Two unrelated stories

Item the First: The WHO seeks a comprehensive ban on tobacco advertising in the Western Pacific region that includes New Zealand.*

Before Item the Second, recall anti-tobacco campaigner Jack Banzhaf's 1991 dismissal of slippery slope arguments:

"They use the 'slippery slope' argument. 'My God, if they can do this to smokers today they can do this to people who eat Haagen-Dazs ice cream or whatever.'"

Item the Second: The University of Otago's Janet Hoek wants New Zealand to implement plain packaging for soft drinks. The anti-tobacco industry used to warn that there was no slippery slope from anti-tobacco proposals to other products; tobacco just wasn't like other commodities. Hoek writes:

Tobacco is a very unambiguous product because it is uniquely harmful - some foods are closely analogous to tobacco as they offer no nutritional benefit and the research evidence suggests changes in food supply, particularly the widespread availability of inexpensive, palatable, energy dense food have contributed to, if not at least partly caused, the rising prevalence of obesity.

Hoek warns about a different kind of slippery slope: she says the food industry has been adopting tobacco-industry style tactics to delay government regulation.

* I think it's inframarginal for NZ.

Watching the slide down the slippery slope

For now, it's just a proposal from the New Zealand healthists.

Health officials worried about an obesity epidemic want fast-food advertising dropped from public property, including bus shelters, and are questioning fast-food and soft-drink sponsorship of public events.

They have also raised concerns over the lack of political power to stop fast-food restaurants being built near schools and in poor areas.

What about McDonald's sponsorship of things like Ronald McDonald House? Says Auckland Health Board Clinical Director Robyn Toomath:

"We've reached that purist approach with tobacco, completely hardline. There's no way in the world we would have a Rothman's Centre for Kids in Hospital. You start off saying we won't promote the sale of goods, then the next step is [not allowing] sponsorship of these companies."

McDonald's, Rothman's, no logical difference. No slippery slopes, 'till you're close to the bottom.

For a more reasonable take on McDonald's and the miracles wrought by careful supply chain management, consult Blunt Object [language warning].

No slippery slopes, nothing to see here

Never a slippery slope to be found.

The Health Select Committee, which is to hold an inquiry into the UK Government’s recently published alcohol strategy, will look into a series of proposals including plain packaging for alcohol sold in shops, similar to a plan being considered for cigarette packets. Yesterday MPs were warned that removing well-known trademark images such as Johnnie Walker’s striding man and the Famous Grouse on bottles, could damage the Scotch whisky industry, which is worth £4 billion in exports alone. Labelling of alcoholic products is currently reserved to the UK Government, which means that if Westminster eventually agreed a ban it would affect shops and products across the whole of the UK, including Scotland. It would hit all parts of the alcohol industry, but whisky producers believe it would be particularly damaging for them.

Chris Snowdon helpfully points to assurances that they're not planning plain packaging for food.

As I'd said a couple years ago, in a different context:

I always find it depressing how folks like NORML think beating up on alcohol makes marijuana legalization more likely rather than just making for tighter regs. The hospitality industry lobbies for more restrictions on supermarket-bought alcohol to boost sales in bars; small brewers push for more punitive tax rates on big brewers... the only winners are the healthists who get support bit by bit for more regulations on everything. It's like a bunch of folks on the scaffolds complaining that the other guy's noose isn't quite tight enough. Y'all might instead direct your attention to the hangman sometime and try helping each other cut those ropes.