Reject censorship and paternalism, vote for choice and personal responsibility
Monday, May 18, 2015 at 11:08 Here's my speech to the Oxford Union, in response to the proposition 'This House believes that the tobacco industry is morally reprehensible’.
A couple of sections were dropped because I was running out of time (rookie mistake) but I've included them here because they strengthen the argument:
Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, this side of the House fully accepts the health risks of smoking. In fact, there can’t be a sane person above the age of 16, and possibly younger, who isn’t well aware of the health risks of smoking tobacco.
Historically, as far as health is concerned, mistakes have been made on all sides. For decades most people were ignorant of the health risks including governments and the medical profession. Let’s not forget that cigarettes were once handed out to the armed forces while doctors were more than happy to promote certain brands of cigarette.
Even if it was ever true, the description of the tobacco industry as morally reprehensible is decades out of date. The tobacco industry doesn’t hide the potential health risks of smoking. On Imperial Tobacco’s website, under ‘Smoking and Health’, you will find the following:
Smoking is a cause of serious diseases in smokers, including lung cancer, heart disease and emphysema. We agree that governments and public health authorities around the world should provide clear and consistent messages about the health risks of smoking. Adults should be guided by those messages when deciding whether or not to smoke. Children should never smoke.
Similar messages are on other tobacco companies’ websites.
When the opposition talks about the tobacco industry they are talking about thousands of people, decent, honourable men and women. In Britain alone it is estimated that 5,000 people are directly employed by the industry. A further 80,000 people have jobs that depend on tobacco retailers, packaging companies, logistics and so on.
Across Africa there are hundreds of thousands of small farmers who make a living selling this "reprehensible" crop. Then there are the hundreds of factory workers who process tobacco and turn it into tobacco products. The next step is the retailers, thousands of small retailers who sell tobacco across the UK.
If people are going to make moral judgements on the industry then you are making a judgement on everyone in the tobacco chain, including government. In the UK, on average, 86 per cent of the price of a packet of cigarettes is tax. British American Tobacco alone estimates that it contributed 30 billion in excise globally last year. This is eight times the group’s profits after tax.
So let’s be clear, the biggest benefactors from smoking are governments not Big Tobacco. Governments and industry are partners in the tobacco business and governments are the senior partners.
I’m not here to represent the tobacco industry, and I will come on to their absence later, but I do want to make the following points:
One, tobacco is a legal, highly regulated product. The idea that the tobacco industry can do whatever it likes is laughable. It is one of the most heavily regulated industries in the world.
Two, regardless of the health risks, what the tobacco industry manufactures and sells is a quality product that has undergone years of research and development. Compare that with the smuggled or counterfeit cigarettes widely available on the black market in Britain today. According to reports ingredients have included human excrement, asbestos, mould and dead flies.
Three, the modern tobacco industry is spending billions on the development of smokeless tobacco and other harm reduction products like e-cigarettes. Does that sound like a “morally reprehensible” industry? What is morally reprehensible and irresponsible are the policies advocated by tobacco control campaigners: extreme taxation, for example, has resulted in a black market awash with counterfeit or unregulated tobacco.
And what about the consumer, the people Forest represents? Tobacco is consumed by approximately 25 per cent of adults worldwide. In the UK 20 per cent of the adult population smoke; that’s not a small minority – that’s a fifth of the adult population. Are we seriously supposed to think ten million adults in the UK alone are in thrall to some evil, immoral industry?
Tobacco control activists are quick to accuse the tobacco industry of profiting from and feeding people’s addiction as if consenting adults have no say in the matter. Ladies and gentlemen, smoking is a lifestyle choice. No-one is arguing it’s good for you but it’s YOUR choice. Yes, it’s potentially addictive but for most people it’s a habit and there’s a big difference between habit and addiction.
Like it or not smoking brings pleasure to a great many people. The tobacco industry doesn’t create demand, it meets demand. Smoking was around long before the tobacco industry. David Hockney, one of Britain’s greatest artists, is an ardent smoker. He smokes for pleasure and to relieve stress. Hockney has attended several Forest events and I’ve never heard him blame the tobacco industry for his nicotine dependency.
