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.