Defending smoking and vaping
Wednesday, September 21, 2016 at 14:53 I'm told that a leading vaping advocate had a serious temper tantrum last week after I had the temerity to write:
Forest is a perfectly legitimate commentator on vapers' rights because an increasing number of our supporters smoke and vape. Or, to put it another way, Forest is the voice of the dual user.
I haven't seen his rant (which is on YouTube, apparently) because life's too short and I'm far too busy defending smokers (and vapers) to give a hoot.
Thankfully there are many vapers who do welcome Forest's support. If you're one of them (and even if you're not) you might like to read the transcript of an interview I did yesterday on TalkRadio. The presenter was Paul Ross:
Paul Ross: Now here’s the story we’ve been hearing about in the news all morning. The number of smokers in England has dropped to the lowest level since records began. There are now apparently more ex and former smokers than there are people smoking still. Public Health England says they are double the number of ex smokers compared to current ones, a fifth of people who tried to quit last year succeeded. We’re now joined by Simon Clark, director of Forest, described by some people as a pro smoking lobby. How would you describe your organisation, Simon?
Simon Clark: Pro choice, Paul.
Paul Ross: So is this news a cause for celebration or are you concerned that actually there’s too much propaganda against choice?
Simon Clark: Well, I think smokers have been harshly treated over many years now. Tobacco’s a completely legal product, and, of course, we have a comprehensive smoking ban and we’ve had a raft of legislation in recent years, including the display ban and, most recently, plain packaging, which are designed to denormalise what is a perfectly normal habit for millions of people. But we certainly don’t promote smoking. All we say is, look, if people choose to make an informed choice to smoke then they should be allowed to do so without undue harassment. We’re not against campaigns like Stoptober, which has been launched today, which is designed to help people who want to quit. And the good news is that Stoptober is this year highlighting the use of e-cigarettes [which] come within our domain because we support choice
Paul Ross: These are the so-called vaping cigarettes, the e-cigarettes?
Simon Clark: Yes, that’s right, and they’ve become increasingly popular in recent years, and the great thing is they’re really a free market solution to the issue of quitting smoking because we’ve seen a lot of public money wasted on many anti smoking campaigns over many years but the great thing with e-cigarettes is that it gives control to the smoker. They’re not being asked to go along to some local stop smoking service where they’re being encouraged to use nicotine patches and gum and all the rest of it. This is something that mimics the act of smoking.
Paul Ross: Isn’t the problem, though, that Forest has, and you have with things like nicotine patches and gums, that it doesn’t give money to the tobacco industry whereas vaping does?
Simon Clark: Well, that’s not really our issue. Yes, we’re funded by the tobacco industry but we certainly don’t represent them. I think the great thing about e-cigarettes, as I say, is that they mimic the act of smoking, but the important thing about them is they’re not just a quit smoking tool. They are actually something that people enjoy in their own right, because people have got to get away from this idea that nicotine itself is harmful. Nicotine is no more harmful than caffeine ...
Paul Ross: Which can be harmful, caffeine can be harmful, but so can nicotine.
Simon Clark: Well, again I think you’d have to drink a heck of a lot of coffee ... with e-cigarettes we don’t know about the long term impact, but all the evidence so far suggests that e-cigarettes are much safer than cigarettes. But again it all comes down to choice, and the reality is there are millions of people who don’t want to quit because they enjoy smoking. They still prefer a cigarette to an e-cigarette, and I think we should respect people’s choices.
Paul Ross: Do you think there’ll come a time in this country when smoking cigarettes is banned completely?
Simon Clark: No, because I think, I would hope, that government has learned from the prohibition of alcohol in the United States last century and realised that it simply doesn’t work. You simply drive the activity or the product underground and the criminal gangs move in. We already see this, in fact, with some anti-tobacco policies, like, for example, the punitive taxation on cigarettes, which has driven a lot of people to the black market. The only people who benefit in those circumstances are the criminal gangs who make huge amounts of money from smuggled cigarettes and, of course, not just smuggled cigarettes but also counterfeit cigarettes. So banning a product is totally counterproductive.
Paul Ross: And when you said in the past that money’s been wasted on campaigns, on getting people to go along for meetings and stuff, surely if some, if one person is then convinced to give up smoking and maintains that, if it’s a good and it’s a healthy lifestyle choice for them, that’s not a waste of money, Simon.
Simon Clark: Well, I think it can be when ...
Paul Ross: Not if it saves a life. I’d rather my tax pounds and shillings and pence went to something like that than, for example, buying missiles that we aren’t going to use, thankfully.
Simon Clark: Sure. I think local council budgets are very tight at the moment. Now, we know the number of people using stop smoking services since 2010 has dropped by 51 per cent so I think local authorities have to ask themselves if fewer people are using them should we continue to pump public money into them. And I think the reason a lot of people are no longer using stop smoking services is because people are actually using e-cigarettes. They’re making these decisions for themselves because, I’ll say again, the great thing about e-cigarettes is, it gives control to the user. They don’t feel they’re being lectured. They don’t feel they’re being harassed or coerced in any way. Control is in the hands of the user.
Paul Ross: Well, in fact, you could argue that it’s also prolonging their addiction because it gives them oral gratification and they’re inhaling some form of smoke, so it’s not control.
Simon Clark: You could argue that but again it comes back to this thing that if nicotine itself is no more harmful than caffeine why are we so worried about it? Why are we so worried about this concept of addiction all the time? We hear about people being addicted to chocolate. We hear about people being addicted to all manner of things.
Paul Ross: Yeah, but chocolate doesn’t give you lung cancer and cigarettes do.
Simon Clark: Well, yeah, but I’m talking about e-cigarettes now, not cigarettes.
