Special Report #2: Transparency or Obfuscation?

[Doodlebug]

“In reality the workings of your governing system are opaque and covert, while hiding in the chattering spotlight of an ostensible transparency, even though the ultimate objective is clear.”Breyten Breytenbach​

Across human society, there is an increasing emphasis on transparency: from personal tax affairs to politicians’ utility bills; from charity and business administration to government policy-making. It polarises opinion: is it ‘Big Brother is watching every move you make’, or ‘transparency exposing the truth’? But what is transparency, and is it achievable in any useful or meaningful way?
Transparency is supposed to offer the public the opportunity to scrutinise the workings of government, for example, at national and international levels. Government ministers of all ranks often speak of transparency as if it is the life-blood of their work, the utopia of politics: to govern transparently, and to have the transparency expose good and wholesome practices does indeed sound like the elusive Holy Grail.
But is transparency possible where there is an agenda? Certainly, this seems to make it much more complicated. In business, in government and in life we are told that it is important to have ‘goals’. Indeed it is difficult to imagine any individual or organisation making any progress without having an idea of what they are trying to achieve. This might – quite reasonably – be described as ‘having an agenda’, and is not necessarily a bad thing. Perhaps the true beauty in the transparency concept is that it attempts to expose the hidden agendas, those conflicts of interest and cash-for-favours incidents which, while ugly and offensive are nevertheless better exposed than left to fester in the dark, unacknowledged and unaddressed. For surely it is only by exposing practices to scrutiny that meaningful transparency can be achieved, and that steps can be taken to prevent unwanted practices from dogging our society.
I should like to offer three specific examples for consideration: all three purport to want ‘transparency’; all three no doubt believe that what they are doing is ‘good and wholesome’; but all three must have grave concerns about what genuine transparency would mean for them. The first is the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in the UK, the second is the European Commission, and then finally, the World Health Organisation (WHO). All three claim Transparency, like a badge of honour; all three bring it into disrepute.
When the MHRA published its poorly-executed and ill-fated public consultation in February of 2010, The regulation of nicotine containing products, the enforced transparency of having to publish all the responses left the MHRA with nowhere to hide. They used a research company to gather opinions from various groups, and the reports on their findings make very interesting reading. In their Report of Qualitative Research Findings (linked from our blog), many respondents questioned the MHRA’s obvious conflicts:
“From the outside this looks very much like protecting the drug industry from possible competition.”
More damning is the research company’s own wording, describing the concerns of “friendlier opinion formers” (‘friendlier??’) “that regulating these products might be seen as protectionism by the MHRA on behalf of the pharmaceutical industry.”
So transparency can be a two-edged sword, but it is not enough to have these egregious failings exposed if no remedial action is taken. Much like the situation facing the electronic cigarette industry today, it is not more regulation that is needed but better enforcement of the existing regulations; similarly, we don’t need more transparency – we need decisive enforcement action against those who perpetrate the misdirections and the lies in the name of transparency!
Only those of a cynical nature can fail to have been shocked by recent revelations about the European Commission’s operations. The lobbying problems which were highlighted over the Dalli affair demonstrate all too clearly that transparency is meaningless in that context: neither the pharmaceutical nor the tobacco lobby groups can come out of it with a clean record, both having sought to influence the political decision-making process for their own gains. That’s what lobbyists do; it’s what they’re for. But then where is the transparency? The Commission likes to talk about transparency, as if it can be picked up at the DIY shop and nailed on to a political process, but it is not that simple.

For example, during the recent ‘snusgate’ scandal surrounding the resignation by former Health Commissioner, John Dalli, three NGOs in Brussels suffered a break-in and theft. Leaving aside the obvious and significant questions surrounding this, something deeply insidious and alarming emerged during the reports of this incident: the Commission’s revisions to the Tobacco Products Directive are supposed to be an entirely transparent process. We ourselves have been in direct communication with the Commission about this, as it relates to the electronic cigarette industry, and we have been assured at every step that it is a fully transparent process.
How, then, is it possible that the European Respiratory Society suffered the loss of files containing “confidential information on its work on a new EU tobacco law”? Another report quotes the ERS saying:
“On the night of 17/18 October, the ERS Brussels Office was broken into and confidential data relating to the revision of the EU Tobacco Products Directive and other issues were stolen.”
This raises a number of deeply uncomfortable questions: in a supposedly transparent process, how can there be “confidential data” of any kind? And why is the ERS – an unelected NGO – working on “a new EU tobacco law”? It is deeply disconcerting to discover the immoral and unethical behaviour of both the elected and the unelected elite who seek to dictate how we should conduct our lives. And this goes so much wider than just the EU.
In 2010, the WHO published a Technical Manual on Tobacco Tax Administration. Remember, these are not elected politicians, nor are they well-respected international economists. In a surprising display of devious calculation, it advises governments on how to maximise the tax benefits of persecuting smokers in their nations, and states:
“This win-win result of reducing consumption and increasing revenues should be embraced during this period of economic hardship, when governments face increasing needs to find new ways to fund spending, particularly for health care.”
Unfortunately, as governments have discovered, this sort of policy does not result in a ‘win-win’ at all. Increasing tobacco taxes does not increase tax revenues; it merely increases the smuggling.
In February 2011, the Irish government published its research Economics of Tobacco: Modelling the Market for Cigarettes in Ireland, which suggests:
“Increasing the taxation of cigarettes in Ireland no longer carries the combined benefits of better public health and higher revenue for the public finances that would have arisen from such increases in the past.”
In layman’s terms, if you push the taxes too high, smokers will no longer pay for legitimate cigarettes, but will buy the illegally smuggled cigarettes since these are cheaper. A graphic illustration of this is provided by the Laffer curve:
The UK HMRC published its own research this year, Measuring Tax Gaps 2012, which rather optimistically tries to suggest that revenue losses to the illicit market share for both cigarettes and hand-rolled tobacco are steadily falling:

