Mann alive
Wednesday, January 8, 2020 at 18:58 Public Health England may have axed its New Year quit smoking campaign but January is still a fertile period for anti-smoking activists.
On Monday I was invited by BBC East Midlands Today to respond to the enforcement of a comprehensive smoking ban on the grounds of all Lincolnshire hospitals.
I recorded a short interview from which they extracted the usual 20 second soundbite for the local evening news.
I was also on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire where I was interviewed by presenter Chris Mann. Subject: 'Can England really be cigarette free in just ten years’ time?'.
A forthright Glaswegian, Chris and I have enjoyed some quite heated 'discussions' in the past but usually over the phone, which puts the caller at a disadvantage.
This time I offered to go in to the studio for what I understood would be a short interview to kick start the programme. Instead I was asked to stay for the best part of an hour.
I wasn't however allowed to engage with the consultant in public health at Cambridgeshire County Council because she (allegedly) declined to share a platform with me.
I was also kept apart from Vicky Salt of ASH, although I don't think anything can be read into that because Vicky and I have gone head-to-head several times in the past without falling out.
Anyway, even after I corrected him, Mann insisted on describing Forest as 'pro-smoking' rather than 'pro-choice'.
He also persisted with the fiction that I am a spokesman for the tobacco industry. The irony is that the more he had a pop at the companies the more determined I became to stand up for them.
Anyway, here's an abbreviated transcript, minus the callers, the other guests ... and the music!
Chris Mann, presenter, BBC Radio Cambridgeshire:
First up my guest Simon Clark joins me this morning in the studio from the Cambridgeshire based pro-smoking pressure group Forest financed by the tobacco companies.
Simon Clark, director, Forest:
Indeed, but we’re pro-choice not pro-smoking.
Chris Mann:
But that means, in this case, pro-smoking. Presumably you want people to carry on buying and smoking cigarettes?
Simon Clark:
No, not at all because I don’t sell cigarettes. I simply want to defend those people who choose to smoke. It’s an adult activity, it’s a legal product, and people should be allowed to do it if they want to.
Chris Mann:
It is an odd thing, isn’t it, that people know it’s doing them a lot of harm. We spend so much of our lives trying to live longer and protect ourselves and avoid danger and here is this thing, this very popular thing, that people do knowing that it’s going to potentially kill them.
Simon Clark:
Yes, but we do lots of things in life that can be potentially harmful. I mean, you look at extreme sports, people who drink too much, people like me who are overweight because we eat the wrong type of food. The reason a lot of people do it is because they get pleasure from doing it, and one of the things in the smoking debate that people have forgotten about, because we never hear about it any more, is the fact that many people smoke because they enjoy it, they get pleasure from it, and they put pleasure ahead of the potential health risks.
Chris Mann:
Are you a smoker?
Simon Clark:
No, I’ve never smoked properly. I had the odd cigarette when I was 16, 17, but I was surrounded by smokers at university and in my younger life and it never bothered me at all.
Chris Mann:
So what do you say to somebody who’s smoking? Do you say, ‘Here’s another one, go on, carry on killing yourself’, or do you try and dissuade them?
Simon Clark:
Absolutely never try to dissuade them. Why should I? It’s their life and if people to choose to smoke or eat the wrong type of food or drink, that’s a matter for them. I would never tell another human being how to live their life.
Chris Mann:
This idea of smoking being gone by 2030. You welcome that?
Simon Clark:
No, because the only way that could happen would be the introduction of such severe rules and regulations around smoking that they would be forcing people to quit, not letting people quit of their own accord. I’ve no problem at all if people choose to stop smoking, that’s a matter for them, but they shouldn’t be forced to give up a legal product by the government.
Chris Mann:
So here’s a product which is carcinogenic, which causes lung disease … and can harm other people through secondary smoking, and you don’t want to see it ended. That’s odd, isn’t it?
Simon Clark:
Not at all because I think in a free society we have to allow people to do things that might not always be good for them. I would strongly argue the point about passive smoking because we’ve been told this lie over many many years that smokers are killing people around them and there’s very little evidence to prove that, so while I don’t dispute for one second the serious health risks associated with primary smoking, I think accusing smokers of killing people around them is quite wrong and is a form of emotional blackmail designed to force people to quit. But this target of getting people to quit smoking by 2030, actually the target is getting the smoking rate down to five per cent. That means that two million people will still be smoking in 2030. That’s a substantial minority of people.
Chris Mann:
I’ve got to ask you, because some people might question the morality of what you’re doing. You’re paid to represent tobacco companies who make vast profits from selling tobacco to people. Does that seem right to you?
