"Clive Bates has just published another brilliant post. It's a pity smokers have no Clive Bates!" writes Vapingpoint Liz.
The gist of her post, published yesterday, is that Clive is expertly picking apart the junk science surrounding e-cigarettes and smokers need someone like that on their side too.
Says Liz:
I wish someone would question the dodgy science about second hand smoke too - in defence of smokers and the warped fracturing of society that THAT dodgy science has caused. The anti smoking ideology, and the massive worldwide industry it has now become, needs to be unpicked piece by piece on the basis of the faulty science it has promoted.
Clive is a shrewd, sincere and intelligent campaigner. I have a lot of respect for him but I must point out – not for the first time – that the idolatry (#ImWithClive) that greets his every word is ironic because in my opinion he must take some share of the blame for the culture of intolerance that has swept the nation with regard to smoking and, by association, nicotine.
As director of ASH Clive was no stranger to fear mongering about passive smoking. Few of the allegations made much sense and during his time in charge the threat of second hand smoke was repeatedly debunked.
In April 2002, for example, following an exhaustive six-month investigation during which written and oral evidence was put forward by ASH, Cancer Research and Forest, among others, the Greater London Assembly Investigative Committee on Smoking in Public Places declined to recommend any further restrictions on smoking in public places.
According to Angie Bray, a joint author of the report:
The assembly spent six months investigating whether a smoking ban should be imposed in public places in London. After taking evidence from all sides, including health experts, it was decided that the evidence gathered did not justify a total smoking ban.
For Liz to suggest smokers need a Clive Bates ignores the fact that for several years there were people fighting the junk science on passive smoking. Sadly Clive wasn't one of them.
Those genuine freedom fighters included Ralph Harris who was chairman of Forest from 1987 until his death in 2006; Gian Turci; and Joe Jackson.
In 2005 Ralph (aka Lord Harris of High Cross) wrote a booklet published by Forest called 'Smoking Out The Truth: A Challenge to the Chief Medical Officer'. It began:
Hardly a week is allowed to pass without some new scare story about the perils of 'passive smoking'. One of the latest, based on an experiment in an Italian garage, is that tobacco smoke is more lethal than car exhaust fumes. Another was that 'passive smoking' is even more dangerous that direct smoking ...
As a lifelong pipe man I have increasingly come to mistrust the dogmatic vehemence with which the stop smoking (SS) brigade recycle their denunciations of 'passive smoking'. Certainly, smoke may be irritating or even upsetting to sensitive bystanders, as are popcorn, perfume and garlic on crowded tube trains. But lethal?
Despite a barrage of media publicity most non-smokers in my experience remained unmoved by dire warnings that tobacco smoke – massively diluted in the atmosphere – could actually kill them. It is this common sense implausibility that has goaded the tight network of anti-smoking lobbyists – ever more shrilly – to demonise ETS and brandish mounting estimates of its death toll.
I also have in front of me a report commissioned and published in 2005 by Forest. Entitled 'Prejudice and Propaganda: The Truth About Passive Smoking', it was researched and written by Gian Turci who loved nothing more than debunking junk science.
'Prejudice and Propaganda' began with some questions and answers about environmental tobacco smoke (ETS). For example:
Q: Why is the passive smoking argument so important to non-smokers?
A: Before the anti-smoking movement created what Dr Ken Denson of the Thame Thrombosis and Haemostasis Research Foundation called "the myth of passive smoking" smokers were largely tolerated by non-smokers. The general attitude was "They're only harming themselves." Anti-smokers therefore decided to argue that smokers were harming others around them which of course makes smoking "socially unacceptable".
It's a clever tactic and it's working. By constantly giving the impression (without ever proving) that ETS is a serious cause of ill health among non-smokers the anti-smoking lobby has been able to increase people's intolerance of smoking and deprive smokers of the important argument of free choice. In short: the anti-smoking movement has found passive smoking to be such an effective propaganda tool that objective science cannot be allowed to get in the way.
Clive was of course an active member of that anti-smoking movement.
Gian Turci's report featured a systematic examination of the evidence on the effects of passive smoking. In particular it listed all the studies available to 2004 that looked at the risk of lung cancer from ETS.
