As Burn-Murdoch points out, one in eight Americans has tried the new generation of weight-loss drugs and ‘the decline [in obesity] is steepest among college graduates, the group most likely to be using them’. Moreover, we know from randomised controlled trials that using them leads to ‘substantial, sustained weight loss’. Semaglutide and its competitors have done what all the sugar taxes, fat taxes, advertising restrictions and warning labels have failed to do elsewhere in the world – they have actually reduced the rate of obesity. ...

Still, at least tirzepatide does what it is supposed to do. It will be interesting to see how the introduction of an effective but expensive anti-obesity drug fares in comparison to cheap but useless nanny-state policies, such as banning ‘junk food’ advertising and stopping fish-and-chip shops from opening. Has there ever been such stark exposure of the public-health grift?