Above: Yours truly making a similar point at TabExpo in 2019
One of the panellists who took part in a Forest webinar on vaping last month was the head of programmes at the Adam Smith Institute, a leading free market think tank.
Daniel Pryor had an interesting story to tell. He made a "very conscious decision", he said, to start smoking on his 18th birthday and by the end of his final year at university he was a 20 to 30-a-day smoker.
Having planned "all along" to stop in his early twenties he quit by switching to e-cigarettes before experimenting with other reduced risk products. Today he uses nicotine pouches.
Daniel was articulate and knowledgeable and made a valuable contribution to a webinar that also featured John Dunne, director general of the UK Vaping Industry Association, and Joe Dunne (no relation), spokesman for Respect Vapers, a consumer group in Ireland.
Unfortunately the subsequent publication and promotion of the ASI’s latest paper on vaping (The Golden Opportunity: How global Britain can lead on tobacco harm reduction and save millions of lives) was another example of a free market think tank or consumer group choosing to ignore an inconvenient truth.
Yes, e-cigarettes and heated tobacco have been a welcome consumer-driven free market success story in many countries (and I applaud that) but that's only half the story.
While millions of smokers have switched to vaping, albeit many as dual users, millions more have chosen not to switch because (spoiler alert!) they prefer smoking.
Listen to many vaping advocates and free marketeers however and you could be forgiven for thinking the only reason every smoker hasn’t switched is because they are either cruelly uninformed about vaping or the health risks have been misrepresented by multiple scare stories.
While there is some truth in this it’s not the whole story - far from it - because it ignores the reality that many current smokers are far from ignorant or misinformed about vaping. They have tried e-cigarettes and heated tobacco and they don’t like vaping as much as they enjoy smoking.
Take Dan Donovan, another member of our webinar panel. Dan is what we call a confirmed smoker because he gets enormous pleasure from smoking and he doesn’t want to quit. He told us:
I just love the aroma of [hand rolled tobacco]. With a nice strong coffee in the morning I can't think of anything better to start the day really ... And then you wind down in the evening. I've been smoking all day anyway but to sit down with a glass of whisky and a cigarette, I just find it very therapeutic.
And when I asked him "Can you conceive of a time when you will stop smoking?", he replied (tongue only partly in cheek), "Yeah, when I stop breathing."
During the webinar I also put this to Daniel (Pryor):
In the past free market groups like the ASI were always supportive of an adult’s right to smoke and opposed things like the smoking ban and plain packaging.
Today we hear a lot from the ASI and other free market groups about the benefits of vaping so I wondered where you, and the Adam Smith Institute, now stand on smoking and whether you will actively oppose some of the regulations that are currently being considered by government.
For example, there’s talk about a reduction in the prevalence of shops that sell tobacco; smoking bans outside pubs, restaurants and cafes; increasing the age of sale of tobacco from 18 to 21. These are all policies that might in theory ‘encourage’ smokers to switch to vaping so would the ASI support or oppose them?
Daniel was adamant that the ASI would oppose such measures but his full response added this qualification:
The underlying thing with your question is ... where to put the policy emphasis, so if I'm deciding to write a paper or an op-ed, for example, is the cause of individual freedom best served by me writing, sadly, about something where I don't think there's likely to be much change, like plain packaging for example ...
He then added:
I am pessimistic that there is going to be a reversal in the anti-smoking policies that have already passed. If someone asks me in the right circumstance where it's being discussed I'd certainly state that I'm opposed to it, but in terms of where I think we're likely to make the most positive impact in terms of expanding consumer choice and freedom, I think that's why I'm primarily focussed on the tobacco harm reduction sphere.
I totally get that. It’s one of the reasons Forest doesn’t go on and on about the smoking ban even though I know that for some of our supporters it’s the only thing that really matters to them.
Like the ASI and other groups we have to be pragmatic in our choice of issues to fight or address and in media terms the indoor smoking ban, sad to say, is history. So I understood exactly what Daniel was saying.
The problem is this. By focussing (exclusively it seems) on extending choice for consumers who want to quit, free marketeers and ‘consumer choice’ advocates seem more than happy to abandon the interests of consumers who don’t want stop.
Nor is this a question of fighting old battles. Most of the policies I mentioned pose a future threat not just to consumers but to businesses large and small.
They strike at the heart of freedom and choice but there’s little to suggest that groups that might in the past have opposed them have any intention of doing so in future.
To be clear, I agree with the general thrust of the ASI’s report which I’d definitely file under 'pro-vaping' rather than 'anti-smoking'.
Unfortunately, by arguing that without changes to the current regulations on reduced risk products the Government will miss its 'smoke free 2030' goal, it would appear the ASI is actively endorsing that wretched target, and that bothers me.
So let me finish with a friendly reminder to free market think tanks and consumer choice groups – including the group behind today's World Vape Day – not every smoker wants to quit or switch to a reduced risk product and the rights of adults to make an informed choice to smoke (and for businesses to accommodate that choice) must be supported too.
Of course consumers must be informed about alternative nicotine products and advised about the relative risks, but invoking 'smoke free 2030' to support the case for reduced risk products crosses a line.
My issue, as I explained here, is that ‘smoke free’ will never be achieved by voluntary means alone - not in my lifetime, at least.
It might be achieved with a combination of the stick and the carrot (inexpensive, lightly regulated reduced risk products) but without the stick (more anti-smoking regulation, even higher taxes), ‘smoke free 2030’ is not going to happen because too many people still enjoy smoking and don’t like vaping.
Therefore those who cite ‘smoke free 2030’ as a legitimate goal are effectively supporting both the carrot and the stick, which means further government intervention that will discriminate against legitimate consumers.
Finally it's worth mentioning that while Forest has always been happy to invite a range of interested parties to discuss smoking-related issues at our events, I can’t recall a single invitation from a free market think tank or ‘consumer choice’ group to participate in one of their many discussions on tobacco harm reduction.
Just as we are excluded from events like the Global Forum on Nicotine, where the views of confirmed smokers appear to be an unwelcome distraction, so their views are repeatedly ignored by those who claim to support freedom of choice.
Freedom? Choice? Only for some it seems.
Below: the ASI promoting its recent report on LinkedIn