Simon Clark:
Well, first and foremost, I’m not paid to represent tobacco companies. Yes, we get donations from tobacco companies but we stand up for adults who choose to smoke and for what I call tolerant non-smokers like myself, people who believe that there should be a certain amount of freedom in life. Smoking shouldn’t be allowed without any rules and regulations. We don’t believe that people should be allowed to smoke whenever they like and wherever they like, but it is a legal product and we believe that the laws on smoking have gone far enough.
Chris Mann:
OK, thank you for being with us. Simon Clark is staying with us from the Cambridgeshire based pro-smoking pressure group Forest, as you heard there, arguing for smoking. We will hear the other side in just a moment or two.
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Chris Mann:
Listening to that is one of our other guests who’s been with us all morning, Simon Clark from the pro-smoking pressure group Forest. I mean, don’t you feel for someone like that who’s smoking a product that you support and can’t get off it and wants to get off it?
Simon Clark:
Sure, but I don’t think you can go round banning things or forcing other people to quit simply because some people find it a difficult habit to break, and it is a habit. Millions of people in this country have given up smoking over the last 30 or 40 years yet we’re often told it’s an impossible habit to break. Well, it’s not. It requires willpower but with willpower you can give it up. But we haven’t really talked about vaping this morning and the great thing about vaping … vaping is a completely different product to tobacco but it mimics the act of smoking and people get a lot of pleasure from vaping and again I come back to ...
Chris Mann:
Is it true that the same tobacco companies that pay you to support smoking also make those vaping devices?
Simon Clark:
Well, they’ve got involved in the market but, Chris, I must come back to ...
Chris Mann:
So the tobacco companies want us to replace the tobacco habit with the vaping habit?
Simon Clark:
Well, I think they are quite sensible. They realise that if you are to get more people to quit smoking you’ve got to come up with something that is equally and perhaps more pleasurable than smoking.
Chris Mann:
What about fresh air?
Simon Clark:
Well, the reality in life is that people like to do things with their hands ... [interrupted]
Chris Mann:
It’s a bit cynical that the tobacco companies are trying to wean us off, they say, [smoking] and be goody-goody, but in the background they’ve got this other product they want people to get hooked on.
Simon Clark:
To be fair, it’s a harm reduction product, Chris, so surely we should be congratulating the tobacco companies for ... [interrupted]
Chris Mann:
But do we know that, with some of the recent evidence coming out of America and cases in Britain? Do we know that vaping is 100 per cent safe?
Simon Clark:
Well, I don’t think anything is 100 per cent safe but Public Health England believe that vaping is 95 per cent less harmful than smoking and the cases that have happened in America have had nothing to do with regulated e-cigarettes. They have been to do with black market cannabis e-cigarettes.
……….
Chris Mann:
Listening to you there is Simon Clark from this Cambridgeshire based pro-smoking pressure group Forest. Again, Simon, that’s terrible to listen to, isn’t it? I mean, somebody who wants to give up, who knows it’s doing him harm and he can’t give up. Are you proud to represent a product like that?
Simon Clark:
I’m proud to represent freedom of choice. You keep saying, Chris, that I represent a product or the companies and I don’t. I’m very proud to stand up in a free society for freedom of choice. It’s an extraordinarily important factor and it’s behind a lot of the freedoms that we all enjoy. People have a choice to smoke, they have a choice not to smoke, and many people make choices and they use willpower. Of course, it’s a very difficult habit for some people to break. Many other people have broken the habit quite easily. What I’m against is government taxing people to the roof, forcing a lot of people further into poverty by putting up taxes to 90%. It really is quite disgraceful. Also, denormalising not just the product but trying to denormalise smokers themselves. That’s completely wrong.
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Chris Mann:
It is true that your organisation is funded by the tobacco companies, is it not?
Simon Clark:
It is. We’ve never made any secret of it. It’s on our website, we’ve never hidden it, and I don’t apologise for it because as a consumer group we need to get our funding from somewhere and clearly the manufacturers are the obvious place to go, and I would congratulate the manufacturers for getting involved in harm reduction products like e-cigarettes because that clearly is the future, so let’s congratulate them rather than constantly hammering them.
Chris Mann:
Simon Clark there, from the Cambridgeshire-based pro-smoking pressure group Forest.
PS. To be clear, I rather liked Mann. I have no problem with presenters acting as devil's advocate when interviewing someone. In fact, I quite like it.
My only issue was the fact that he repeatedly referred to me as "pro-smoking" even after I tried to put him straight.
That apart, we got on quite well. Turns out he went to St Andrews University and was familiar with my old school – Madras College – which is also in the town.
Small world.
