Harry Shapiro
Harry’s blog 109: The myth of the vaping controversy
Jan. 18, 2021
Beyond that, is mask wearing an effective barrier? If so, what kind and where should they be worn? Do you render the vaccine less effective by extending the time between each dose? How long is the...
Harry’s Blog 108: If something doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t make sense
Dec. 15, 2020
Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations became regarded as the template for capitalism. But while Smith was a free marketeer, his work had moral underpinnings; after all, he was also the author of The Theo...
Harry’s Blog 107: Tobacco ‘out of’ Control
Dec. 7, 2020
“There seems to be no study too fragmented, no hypothesis too trivial, no literature citation too biased or too egotistical, no design too warped, no methodology too bungled, no presentation of re...
Harry’s blog 106: Back to front
Nov. 16, 2020
Pro-THR consumer groups and other bodies are often accused of being front organisations for the tobacco industry. Historically, the industry did establish at least one front organisation, the Toba...
Harry’s Blog 105: Sheer Heart Attack
Oct. 2, 2020
Next year, the European Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) is up for review. Politicians will have to decide if the TPD needs amending. An important part of that process will be consideration of the...
Harry’s Blog 104: Baptists and Bootleggers
Sept. 7, 2020
Hang on though. It was noticeable last year that when flavour bans were mooted in the USA alongside an outright ban in India, tobacco company share prices in those countries rose. You don’t need t...
Harry’s Blog 103: Tobacco Harm Reduction from A to A
Aug. 19, 2020
First, here’s what we cannot do – legislate cigarettes out of existence. Some rosy prohibitionist vision of the future won’t wash. There is too much money at stake, not just for multi-national tob...
Harry's Blog #102: How to Make a Public Health Disaster Worse: a 5-Point Guide
July 24, 2020
Moreover, a BMJ article suggested that the 2005 Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) has done little to accelerate declines in smoking in those countries which had been seeing declines w...
Harry's Blog #101: The New Colonials
June 3, 2020
These agencies are sweeping broader public health issues overboard in pursuit of a rabid obsession with Big Tobacco interference in the domestic tobacco policies of mainly lower-and-middle income ...
Harry's Blog #100: The virus of propaganda
May 19, 2020
Professor Alex Stevens from Kent University has written an article on the proposition that it is naïve to imagine the scientific and medical advice, given to politicians about COVID-19, is simply ...