Having demonstrated the weakness of the antis' argument, Gian concluded:
The risk of getting lung cancer from passive smoking is minute in comparison to the risk of getting breast cancer from wearing a bra or leukaemia from eating twelve or more hot dogs each month or, more seriously, prostate cancer from drinking red wine.
He added:
Where does it all end? Should we forbid, control and regulate everything?
Sadly Gian is no longer around to answer his own question but the desire to "forbid, control and regulate" e-cigarettes was clearly inspired by the war on tobacco.
Another person fighting the good fight a decade ago was Joe Jackson. Joe may be a musician but I would argue he was as knowledgeable about the risks of smoking and second hand smoke as Clive is about the risks of vaping and e-cigarettes.
'The Smoking Issue' was published (but not commissioned) by Forest in 2004. An updated version, Smoke, Lies and the Nanny State, appeared in 2007.
Joe prefers the revised version. I like the original best. It was succinct, brilliantly written and made a powerful case. It began:
A couple of years ago I considered giving up my own moderate enjoyment of tobacco because of the constant barrage of horrific statistics. But anti-smoking propaganda in the USA (I was living mostly in New York) seemed so overblown, so hysterical, that I became sceptical.
So instead of giving up smoking, I started doing research. At first my mind was pretty open; I half expected to find that smoking was even worse than I thought and I decided that, since I wasn't a hardcore nicotine junkie, I could live without it.
Instead I've been astonished, again and again, by how flimsy much of the anti-smoking evidence really is. By now I'm absolutely convinced that the dangers of smoking (and 'secondhand smoke' in particular) are being greatly exaggerated for a number of reasons, many of which have less to do with health than with politics, money and fashion.
Copies of all three publications were delivered to MPs and the then Health Secretary John Reid. I know Reid shared our scepticism about the effects of passive smoking because Ralph Harris and I were in a private meeting with him when his chief advisor also questioned the evidence and Reid nodded his head in agreement.
Prior to writing 'The Smoking Issue' Joe had written articles for the New York Times and Daily Telegraph that attracted huge attention. He appeared on the Today programme and was invited to share a platform with John Reid at the 2004 Labour conference in Brighton, so you could say he was "a Clive Bates for smokers".
Unfortunately we were fighting opponents who were more than happy to use junk science to further their goal of a smoke free society. Social media such as Facebook and Twitter didn't exist so it was also very difficult to develop a groundswell of support among smokers or the general public who were largely apathetic.
More recently of course Chris Snowdon has done a great job highlighting the junk science that surrounds smoking and vaping. I'm thinking specifically of the smoking ban/heart attack "miracle" but I could list many more examples.
The great thing about Chris is that he exposes junk science wherever he finds it; he's not selective.
For avoidance of doubt I'm not questionng Clive's sincerity or his commitment to harm reduction, which is a perfectly honourable cause. I appreciate too that unlike many tobacco control campaigners he's not driven by a visceral hatred of the tobacco industry.
My point, quite simply, is this: Clive's canonisation by the vaping community ignores two important issues:
One, he helped create today's nicotine-intolerant society. Two, he supported questionable science when it suited him but when it doesn't he cries "foul".
Today he's doing a valuable job for vapers and it would be wrong not to acknowledge that or offer the vaping community our full support.
It's a pity though that our support for vapers isn't reciprocated by the likes of Clive Bates who rails against excessive regulation for smokeless tobacco yet supports both the smoking ban and plain packaging (for which there is still no evidence that it will reduce smoking rates).
I don't expect the level of support we happily offer vapers, merely a recognition that millions of adults choose to smoke tobacco knowing the health risks and they don't deserve to be bullied or stigmatised into quitting.
Is that too much to ask?
See also: Where is the empathy for smokers who don't want to quit?.
I also recommend this interview with Joe Jackson in the Telegraph in 2008 that refers to 'Smoke, Lies and the Nanny State' which the interviewer describes as "thoroughly researched and passionately argued".
A Clive Bates for smokers? We had one. Sadly most people weren't listening.