Some thoughts on smoking, vaping and individual freedom
Wednesday, October 31, 2018 at 18:07 
As I mentioned last week I was on Your Call (Five Live) with Nicky Campbell, speaking to the nation from a hotel in Turkey!
The discussion followed an interview on Five Live Breakfast with Peter Nixon, MD of Philip Morris UK, concerning the launch of the company's Hold My Light quit smoking campaign.
The transcript is now in and here are a few extracts.
On vaping and the tobacco companies
Nicky Campbell: Just on the vaping topic, Simon Clark, this is a real growth area for the tobacco companies, the vaping business, right?
Simon Clark: Indeed, and I think people should welcome the fact that the tobacco companies are getting involved because they have the money to put in to research and development, they have the distribution networks. I mean, it’s very clear from the evidence that’s currently available, and Public Health England would back this up, that there is virtually no evidence that vaping is harmful. Therefore, if you want to get people to move to risk reduction products to get people off smoking, vaping seems to be the best way to do it.
I know a lot of people who have switched from smoking to vaping. They do it because vaping is more like the act of smoking. That’s why these new heat-not-burn products are coming on the market as well because smokers, generally speaking, are not interested in things like nicotine patches and gum, they want something that replicates the act of smoking. That’s why they’ve been quite successful. So I would say, if you’re interested in harm reduction or public health, you should actually be welcoming the tobacco companies getting involved in this area.
On pleasure
SC: Look, what we have to accept is that, in life, people want to get pleasure from doing things. There's a reason why there are still over seven million smokers in this country and that's because many of them enjoy smoking, they get pleasure from smoking. Now the same thing is true of vaping. A great number of people get pleasure from it and all these attacks on smoking, these attacks on vaping, are actually an attack on pleasure. We all get through life in different ways. Some people get pleasure or comfort from smoking, the same is true of vaping. A lot of people want to switch to vaping because whatever you say ...
NC: It's a gateway drug to smoking.
SC: Oh nonsense.
NC: There's more and more evidence of that. A 2014 study in the New England Journal of Medicine ...
SC: There have been thousands of studies into vaping. There's very, very little [evidence] that it's a gateway to tobacco so I think we can basically write that off. But the point is, if people choose to vape for pleasure they should be allowed to do so as long as they don't inconvenience other people.
On mental health issues and the 'benefits' of smoking
Caller: When people come off tobacco there are mental health issues ...
NC: That’s an interesting point, Simon.
SC: It is, absolutely. There’s a lot of talk about banning smoking in mental health units and again I think that would be completely wrong for a number of reasons, partly because smoking does give some people a sense of autonomy and if you’re put into a mental health unit you feel a loss of autonomy and smoking is one of the few ways you retain your independence, so simply to ban it completely can actually have a far worse adverse affect, so we’ve got to be very careful about going down these routes.
I mean, there’s talk about what more can we do to drive smoking rates down. Well I would say we certainly don’t need any more regulations and no more legislation. We’d had enough of that over the last ten or 15 years. The reality is that over the last four or five years smoking rates have actually dropped quite substantially in the UK and that’s largely because people have voluntarily gone across to vaping.
Obviously the price has had some impact but I think that has driven a lot of people to the black market and people often buy their cigarettes abroad, but people have voluntarily gone to vaping and that is an approach that we have to encourage because we can’t force people to give up a legal product. It makes me laugh when last week, for example, there was all this talk of legalising cannabis in Canada, and so we’re talking about legalising cannabis but at the same time cracking down on smoking and trying to eradicate smoking from society, so there's no consistency there ...
NC: But you can smoke cannabis without mixing it with tobacco ...
SC: That’s true but the basic point I’m making is that this shouldn’t be something where the government tries to force people ...
NC: But cannabis has health benefits. There are none with cigarettes ..
