Further to yesterday's post, the new Prague-based Smokers Rights Movement has responded to a tweet querying the use of 'Smokers Rights' in the name of a pro-vaping campaign.
Forest’s tweet read:
Traditional definition of smokers’ rights:
‘The right to choose to smoke a legal product without undue harassment or discrimination.’
Now redefined as ‘The right to quit smoking’.
In reply SRM gave their definition of smokers’ rights as:
The right to maintain health and life that was oppressed by governments via artificially limiting smokers choices.
To be clear, Forest supports the right to vape and I accept that in many countries that right has indeed been suppressed or severely limited.
What I don’t get is that no-one is forced to smoke - potentially putting their health at risk - but millions of people have been forced to quit as a result of prohibition, punitive taxation or general harassment.
The bigger picture, which many pro-vaping campaigners seem to ignore, is that millions of adults continue to smoke, despite the health risks, because they enjoy it more than vaping.
All too often though vaping advocates like to portray smokers not as independent-minded consumers but as victims of their habit and without e-cigarettes and other reduced risk products there is no alternative other than to continue smoking - ergo they will die.
Let’s be clear. If you are a smoker and are so worried about the effects of smoking on your health there is nothing to stop you quitting today.
I accept that many smokers find it hard to quit but I have never accepted the argument that smoking is a habit that is almost impossible to break without 'help' or that nicotine is more addictive than heroin.
Millions of smokers have given up, many overnight. For others it takes multiple attempts but very often the deciding factors are willpower and incentive - a health scare, for example, or a new baby/grandchild in the house.
Some people will say I don’t know what I’m talking about because I'm not a smoker but through friends and family I know that if the incentive to quit is big enough most people can and do stop smoking.
According to SRM however:
It's time to wake up and remember that smokers are humans and smokers are dying. And with existing government regulations on tobacco, smokers have almost no choice.
I absolutely agree that smokers who want to quit should have the option to switch to reduced risk products but to say that 'smokers are dying ... [and] have almost no choice' is another example of victimhood.
Of course smokers have a choice. They can choose to stop smoking!
It may be harder for some without alternative nicotine products but the reality is that most smokers who quit do so without using any smoking cessation aid.
Meanwhile, in bold capitals on the home page, the SRM website screams 'THE RIGHT TO LIVE' as if smokers are being condemned to die through no fault of their own.
I'm sorry but smoking is a choice and playing the victim card makes very little sense to me, not least because it plays to the stereotype that smokers are addicts who can't cope without a regular hit of nicotine.
That said I can see a future for 'The Right To Live' slogan, if adopted by Forest. After all, adults have a right to live as they choose (within reason) and that includes the right to take risks or, as some might put it, to live.
As the Mail Online wrote last year (Don't tell me not to smoke! Artist David Hockney, 82, sees his 60-year habit as an 'act of defiance'):
A desire to live life with purpose and pleasure has always been fundamental to him and his art - as such it's no surprise that David won't be curtailing his smoking habit.
The right to live – living on your own terms and seeking pleasure even at the expense of one's health – is, for me, a fundamental human right.
Not as fundamental as having food, water and a roof over our heads, but important nonetheless, even if most of us choose a more conservative, risk-averse path through life.
Either way it has to be our choice and the right to smoke is just as important as the right not to smoke.
See also: Britain needs a cigarette (Unherd, June 2021).