines, you and your team have either been very lazy in your research of the science of drinking or, more likely, have used worthless data in an attempt to firm up your prohibitionist stance by grounding it in statistics. As an examination of the above shows, your report, rather than being built on the grounds of concrete science, has been placed upon quicksand and as such is now sinking to the point where it cannot be taken seriously by anyone in possession of the actual facts. The most lamentable example of this is where you state that “the UK is among the heaviest alcohol consuming countries in Europe”. This is, quite simply, a lie, unless by “amongst the heaviest” you in fact mean twelfth? (Type http://www.forbes.com/2007/11/27/drinking-europe-alcohol-biz-commerce-cx_tvr_1128drinking_slide_13.html?thisSpeed=3000 into your web browser if you would like to view this statistic for yourself.)


It saddens me to see such a flagrant disregard for accurate reporting, particularly as there is no need for you to have chosen to set such low standards for this report. The BMA is, largely, a respectable organisation of intelligent men and women so I fail to see how this report could have been published with so many errors and manipulations of science. (There are many more statistics that I would take issue with in this letter, but I can appreciate that you are probably to busy too reply to them all.) My only conclusion can be that this report, rather than the product of an investigation, is simply dogma aimed to fuel the erosion of British civil liberties through sponsoring of prohibitionist measures that may perhaps “contribute much needed funding for public health research and education”.

If this is the case then I shall make an effort to briefly counter some of your authoritarian thinking and policy pushing. The claims that “public health” is at risk from drinking are all ultimately flawed simply because public health does not exist. There is my health, there is your health and collectively there is the sum of all our individual healths. There is no collective public health and thus my individual health is not your responsibility to improve, because my individual health cannot effect your individual health. If I choose to corrode my liver with alcoholic drink then it is I who shall suffer the consequences. If your response to this would be to state that the NHS, which is funded through the nation’s tax revenues, pays for my treatment and thus my drinking should be discouraged, as it imposes a cost on society, I would say that we have identified the real problem. My drinking only becomes a public problem when the taxpayer has to pay for my treatment. It is neither my choosing to drink nor the advertising which may be encouraging me to drink which causes the public problem. Therefore surely a better policy solution is to stop the NHS for paying for my drink related treatment? Make the irresponsible pay for the cost of their own excessive drinking and they will have a greater disincentive not to drink so much. If you charge every over-drinker for their own stomach pumps and liver operations people will drink less in order to avoid these costs. By contrast, your approach fails on both the pragmatic and ideological levels. The prohibitionist measures outlined in your report take away choice from those who drink alcohol very responsibly. Indeed you yourself in the foreword call for “targeting” more than “irresponsible drinkers alone”. But who are you to advise that our freedoms are taken from us? To advise that those who just drink wine with their meals should pay more for it and only be able to buy it at certain times of the day? In our courts of law do we punish the whole of society for the actions of a few murderers? Does everyone share the price of one person’s parking ticket? Of course not, because most people recognise both that such measures are both unjust and destined to failure. The second that the price of drinking is shared by all those who drink too much will be having more of their tab paid for by everyone else and as such will actually be more encouraged to drink than ever before. If everyone shared a murderer’s sentence his own would be lightened, thus he would surely have less disincentive to kill than if he was held entirely culpable for his own actions?

I shall leave you with that thought. My hope is that you retract your report and advise all governments from acting upon it. Your misuse of statistics is truly abhorrent and a sufficient reason alone for the report’s immediate retraction, if only to save the reputation of yourself and your colleagues. Your report also promotes an equally repugnant ideology of the removal of liberties and the socialisation of other people’s mistakes for no clear benefit. It is for this too that I shall be writing similar letters to my MP and to the House of Commons warning them of this report’s viscous cocktail of false-science and dangerous dogma, until you decide in favour of retraction.

Yours in hope,

Matthew Triggs