Yes, there are smokers who wish they’d never started or would like to quit. But lots of people smoke because they enjoy it. It’s not something you hear very often these days because it doesn’t suit the anti-smoking zeitgeist. Hence a lot of people are “shy smokers” in the same way a lot of voters are “shy Conservatives”.
Anti-smoking campaigners argue that the tobacco industry targets children. The truth is many children like to experiment. Many will experiment with alcohol. A small minority will experiment with tobacco. It’s called growing up. You cannot blame the tobacco industry for the fact that some children choose to experiment.
Tobacco companies have also been accused of deliberately targeting women with so-called "pretty" packaging. This is not only patronising to women it’s deeply sexist. But don’t take my word for it. Here’s what Claire Fox, director of the Institute of Ideas and a regular panellist on Radio 4’s The Moral Maze, had to say:
The World Health Organisation once accused tobacco companies of “exploiting women’s struggle for equal rights by creating the impression that tobacco makes women confident … more in control of their destiny”. What a cheek. It’s the public health brigade who deny women the right to control our lives, by campaigns aimed at limiting our free choices by regimenting us all into dull, miserablist conformity.
If the tobacco industry is morally reprehensible what about other industries – food and drink, for example? Drinking alcohol can lead to alcoholism; it can lead to binge drinking. Who’s responsible, the manufacturer or the consumer? Sugary drinks and convenience food can lead, we are told, to obesity. Again, who’s “morally” responsible, the manufacturer or the consumer?
And that’s the problem. Tobacco control is no longer about public health. It’s a moral crusade, like the old temperance movement. We’re far too quick to pass moral judgements on people and even industries we don’t agree with. Disagree by all means but what makes the tobacco control industry morally superior to those of us who believe in freedom of choice and personal responsibility?
In my experience most of the attacks on the tobacco industry have nothing to do with health. It’s politics, pure and simple. In Britain most of the campaigners who attack the tobacco industry work in the public sector, or their campaign group is funded with public money, our money. They represent a new form of socialism – lifestyle socialism – and the enemy is big business.
I mentioned the absence of the tobacco industry from tonight’s debate. I have no quarrel with the Union because I know they invited a representative of Imperial Tobacco to take part. However, as readers of Cherwell [the Oxford student newspaper] will know, the Union came under enormous pressure to withdraw that invitation.
Dr Vaughan Rees, a lecturer at Harvard University commented, “The nature of the debate itself is deeply disturbing. The tobacco industry has a history of engaging in deceptive behaviour to further their interests while improving their public image. More recently, they have attempted to adopt principles of ‘corporate social responsibility’ and I see this debate as part of that effort.”
Deborah Arnott, chief executive of the fake charity Action on Smoking and Health, said: “The tobacco industry truly is morally reprehensible and I find it hard to believe that any students with half a brain could come to any other conclusion.”
So there you are, ladies and gentlemen, God has spoken. If you vote against this motion tonight you only have half a brain.
What is morally reprehensible is not the fact that the tobacco industry wanted to engage with young adults and have a serious debate, it’s the fact that the tobacco control industry, represented by our opponents here tonight, regularly tries to ‘no platform’ a legitimate industry from defending itself both in public and in a private.
Ladies and gentlemen, the underlying assumption of the motion is that the tobacco industry has huge power. I would suggest that after 15 years of almost constant regulation – bans on tobacco advertising and sponsorship, the prohibition of smoking in the workplace including every pub and private members’ club, a ban on tobacco vending machines, a ban on the display of tobacco in shops, a ban on smoking in private vehicles carrying children and, most recently, a ban on branding, all the power lies in the hands of the modern temperance movement.
I urge you to reject this motion, reject paternalism, reject censorship, and vote for freedom of choice and personal responsibility.
(See also my previous post, Warning: this post contains a gratuitous reference to Jimmy Savile.)
Reader Comments (7)
I found that to be a rather weak argument which for me, you lost in the first paragraph by stating that no-one denies the harm caused by tobacco.
