That BBC Breakfast interview
Monday, October 12, 2015 at 9:06 Here's my interview on BBC Breakfast yesterday.
It was in response to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Smoking and Health (run by ASH) calling for another substantial hike in tobacco tax (inflation plus five per cent).
See Tobacco tax increase urged by parliamentary group (BBC News).
Short interviews like this involve spur of the moment judgement calls so there were other points I could have made but didn't, but here are some quotes, including one for my vaping buddies:
"This would be economic madness. We know the impact of raising tax on tobacco and it drives people to the black market."
"The last Chancellor who introduced an inflation plus five per cent increase on tobacco was Gordon Brown and he had to jump off the so-called tobacco escalator because it wasn't working."
"Many people enjoy smoking and you mustn't use taxation as a form of social engineering to try and coerce people to give up."
"The most successful smoking cessation aid of recent years has been the electronic cigarette. That's driven by the free market. It's got nothing to do with government."
A soundbite from the interview was used later in this BBC News report:
Reader Comments (3)
So, the NHS faces a £30bn shortfall in funding - and therein lies the real reason to screw more cash from smokers who keep the alleged service afloat.
We pay far more for the NHS than anyone else and yet we are the ones most excluded from it and discriminated when it comes to treatment. So far, I am still waiting for my four decades of product tax to be spent on so called "smoking related illnesses". I want my money back so I can take care of my own health in a climate where I will be treated equally.
I buy abroad. It costs me less than £300 to smoke for a year. The same would cost me £1,500 IF I bought in the UK so I save that cash not spent on tax here for a nice little holiday at the end of the year. I buy in a country that, unlike the UK, doesn't treat me as scum for no other reason than I'm not dead, I'm not ill, and I won't quit.
Why should I invest or support the UK in tobacco tax where I am treated as a second class consumer? With display bans, I am not allowed to know what I'm buying, not allowed to compare prices, and soon I won't even be allowed any product information nor will I be permitted to know which brand, or type of tobacco I will be smoking when the thuggish plain packing comes in.
Neither do I wish to support the thugs in tobacco control whose only motivation is hate to ensure my social and health exclusion from the country, plus forcing me into criminalisation one ban at a time. This is not about health. Only the stupid or gullible believe it is.
Incidentally, I know you are a vaper fan but please be careful not to force us into the trap of vape, quit or else. Vaping is not the answer for a lot of smokers, certainly not me and lifelong smokers like me, who just don't like it and don't see the point.
Bottom line is vapers are ex-smokers not smokers and smokers are not vapers and we have little in common - certainly not as much as some assume.
Good interview Simon. Well said.
Pat, I would point out that I am a vaper, an ex smoker, whilst I see your point, I would argue that quite a few vaping advocates fully support smokers rights, forest and strongly oppose the draconian bullshit foisted upon smokers by the fascists in public health.
I certainly applaud your approach, and hope many more smokers follow your lead and seek any way possible to avoid paying these ridiculous duties that fund further bullying and stigmatisation of smokers whilst making no effort to support smokers who may decide they wish to quit, never mind looking at ways of actually accepting peoples free right to happily enjoy a perfectly legal passtime.
I would believe you Graham if it wasn't for the fact that I too often see vapers posting or writing articles patronising us (even when they mean well) and calling for us to introduced to ecigs. Of course I don't have a problem with any smoker who chooses to quit with a ecig but I am very vary of it being promoted as some form of miracle product that will save poor wretched souls like me.
I do object to smokers who smoke using ecigs in public instead of fighting smoking bans and all the junk science and scam stats that justify them, and I might be more persuaded that vapers are on the smoker's side if they stood squarely with us and fought for the right to smoke above all else, instead of trying to make clear that they are not us and their choice of product is not smoking. I still believe very passionately and deeply that if vapers fight for smoking then it follows naturally that they have a right to vape as they have a right to drink alcohol, fizzy drinks, eat sugar or stuff 10 McDonalds burgers in their mouths in one go.
Distinguishing between us means it will become accepted that smoker's can or should be denied choice and then it follows that vapers can and should be denied choice too. Anyone who thinks just because an ecig is steam not smoke means the product won't be attacked should by now realise that as far as smokerphobics are concerned, anything that looks like smoking is smoking and they will fight it and those who use it by fair means or foul - usually foul as we have discovered in the decades that we have been fighting anti-smokerism.
When the chips are down, and, say, vaping is allowed indoors, how many vapers would then fight for smokers rights? Sadly, I think most will take the "I'm alright Jack, fuck you, and if you don't like it buy an ecig" approach because that is human nature.
I've also been told many times by vapers, and perhaps you think it too, the fight for ecigs is not the same as the fight for smokers rights and there we part ways and there in a nutshell is why neither of us will win any ground.
I for one certainly won't ever fight for ecigs and then find myself pushed into third class citizenship because I've smoked a lifetime and have no intention of quitting.