The Global Forum on Nicotine kicks off in Liverpool today.
Having gone online last year the conference has now moved from its previous home in Warsaw. This year it's a hybrid event with up to 70 delegates attending in person, with hundreds more participating online.
Credit to the organisers for keeping the show on the road. I suspect that hybrid conferences like this will be the future. I wouldn't have minded travelling to Liverpool but it's certainly easier and cheaper to login via my computer.
What you miss of course is the socialising and the direct engagement with other participants. Nevertheless I wish the event well.
My only criticism of GFN is a familiar one. Where are the confirmed smokers, the ones who enjoy smoking and don't want to quit?
They're nicotine users too (and they still significantly outnumber consumers of reduced risk products) but the organisers of GFN have yet again chosen to ignore them as if they don't exist and looking at the list of speakers they are once again completely unrepresented.
Tomorrow, for example, there's a Consumer Voices Panel that lists two hosts and four panelists, not one of whom (to the best of my knowledge) is a current confirmed smoker. Why is that?
I've written before about GFN being an echo chamber for vaping advocates and smoking cessation campaigners so I won't bore you with more of the same, but it does make me laugh that an event can be called the Global Forum on Nicotine and ignore one of the largest groups of nicotine users.
Anyway, I'm pleased to report that Forest's final webinar before the summer break will address this striking imbalance.
Consumer Voices Uncut will take place on Thursday July 8 from 6.00pm and our panel of guests will include confirmed smokers and enthusiastic vapers because we don't marginalise any nicotine user.
As far as we're concerned, all nicotine users are equal.
I can also report that the similarly named but strikingly different Global Tobacco and Nicotine Forum has no such qualms when it comes to inviting representatives of confirmed smokers to speak.
Like GFN, GTNF 2021 will be a hybrid event with the physical conference in London in September and I have been asked to represent Forest in a session called 'Consumers: The Key Stakeholder'.
Good to see that the pre-eminent global conference on nicotine hasn't forgotten that confirmed smokers are a key stakeholder too but perhaps that's why GTNF continues to be the best conference of its type, bar none.