Feature article in today's Independent:
It includes quotes by me, Joe Jackson and another Forest supporter, Oscar-winning screenwriter Sir Ronald Harwood who took part in our recent Voices of Freedom debate, 'Civil liberties: up in smoke'.
Do have a read.
Update: I really don't understand some of the complaints about this article. I was more than happy to be interviewed by Nick Duerden and I have no problem with the published article.
I may disagree with some aspects of it but if we only talk to journalists who share our views or give us exactly what we want, opportunities to reach a wider audience will be few and far between.
Nick could have stitched us up and portrayed the tobacco or "pro-smoking" lobby as a bunch of wild-eyed eccentrics. (Believe me, there were one or two who fitted that description at the House of Commons last week.)
He didn't. He took the trouble to interview no fewer than three champions of smokers' rights. He listened and he reported what we had to say. He described me (the director of Forest) as "an entirely reasonable and seemingly sane man". In my line of business that's probably the nicest thing he could have said.
He threw in some other stuff too, some of it personal and some of it contentious (from our perspective), but that's the nature of an essay like this. What matters is the bigger picture.
Frankly, I think we've come out of this feature extremely well. As I write there are 412 comments on the Independent website, the majority (I haven't read them all) supportive of smokers.
In the current anti-smoking climate, I call that a result.