In fact there are many ridiculous claims made by the Tobacco Control Industry regarding tobacco harm that could easily be denied. Maybe pointing some of these out would help show who is really the most reprehensible here.
It's a good speech, you should have won but Bucko is right. The smoking and health issue is not black and white. There hasn't been enough independent and unbiased research to say one way or the other for sure, but if true that smoking kills (full stop) then why are so many living into old age - especially it seems those who began, as I did, as children?
Once the ideological politics are taking out of this issue then the public will be better served and better informed.
As for this event, it lacks any credibility given that it began from a prejudicial stance with the refusal to hear the other side of the debate and from the industry clearly believed to be morally reprehensible before anyone spoke given the ban on industry representing its side of the argument.
I too think the first 2 paragraphs were unnecessary. The fact that tobacco companies parrot so openly on their websites the false anti smoking propaganda is a big PR and even legal mistake in my opinion. How can you take seriously an industry who practically shouts 'I'm selling poison, but you should decide for yourself if you want to use it on you or not'. I've researched many documents and court cases from the tobacco library and for the life of me I can't understand why they've chosen to shoot themselves in the foot like this.
In fact, there can’t be a sane person above the age of 16, and possibly younger, who isn’t well aware of the health risks of smoking tobacco.
It would seem, then, that I am insane.
I'm very aware of the wild and hysterical claims emanating from Tobacco Control about the supposed health risks of smoking tobacco, but then as Mandy Rice-Davies so memorably quipped (I paraphrase): "Well, they would say that, wouldn't they...".
Indeed they would. Their gravy-train relies on hyperbolic scare stories and photoshopped medico-porn to keep the funding rolling in. The truth is anathema to them. You only have to look at the way they created the myth of SHS (despite there being no significant risk factors, and despite the fact that they knew there were no significant risk factors) to see how morally corrupt they are.
And yet, Simon, the opening sentences of your speech fully endorsed their scurrilous propaganda. You will never win the argument like that.
Anti-smoking is an ideology; one whose moral code is "the end justifies the means". Facts are just playthings, only to be used if they serve the agenda, and even then presented in such a way that distorts their true meaning. The health impact of smoking tobacco is far from clear-cut. What we are indoctrinated with is all conjecture and fantasy.
"Smoking Kills", they say. Maybe so, but then so does life. The question is "When"? I've been smoking for over fifty years, and I'm clearly not dead, so obviously the statement "Smoking Kills" is patently false. A lie. One of the many.
Some of the health risks of smoking have been exaggerated, sometimes wildly, I agree. However there was no time to debate the nuances of smoking and health and to argue that smoking poses little or no risk to the health of the smoker would be madness and counter-productive, especially in the current climate.
Had any member of our debating team (there were three of us) argued that smoking isn't potentially harmful or addictive we would have lost the debate by a huge margin because few would have believed us.
If you want to engage in any sort of dialogue about smoking with the average man or woman (including students) you have to concede that smoking is not a risk-free activity, and move on. The degree of risk is open to question but there wasn't time to go into that because there were other points I wanted to make that I felt would win us more votes.
As for passive smoking, I too am extremely sceptical about the risks of 'secondhand' smoke but you have to stick to the subject of the debate and the proposition was 'This House believes the tobacco industry is morally reprehensible' not 'This House believes the tobacco control industry is morally reprehensible'. That's a different debate altogether.
I wish that EVERY politician could read and UNDERSTAND the valid points you have made. However, perverse nature would cause most to reject most of what you have said - others would refuse to read it on "head in the sand" principle !
Keep pushing Simon, please !
I would have started by comparing smoking to love - neither are for the faint of heart. However, that probably applies just as much to the mental resilience a smoker needs in his armoury these days.
Whilst there may be some who succumb to the pleasures of smoking, let's move the focus away from those individuals and concentrate on the many who have breezed past the average life expectancy age.
I also find the submissive statements found on tobacco companies websites an embarrassment and what have they done to help their customers counteract the constant oppression they've been subjected to over the last couple of decades?
Also, once one tastes unprocessed tobacco, you realise how second rate most of their products have become.
There again, when an industry ends up with less than a handful of major players, quality and choice are invariably the main casualties.