but the reality is succinctly put in their key findings:
“The illicit market share for cigarettes was estimated to be 9 per cent in 2010-11, with associated revenue losses of £1.2 billion.”
For hand-rolled tobacco, it was 38%, with associated revenue losses of £660 million.
At least Ireland’s Revenue Commissioners are honest enough to confirm that:
“cigarettes remain a sizeable source of exchequer funding. While it may be desirable from a public health perspective to abolish smoking, the €1bn in excise revenue from tobacco would be a significant loss from the fiscal perspective.”
The WHO’s Technical Manual goes on to suggest that:
“Finally, it provides a list of best practices that will help maximize the public health benefits of higher tobacco taxes while producing new tax revenues for at least the short- to medium-terms.”
Perhaps this goes some way towards explaining why the WHO seems intent on keeping smokers trapped in the ‘quit or die’ cycle, but whatever it is, transparency doesn’t make it any easier to swallow.
Today, the WHO has a 6-point stated agenda, which includes:
“4. Harnessing research, information and evidence
Evidence provides the foundation for setting priorities, defining strategies, and measuring results. WHO generates authoritative health information, in consultation with leading experts, to set norms and standards, articulate evidence-based policy options and monitor the evolving global heath situation.” (Our emphasis.)
However, at this very moment, the WHO is holding its 5^th Conference of the Parties to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) and, rather than ensuring that all the “leading experts” they need are there to assist them, they have closed the public gallery to any and all representatives from the Tobacco Industry (despite the fact that, historically at least, the Tobacco Industry has provided more meaningful scientific research evidence than the Pharmaceutical Industry can be credited with, and don’t get me started on the pharma-funded Tobacco Control movement, whose ‘science’ brings science into disrepute!).
Furthermore, it seems they have also excluded Interpol from the public gallery. Effectively, they are trying to make policy decisions – despite being unelected and unqualified to do so – which will affect every citizen in the world, behind closed doors and without reference to anyone who could tame their obsession to eradicate tobacco (while, of course, protecting the tax revenues). Transparency very, very thickly veiled. They are not even following their own stated agenda!
Clive Bates, former director of ASH UK clearly recognises the risks inherent in this type of gathering. He published an open letter to the delegates attending the COP5 meeting, and urged them to properly consider tobacco harm reduction as a necessary strategy for public health. He urges them to:
“First do no harm – please do not agree to regulations, internationally or domestically, that deny smokers access to ways of taking nicotine with greatly reduced risk. This misguided prohibitionist agenda would be harmful to health, highly unethical and amount to support for the cigarette industry.”
As is so often the case, the comments make for very interesting reading – and from a particularly high calibre of contributors. In a recent interview, Clive Bates expresses himself on this issue far better than I can:
“I’m incredibly frustrated by some of the health groups. They’ve taken a cavalier attitude to the evidence and ethics of harm reduction, and seem to show no empathy or concern for the people they are supposedly trying to help. It is as if they value their anti-tobacco industry credentials more than doing something about cancer, lung and heart disease. If you swear a fight to the death with Big Tobacco, you will be treated kindly by politicians, the media, funders and the public. But if you care about health, and I mean really care, there are some tougher choices and trade-offs to make about reducing the harm caused by tobacco.”
Expediency trumps virtue; blind adherence to dogma trumps public health; and obfuscation trumps transparency. Nothing will change until the issues exposed by the emphasis on transparency are addressed, and there are consequences for such immoral behaviour.
As Clive Bates said, in the comments on his open letter:
“Unfortunately, the FCTC meetings act a bit like an insular echo chamber, and those shouting loudest are often the ones least attached to the right science and ethics on this issue.”
It is time for an injection of realism: there is a need to move beyond the machinations of the anti-tobacco movement and bring the focus sharply back onto readily achievable public health outcomes. Everyone involved in public health – from volunteers in the charities sector, through elected government ministers, to overpaid unelected delegates on their 5-star sabbatical in Seoul – must move away from being dogmatically anti-Tobacco and refocus exclusively on being pro-Public Health.


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