SC: But Nicky, for some people smoking does have health benefits. Listen to David Hockney, for example, who’s now in his eighties. He’s often said that smoking is good for his mental health. He says that in America a lot of his friends are on Prozac and all the rest of it. He’s not saying it’s good for his physical health, he’s saying it’s good for his mental health. Now if he thinks that’s the best way for him to get through life then that’s up to him. It’s not up to government or anti-smoking campaigners to wag their fingers at him and say ‘No, that’s the wrong thing to do.’
On individual freedom
NC: Simon Clark, last word to you in this particular section of the programme. Forest voice, friend of the smoker. Pro choice, as you say. Do you think things are still steamrollering in the wrong direction as far as you’re concerned, and crushing freedom in its path?
SC: Well, I think support for smokers is important. People often say to me, ‘Why on earth do you do this job of defending smoking and I say, ‘Well ...’
NC: You have a mortgage to pay ...
SC: [Laughs] How cynical of you, Nicky.
NC: [Laughs]
SC: Look, the reality is, if you genuinely believe in individual freedom and you believe in personal responsibility and choice, then smoking is actually a very important issue to fight on because most people don’t smoke these days, a lot people dislike smoking which is even more reason to support it because if you don’t support smokers but you enjoy drinking alcohol, you enjoy fizzy drinks, you enjoy fatty food, you enjoy eating meat ...
NC: 'First they came for the smokers'. One of those, is it?
SC: Indeed, and going back to your previous caller, I do accept that smoking is an addiction, but it’s not an addiction that’s impossible to break, millions of people have given up smoking. But it is also a choice and it’s a lifestyle choice for a great many people and if people choose to smoke, if adults choose to smoke, that choice must be respected.
You can listen to the full conservation here, including callers. My contribution starts at 10:40 and finishes at 35:55.
Reader Comments (4)
I had a Twitter spat with Nicky Campbell a year or two ago. He was asking myself and at least one other Creationist questions, like he was genuinely interested in learning about the subject. I linked to my own creation website, which gives the basics, and Campbell obviously had a quick look and called it "hilarious b****cks".
Then after some more hostility he said I was a "known troublemaker" and that I was on some list or other, when I had never communicated with him before in my life and he couldn't have known me from Adam, but he was obviously privy to certain information about me from somewhere.
Typical creepy, duplicitous Establishment asset, IMO. Give that man an OBE. Oh, he already has one; what a surprise.
His comment to you, "But cannabis has health benefits. There are none with cigarettes ..," sums him up as the typical ignorant Leftist - drugs: good; anything normal: bad by default and the ability to critically analyse a topic - tending towards zero.
I'm just glad I don't contribute to his nearly half a million quid salary via the TV licence.
Smoking is a habit not an addiction.
Fair point, Pat. I normally say it's an addiction for some, a habit for others, but in the cut and thrust of a live discussion I sometimes forget to make that distinction.
Note: I think it's counter-productive to deny that some people are addicted to smoking. According to 'The Pleasure of Smoking' report (Centre for Substance Use Research), 54% of confirmed smokers, including many readers of this blog, accepted they are 'addicted' even if the pleasure outweighs any concerns they may have about that addiction.
Fair enough but it needs to be jumped on because the addiction myth is responsible for the bullying of smokers, allegedly for their own good. What isn't studied is why some people can smoke 10 cigs a year, I've met that type, and others despite having to quit find they just can't and can't go to ecigs because whatever the addiction, it can't be to nicotine or why aren't ecigs suitable for all smokers who do not find their "addiction" satisfied by vaping?
I know it is hard to question the addiction myth when you have guns blazing at you live. At least in future when asked if you do it for your mortgage, you can answer you would have to promote stoptober to make that kind of money 😉
As much as I admire the work done in the Pleasure of Smoking, I'd also say that like all studies, one has to keep in mind the respondents and this one was open to smokers, vapers who are not smokers, and antismokers posing as smokers or exsmokers. There are many views on addiction, and there are many types of smoker, so why do we have to agree on the one defined for us by people who want to eradicate us or convert us? If we continue to accept their version of why we enjoy smoking - ie, addiction without choice - then we cannot complain when forced to quit even if that comes with the threat of prison, unemployment and homelessness if we don't.