Reader Comments (9)
More than standing up for free choice, you are standing against bullying and that mainstream presenters think that stigmatisation or bullying against any minority is acceptable says more about their morals and motivations than it does yours.
Thank you for standing up for those of us who live in Lincolnshire and have been told that we are neither welcome nor wanted in county hospitals. More of us will die due to exclusion from hospitals than cancer and that is a fact.
It is disgusting that the NHS thinks bullying, stigmatisation and marginalisation are acceptable in this age that bangs on about equality all of the time. We live in an age of elitist bullies and high class hypocrites.
I told my doctor today during a routine visit for what he diagnosed as all year round hayfever, that no way will I see an eye specialist or anyone else in Lincoln hospital because I know that I would not be treated medically equally or with the same compassion as those people who do not smoke.
He is an anti smoker, if rather more polite than most, so obviously he didn't agree with me and I am sure when I die of something that could easily be treated if we had equality of healthcare for all, he will just blame the pantomime Big Bad Eviiiiiil Tobacco rather than bullying and exclusion within the NHS targeted at just one group of people with an identity forced upon them for the purposes of such exclusion and marginalisation.
Simon,
Once again, nobody is mentioning a pertinent fact, that is it is not illegal to smoke in the open air. Therefore it will be the nhs who will be carrying out an illegal act.
Well, once again we see the anti-smoking bias leading anti-smokers unable to separate the relentless propaganda from facts. They can't even fathom the concept of free choice anymore. Reasoned debate is silenced by the controlling class and ether neo-prohibitionist advocates.
The risks from second hand smoke are a fiction and the risks of actual smoking are severely exaggerated through manipulating data and suppressing all dissenting data. Smoking bans are the result of a concerted propaganda campaign that perpetuate the persecution of smokers.
David Kerr - the jackboots patrolling and looking for smokers only have to push them into a response such as "fcuk off" for the jackboot to then report them for the public order offence of causing alarm, harrassment or distress. Yes, saying this to someone who is intruding upon your grief or private moment is enough for the public order offence to be committed, especially if others hear you and claim to be "alarmed" at your behaviour so 2 jackboots on patrol is enough - me as provocotuer and the other as witnrss. The more a harrassed smoker argues with the jackboots, the deeper trouble they could be in.
So, you are right it is not against the law to smoke outdoors at hospital but smokers will clearly be pushed into committing a public order offence which does the job nicely for the jackboots and their fascist managers to call police and turf them off site.
I would say if approached, stay calm, say nothing, finish your cigarette, record on your phone what is going on so the jackboots cannot lie about your response, and then walk away.
Pat,
I totally agree with you, this happened to me in Bristol, I was having a smoke outside in a shopping area, under a big overhang open on three sides, it was pouring with rain, a uniformed security guard approached me and informed me I could not smoke there as the smoking area was over there as he was pointing to a lamppost with no shelter at all. I completely blanked him and carried on smoking. He got quite officious and attempted to insist and became verbally abusive. I finished my cigarette and lit up another one. He then became more abusive and threatened to physically remove me if I didn’t put out my cigarette or go over in the pouring rain to this lamppost, I then requested his name and stated if he did not go away I would be calling the police. He went away.
Well done for staying calm. However, I'll bet they know that smokers at time of stress outside of hospitals will not. It all helps towards the jackboots pushing smokers into criminality and stigmatising the character of smoker so that when smoking becomes illegal, the general public, and pathetic politicians, will judge the issue on prejudice rather than fact.
The Smoker branded as violent, selfish and aggressive will never be considered in law making when pitched against the hallowed vision of children as pushed by the zealots actively working to taint our character and turn our communities, public services and public servants - including councils, health authority and parliament - against us. We pay more taxes than anyone else in this country and yet we are expected to put up with the hate campaign that money is used for.
It would be illegal to treat any other minority in this way but what I do not understand is why a person who describes themself as vegan has protected identity status and yet a person with the identity of Smoker forced upon them is an identity created especially for the purpose of targeted hate incitement and exclusion from the same human rights afforded to others.
Smoking on NHS property has been banned in Scotchland since 2017, in case you had missed this!
Essex,
Yes it is banned in Scotland, but only to fifteen metres outside of the building. Therefore still legal after fifteen metres
To be clear, Essex, NHS Scotland introduced a policy to prevent smoking on hospital grounds in 2015 but this is not mandatory and is frequently ignored. The Health (Tobacco, Nicotine etc. and Care)(Scotland) Bill passed in 2016 makes it an offence to smoke around hospital buildings but the specific regulations have yet to be confirmed hence the current consultation. As things stand, it will be illegal to smoke within a distance of 15 metres of hospital buildings. Beyond that, to the best of our knowledge, it will still be permitted,