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.