Quelle surprise!
In a letter to public health minister Jo Churchill and Munira Mirza, director of the No 10 Policy Unit, the New Nicotine Alliance has confirmed what I quietly suspected.
As well as pressing for a more liberal regulatory approach to reduced risk products (which I support), the NNA supports the Government's goal of a 'smoke free' England by 2030.
There are two signatories on the letter - NNA chairman Martin Cullip (recipient of one of Forest's coveted Voices of Freedom awards in 2017!) and Clive Bates, a 'voluntary adviser' to the NNA and a former director of ASH.
As it happens I agree with much of it – including the ten key recommendations. What saddens but doesn’t surprise me is the statement that 'The idea is to support the government’s stated aim to go smoke-free or to make smoked tobacco “obsolete” by 2030.'
The letter quotes a Government consultation document published last year that read:
We are setting an ambition to go ‘smoke-free’ in England by 2030. This includes an ultimatum [my emphasis] for industry to make smoked tobacco obsolete by 2030, with smokers quitting or moving to reduced-risk products like e-cigarettes.
Bates/Cullip follow this by declaring:
We support this goal and agree that smokers should be strongly encouraged [my emphasis] to move to low-risk alternatives to smoking – these include e-cigarettes, heated tobacco products, smokeless tobacco and novel oral nicotine products such as pouches.
While it is entirely reasonable to ‘encourage’ or gently nudge smokers to switch to lower risk products through education and fewer restrictions on e-cigarettes, heated tobacco and other reduced risk products, it is not acceptable (in my view) for a consumer group to endorse a 'smoke free' target that will be very difficult to achieve without further punishing the millions of consumers who choose to smoke and don't want to quit.
Although the NNA letter focuses on reduced risk products and does not recommend any anti-smoking policies as such, there is little chance that the Government will hit its 2030 target without further tax hikes, more smoking bans and other prohibitive measures.
In other words, it's one thing to lobby for more liberal regulations on reduced risk products but why did the NNA feel the need to declare its support for combustible tobacco products to be made 'obsolete' and England to be 'smoke free' within a decade?
It’s not inconceivable that the measures recommended by the NNA will encourage more smokers to switch voluntarily to reduced risk products, and I have no problem with that, but research shows that a substantial number of smokers have tried vaping and don’t like it as much as smoking.
Until that issue is resolved – and the onus is on manufacturers to come up with products that are at least as pleasurable as combustible tobacco to confirmed smokers – UK vaping rates will probably continue to stall because you can't lead a horse to water if it doesn't want to drink.
The stark reality is that however much you educate smokers about the relative risks of smoking and vaping, and however attractive you make reduced risk products in terms of cost or ‘normalisation’, there will still be a substantial proportion of smokers who don't want to switch or quit.
Reduced risk products clearly have a significant role to play in reducing smoking rates but I genuinely can't see the Government meeting its five per cent or less target without introducing even stricter anti-smoking policies.
If therefore you support the Government’s ‘smoke free by 2030’ vision you are effectively endorsing another decade in which smokers will continue to be bullied to quit by a tobacco control industry that will stop at nothing to achieve their artificial, time sensitive goal.
The endgame of course is not smoking cessation but nicotine cessation. For most public health campaigners reduced risk products are a means to an end. The endgame is to wean consumers off all nicotine products, not just cigarettes, as quickly as possible.
This week for example it was reported that 'Royal Navy sailors will be banned from smoking on board all vessels from the start of 2021.'
According to the Daily Mail, ‘As well as cigarettes, all forms of tobacco products will be banned from January ...’
Significantly, the Mail also reported that, ‘Sailors will be able to vape until the end of 2022 in an effort to help them quit smoking.’
In other words, e-cigarettes will be permitted as a smoking cessation aid but once sailors have adapted to the ban on smoking vaping will be prohibited too.
The same tactic will undoubtedly be used to combat nicotine use in society as a whole, albeit it will take many more years to enforce. As far as tobacco control is concerned, reduced risk products are a stepping stone towards a nicotine-free world.
Supporting the Government's 'smoke free' goal therefore advances the day when vaping and any product that allegedly feeds society's 'addiction' to nicotine are targeted for eradication too.
As an aside I find it hilarious that Clive Bates - a diehard Remainer who is still whinging about Brexit years after the referendum - has finally seen a possible benefit from leaving the EU.
Whether the UK Government will adopt a different approach to the EU on the sale, marketing and social acceptability of reduced risk products remains to be seen, but it amuses me that without Brexit the opportunity for Clive to lobby the Government like this would never have arisen.
Anyway, to be absolutely clear, I support the 'reforms' listed in the NNA's letter but at the same time I am disappointed that a nicotine consumer group is supporting the Government’s smoke free 2030 agenda, presumably in the hope that it will curry favour with ministers and tobacco control advocates in government.
All I will say is, be careful what you wish for.
Btw, I couldn’t help noticing that when Bates tweeted a link to the NNA letter it was ‘liked’ by Martin Dockrell, tobacco control programme lead at Public Health England since 2014, prior to which he too worked for ASH.
'Must read,' tweeted Clive of the letter he was a co-signatory to. 'Not only a call for UK to diverge from the EU Tobacco Products Directive, but also everything that is wrong with current EU regulations of low-risk alternatives to cigarettes.'
By ‘liking’ Clive’s tweet, Dockrell inadvertently prompted several questions:
One, if the head of tobacco control at PHE ‘liked’ his comment and, by association, the NNA's letter to the government, what is PHE's official position regarding the group's recommendations?
Two, if (as appears to be the case) Dockrell agrees with Clive's statement that the UK must 'diverge from current EU regulation of low-risk alternatives to cigarettes', why isn't he/PHE saying so explicitly?
Three, is the tobacco control programme lead at PHE a leader or a follower? I think we should be told.
Update: Via Carl Phillips, Clive Bates has responded on Twitter as follows ...
I can only speak for myself. The point is to maximise the options for smokers to switch without more coercion or propaganda. This would be the only feasible way to make smoking ‘obsolete’ (ie very few want it) without taking far more harmful, coercive and ineffective measures.
The apposite word is “obsolete’.’ As in dictionary: “cause a product or idea to become obsolete by replacing it with something new”. An analogy might be with vinyl records - still a niche, but not the dominant or forward-looking tech.
The analogy with vinyl records is a good one and I take his point about the word 'obsolete'. The problem, however, is that the nuance is easily lost when, at the same time, you read the words, 'We support this goal [to go ‘smoke-free’ in England by 2030]'.
By publicly supporting the Government's 2030 target it is inevitable the letter will be read by many people, including opponents of smoking, as evidence that the vaping community welcomes a 'smoke free' outcome when the principal message should focus on education and consumer choice.
It's a pity too that the first part of Clive's response ('The point is to maximise the options for smokers to switch ... without taking far more harmful, coercive and ineffective measures') wasn't included in the NNA's letter to government.
Had the letter and the ten recommendations been explained in those terms I could have lived with it. But they weren't.
Perhaps the NNA should make its position a little clearer. Instead it's only when someone questions it that we get a belated clarification, and even that is from someone who is speaking for himself not the NNA.