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Christopher Snowdon Profile picture
Christopher Snowdon
@cjsnowdon
Vice-president of a snooker club and doctor of economics. IEA. Views my own.
Dec 3 • 13 tweets • 6 min read
Good to see this getting a bit of attention. It's just a shame that it's far too late to do anything about. Here's how it happened. 🧵 In 2020, in an attempt to blame the public for the UK's high Covid mortality rate, Boris Johnson announced a new obesity plan which included a ban on adverts for what campaigners call 'junk food'.
Jul 9 • 15 tweets • 5 min read
You may wonder how smoking-related cancer cases can be at an all-time high when the smoking rate is at an all-time low and has been declining for 60 years. They're not. It's a load of nonsense. 🧵 telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/0… Smoking rates have been falling since the 1960s. They had fallen by half by 1990.

1950: ~60%
1970: ~45%
1990: ~30%
2022: 13%

The number of cigarettes smoked per smoker has also fallen substantially.
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Mar 23 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
Quite an eloquent speech here. Unfortunately, everything he says is wrong. 🧵 The IEA doesn't recommended a US private insurance model. We prefer the social health insurance systems used across Europe in which the government ensures universal access to healthcare but doesn't try to provide it through an inefficient state leviathan. iea.org.uk/wp-content/upl…
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Mar 21 • 16 tweets • 7 min read
The Tobacco and Vapes Bill will not only ban adults in the future from banning a pack of Rizla but it will also be an offence or another adult to buy a pack of Rizla for them. 🤪 bills.parliament.uk/bills/3703/pub…
Image Someone should tell the government that tobacco vending machines were banned in 2011. Image
Jan 28 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
BREAKING: The UK government plans to ban disposable vapes, restrict e-cig flavours and introduce plain packaging for vape juice. Some sort of display ban seems to be on the cards too. Rishi Sunak will make an announcement at a school tomorrow. 🧵 The evidence is clear that banning e-cigarette flavours increases the sale of combustible cigarettes. A study from the USA found that "banning non-tobacco flavored ENDS was associated with a 4.6% increase in cigarette sales." valueinhealthjournal.com/article/S1098-…
Jan 13 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
Are we pretending that alcohol consumption went up during the pandemic now? Because it really didn't. 🧵 Per capita alcohol sales fell in 2020 to the lowest level in decades and remained relatively low in 2021. healthscotland.scot/health-topics/…
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Nov 17, 2023 • 14 tweets • 4 min read
This week it was widely reported that the UK’s sugar tax was associated with a 12% reduction in children’s dental extractions in hospitals. 🧵 Image The claim came from a study published in BMJ Nutrition, Prevention & Health which compared rates of tooth extraction in hospitals with a counterfactual of what would (might) have happened in the absence of the sugar tax. 2/ nutrition.bmj.com/content/early/…
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Mar 15, 2023 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
This policy will be popular because FREE STUFF but it is symptomatic of the country's downward spiral. 🧵 bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politi… Childcare costs are extraordinarily high in the UK and have risen enormously since the 1990s. Why? Are the staff highly paid? No. Do nurseries make massive profits? Not really.
Feb 1, 2023 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
Devi has gone back to talking about her first love, alcohol control. She says England can learn from Scotland's "harm reduction" policies. Let's have a look. 🧵 theguardian.com/commentisfree/… She is right to say there was a fall in alcohol harm, as measured by alcohol-related deaths, between 2003 and 2012, although the rate is still far higher than in England. So which policies achieved this? She names four.
Feb 1, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
In today's episode of Junk Science, we use people's self-reported consumption of a vaguely defined food category and dredge the data for an association with any form of cancer. telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/01/3… The study is here. This is the main table. thelancet.com/action/showPdf…
Jan 15, 2023 • 27 tweets • 9 min read
I’ve tried to ignore smiley anti-vaxxers for the last year but I’ve had to block at least 300 of them this weekend since tweeting about Malhotra. Here’s what I’ve learned 🧵 1. So many new accounts. The majority of the ones I blocked set their accounts up in the last 3 months, and in December 2022 in particular. Loads of US accounts getting involved. These profiles are typical.
Jan 13, 2023 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
Almost unbelievably, Aseem Malhotra was invited onto BBC News this morning to talk about statins. Halfway through he started banging on about vaccines and claimed that Omicron is no worse than flu. Way to go, @BBCNews! Image
Dec 31, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Richard Horton, who published a fraudulent study of MMR vaccines and autism and stood by it for TWELVE YEARS before finally retracting it, has received an OBE for ‘services to health and medical journalism’. 🤦‍♂️ Three studies published in the Lancet about Covid-19 have already been retracted and another one is under investigation. Way to go! retractionwatch.com/2022/12/01/buz…
Dec 7, 2022 • 137 tweets • 43 min read
This time last year, a bunch of scientists, activists and journalists tried to bounce a heavily vaccinated population into another lockdown. Here's a day-by day reminder of how it happened. 🧵 7 December 2021: At a meeting of SAGE, it is claimed - based on unpublished modelling - that the peak in hospital admissions is 'highly likely' to exceed 1,000 a day. This turns out to be correct. gov.uk/government/pub… Image
Nov 12, 2022 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
Another depressing must-read by ⁦@duncanrobinson⁩. Nothing in Britain works any more despite the vast cost to taxpayers. economist.com/britain/2022/1… I remember a comedian saying that the railways were rubbish when they were nationalised and are rubbish now they’re privatised so maybe the British just can’t run railways. This now applies to nearly everything.
Nov 12, 2022 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
The results are in and it appears that you weirdos would prefer to be shot in the chest from distance than have your head cleanly snipped off. In second place, you voted for the form of execution that is most likely to be botched, with agonising consequences. Way to go!