Paul Ross: Well, that’s what we focus on, addiction, because a cigarette addiction, and that’s what it is, can kill you.
Simon Clark: Yeah, but if you’re trying to get people to switch from cigarettes to e-cigarettes because e-cigarettes appear to be much less harmful than cigarettes, why would you worry if somebody continues to use an e-cigarette over many, many years? Again it comes back to the pleasure principle and I think a lot of anti-smoking campaigners often forget that pleasure is important to people, and e-cigarettes appear to give pleasure to a great deal of people, and if they want to continue using e-cigarettes over many, many years and there’s no evidence that it’s harmful apart from perhaps being a little bit addictive, why is that such an issue?
Paul Ross: Simon, thank you for your time this morning. Simon Clark there, director of Forest, the pro choice, some people call it a pro-smoking lobby, talking to me, Paul Ross, on talkRADIO. In the next hour of the programme we’re hearing from an anti smoking organisation, in fact the anti-smoking organisation, ASH, on this topic. It’s 8.44. It’s TalkRadio. We’ll get you talking.
Reader Comments (6)
Well said Simon. As a smoker, I feel this is a fair account and an honest way to speak about ecigs in comparison to smoking.
If I take issue with anything you said, for both smokers and vapers (they may not agree), is the mention of "user". That falls into the trap of inadvertently describing us as "addicts".
Vapers and smokers are not "users". We are "consumers" of a legal product like any other consumer. However, it is true to say, and a damn good point, that ecigarettes give control to the consumer to make choices that suit them.
"User" is derogatory because it was a term used to describe us by the anti-smoker industry which wanted to create the impression that we are the same kind of "pathetic addict" as an illegal heroin user in their misguided and dangerous quest to equate smoking with a hard drug addiction.
Ross seemed confused.
Sad, that the old lies about smoking and lung cancer keep being drummed into peoples' heads. Of course the zealots have to conflate smoking and vaping and then claim it's all about combatting addiction (another lie). Finally, it's all about saving lies (again questionable). Enforcing social control and tyranny remains popular though...
Shame you couldn't follow up the point 'that’s not a waste of money, Simon.' - 'Not if it saves a life.' ---- how many more lives could be saved if the money was used to treat patients in our cash strapped hospitals?
Simon, I've found that when people try to play the "addiction" card, the best response is to ask them what they think "addiction" is. I have yet to hear a coherent answer, because "addiction" has become a rhetorical totem that people think they can casually rely upon instead of an actual argument.
And further, if "nicotine addiction" is such a crippling affliction, how come nobody's ever starved to death or become homeless so they could keep buying cigarettes?
Nate makes a very pertinent point there, Simon. The whole 'nicotine addict' accusation is thrown around very freely by the antis, but the definition of 'addiction' is thorny, to say the least. I have in my bookmarks list a few academic papers which question the 'nicotine addiction' theory. For example:
The issue of whether to regulate nicotine seems to focus on whether cigarette smoking is considered a voluntary act or whether it is the consequence of an addiction to nicotine and therefore not under the smoker's control. For a behavioral scientist, it is very difficult to reconcile the notion of "voluntary" behavior with the doctrine of empirical determinism. Cause-and-effect figures predominantly in experimental psychology. Behavior is viewed as the inevitable consequence of antecedent conditions, and the notion of free will is usually excluded from scientific consideration. However, upon pondering the question further it is possible to develop an operational definition of "voluntary" that satisfies the general sense conveyed by the layman's use of this term.
Voluntary behavior is considered behavior of choice. In more scientific terms, the behavior might be considered under the normal control of multiple factors and competing response tendencies. A number of motivations normally compete for the individual's attention. The desire to eat, to sleep, and to have sex may all motivate the individual at the same time. Which behavior predominates is the result of a complex interaction among the relative strengths of the motives, prevailing stimuli, and current physiological conditions. The normal interplay among various motives with no one motivation dominating the individual's behavior gives rise to a sense of self-control.
In the case of addiction, behavior is described as involuntary (i.e., loss of self-control). The motivational properties of the drug override the normal influence of natural rewards. This feature is more formally termed motivational toxicity. This is probably the result of the intense motivational strength of the drug reward and the diminished rewarding impact of other reinforcers.
The cigarette smoker experiences no such blunting of life's other rewards and pleasures. Indeed, smoking is frequently reported to enhance other pleasures. There is no extreme focusing of motivational priorities nor any disruption of the ability of other rewards to engage behavior. In short, there is no motivational toxicity displayed by cigarette smokers. Furthermore, behavior is still under the control of other motives and hence smoking must be considered "voluntary" behavior.
http://wings.buffalo.edu/aru/ARUreport03.html
One would assume that a pack a day smoker (which equates to about one cigarette every 45 minutes in a sixteen hour day), if he is truly 'addicted' to cigarettes would wake every hour during the night to top up his nicotine levels. But how many smokers do that? I don't know of any. Also, the pack a day smoker would not, of course, be able to take long-haul flights (in our brave new world) without intense withdrawal symptoms. But in reality, they do it all the time.
I could say that I'm addicted to red wine, because when I travel to Thailand, which I do fairly regularly, I still buy red wine there despite the insane 400% duty and tax which it attracts. I could buy a bottle of the local Sangsom spirit (40% ABV) for less than half the price of a bottle of less than mediocre red. Indeed, I can buy a bottle of branded Scotch for less than a bottle of barely drinkable red. And I don't have spare money sloshing around - I'm on a budget. Yet I still buy red wine there. Am I a red wine addict?
This is a conceit (and a perceived weapon in the armoury) of the anti-smoking lobby which should be challenged every time it is aired.
We need to shoot down their lies and propaganda soundbites at every turn, and the 'addict' narrative is one of their favourite put-downs which needs to be challenged every time it raises its ugly head.