Harry Shapiro

Harry's Blog #68: Tyranny is the Deliberate Removal of Nuance

Aug. 24, 2018

Greg Jacob was wholly sympathetic to the public health aims of the FCTC in trying to mitigate the worst effects of smoking through bans on ads and public smoking, health warnings on packaging and ...

Harry's Blog #67: The Bullshit Asymmetry Principle

Aug. 23, 2018

Now looking at that line-up, the average viewer would expect the campaigner to rail against the report, accuse MPs of being ‘nobbled’ by Big Tobacco and generally attack any idea that e-cigarettes...

Harry’s blog 66: Not really a JUUL in the crown

Aug. 14, 2018

There are so many ways that a teenager determined to vape on a JUUL could find to skirt around any tech system like this and if, with each (no doubt) well-publicised workaround, the company kept h...

Harry’s blog 65: . For fake’s sake, stop lying about vaping

Aug. 2, 2018

But the MP’s report gives this summary definition of fake news; “There are many potential threats to our democracy and our values. One such threat arises from what has been coined ‘fake news’, cre...

Harry’s blog 64: What if…..?

July 23, 2018

Now what if you could turn this on its head and argue that by publicly lying about the dangers of safer nicotine products this has resulted in smokers not switching away and so suffering all the c...

Harry’s blog 63: Time to deliver on tobacco harm reduction

July 10, 2018

Taking time out from the intellectual tour de force that is a Dan Brown novel, (Me? Jealous?), I turned my attention to Time to Deliver the recent WHO status report on how member states are doing ...

Harry’s blog 62: GFN 2018 – Run Your Own Race

June 22, 2018

Together in one session, we heard Cecilia Kindstrand-Isaksson from Swedish Match say in effect that the devil has currently all the best tunes and that the community needed a more coordinated appr...

Harry’s blog 61: The shiny blue moon of Kentucky

June 4, 2018

However, the bluegrass state is leading the charge in determining that tobacco taxation should be assessed on risk, a possible global first. In May, the Kentucky legislature passed a tax reform bi...

Harry’s blog 60:  The wrong end of the telescope

May 21, 2018

Until recently the US Federal Government has refused to support funding for drug harm reduction interventions. The opioid crisis, which has hit the USA in the past 10 years, has changed official t...

Harry’s blog 59: Won’t somebody think of the ‘bad’ children?

May 4, 2018

This is mirrored by a recent exchange among tobacco academics and analysts about how a totally independently review of the evidence for tobacco harm reduction (THR) might somehow build bridges bet...