NNA plays musical chairs

The New Nicotine Alliance is under new leadership.

The pro-vaping group has been chaired for the past two years by ex-smoker turned vaper Martin Cullip who replaced the admirable Sarah Jakes.

Although the NNA website still lists Martin as ‘chair’ I’ve noticed that his Twitter profile has been amended to ‘NNA trustee’.

Meanwhile the Twitter profile of Louise Ross, who was previously vice chair, now reads ‘interim chair’.

These musical chairs must be very recent because a letter sent to health minister Jo Churchill and Number Ten advisor Munira Mirza on May 19 was signed:

Martin Cullip, Chair
Louise Ross, Vice-Chair
Clive Bates, Voluntary Public Health Adviser

Although Martin and Sarah Jakes are still trustees of the NNA I can’t help thinking that Ross’s promotion, interim or otherwise, represents a significant changing of the guard, albeit one that has been on the cards for some time.

Despite being committed to the promotion of vaping, neither Sarah nor Martin could be described as anti-smoking. In fact, in November 2017 Sarah gave one of the best speeches I have heard from a vaping advocate.

Addressing the E-Cigarette Summit in London on behalf of her corner of the vaping community, she told delegates:

We are all ex-smokers and let me make this clear, we are resentful of the way that smokers are treated. We naturally rail against coercive methods of forcing smokers to quit, and detest the stigmatisation of smokers that always goes hand in hand with those methods.

I applauded her speech then and I do so again because it was from the heart and refreshing to hear.

Sadly no leading vaping advocate has since come close to matching those words and I certainly can’t imagine Louise Ross giving a similar speech. I’ve nothing against her (she seems a perfectly nice person) but her professional background is very different to Sarah’s (or Martin’s).

A former stop smoking service manager who devoted the last 14 years of her professional life to smoking cessation (and once had the words ‘anti tobacco’ in her Twitter profile as though it was a badge of honour), Louise was one of the people behind last year’s ‘Quit for Covid’ campaign that stalled after Number Ten quite rightly refused a grant application from ASH for £350,000 (of taxpayers’ money) to fund it.

Today she freelances for the National Centre for Smoking Cessation and Training and is business development manager for the Smoke Free quit smoking app.

I don’t think it’s unfair therefore to describe her as a fully paid up member of what the late Lord Harris of High Cross used to call the “stop smoking (SS) brigade”.

Either way her appointment as (interim) chair is an interesting development for a group that once seemed a genuinely independent, consumer-driven voice outside the public health tent.

Today the NNA’s most senior representative is a proud member of that industry and I fear that what was an important consumer voice may become just another smoking cessation group driven by public health activists.

PS. My own nomination for chairman of the NNA would be former parliamentary researcher Mark Oates.

Mark is currently an NNA trustee but he also runs the We Vape campaign and the Snus and Nicotine Pouch Users Association which could be a stumbling block because there are only so many hats one person can wear before it becomes counter-productive.

He would however give the NNA a more independent voice and I would also expect a more proactive media presence, given the work that Mark has done with We Vape on limited resources.

Apologies if that endorsement scuppers your chances, Mark, but on reflection you’re probably best where you are so no harm done.