Another Creature Who Wants His Palms Greasing

By Blad Tolstoy

I should like to draw your attention to this letter by John Wesdorp Dip CAH PNLP (that means he's a hypnotherapist and no big deal) who wants all the supermarkets to stop selling tobacco products to save the poor "addicts" from themselves.

See:

Abolish the Sale of tobacco products in Supermarkets - Usprwire

Note the commonly quoted figures, repeated ad nauseam and unsubstantiated by fact, which Wesdorp (self confessed antismoking activist) repeats:

"Every day, over 40,000 young people around the world start smoking. One third of those will eventually die (at what age please) from the effects a smoking related disease as a result of taking up the smoking habit. Those young people are persuaded by multi-billion pound tobacco marketing campaigns that specifically targets adolescents by making smoking look rebellious or even by portraying smoking as hip and a fashion statement."

Here is a right old piece of subterfuge as it implies that children will die as children when most smokers die over the age of 75. We all know this one don't we? It's one of the oldest cons in the book.

And, how about:

"The commercial sale of tobacco products is a remnant of the 20th century when an estimated 200,000,000 (200 million) people died prematurely as a direct result of smoking tobacco products. This number of deaths exceeds the total of all those killed in two world wars, the holocaust, plus all other wars, insurgences, invasions and other military activities. Those deaths from smoking occurred in all ranks of society and tragically included many prominent and talented people in the business community, politics, show business and public life."

Given that no-one really knows how many people die or do not die from smoking, then these figures are sheer fiction of an unprecedented scale. The fact is that smoking has never been proved to be uniquely responsible for anyone's death, hence it is impossible to generate any reliable figures on deaths at all. No, no-one is saying that smoking cannot kill you, but if you have no solid proof that it uniquely responsible for anyone's death, then its a simple logical point that no-one can possibly know how many people die from it.

Wesdorp has also been written about here too:

Offers Smokers Help That Does Not Work

Here, he makes the claim that 70% of British smokers desperately want to give up. This again, is straight out of the ASH handbook. How does he know how many smokers want to give up? How does ASH know? How can anybody possibly know? In fact, the reverse is now happening for, as opposed to wanting to give up, more and more smokers, fed up with the nagging, harassment and intrusions by self-appointed health dictators like Wesdorp and ASH are digging in their heels with even greater determination.

But of course, the nub of the issue is that Wesdorp is "Managing Director" of No Smoking Again, an organisation which is not listed as a company at Companies House and therefore the title "Managing Director" maybe more than a little pretentious. It may be the case, of course, that the name Wesdorp uses is just a company trading name and his "company" is actually listed by another name. However, if not, then he will be guilty of trying to make himself sound more important than he is.

Check it out for yourselves:

Companies House

But, more to the point, Wesdorp peddles hypnotherapy to stop you smoking.

See:

No Smoking Again - Wesdorp Hypnotherapy!

This is the most successful method for stopping he says. Again, how does he know? In fact, whereas Wesdorp is correct to outline the very low success rate of nicotine replacement therapy, the most successful method for giving up is cold turkey, way and ahead on medical figures (see, for example: http://www.whyquit.com/)

As it happens, this writer tried hypnotherapy many years ago and found it absolutely useless.

If the supermarkets have any sense, they'll ignore Wesdorp because if they don't sell tobacco products then the smugglers will, and all Wesdorp will have done is further assisted the creation of a burgeoning criminal market.

See:

Revealed 2bn cost to UK from cigarette smuggling - The Telegraph