Consumer voices unleashed!

Thanks to everyone who took part in our ‘Consumer Voices’ webinar last night.

I’m proud of the fact that Forest gives a platform to smokers and vapers but especially confirmed smokers who are repeatedly excluded from public health and tobacco harm reduction events as if their views are irrelevant.

More fool them.

Special thanks to our speakers - Mark Littlewood, Emily Wieja, Pat Nurse, Anita Chowdry (pictured above), Andy Morrison and Henry Hill.

Henry logged in from a hotel room in Belfast while Emily joined us from Charlestown near Boston, Massachusetts.

Thanks too to moderator Rob Lyons who pulled the strings and pressed the right buttons from the comfort of his home in the Scottish Borders!

I’ll add some soundbites to this post later today and we’ll post the video on YouTube early next week if not before.

Update: As promised here are some soundbites from last night's meeting.

Mark Littlewood, director general, IEA
"Although I voted Leave I thought the most persuasive personal argument to remain was that you could import any amount of tobacco or cigarettes you wanted for personal use from any other European Union country. I think that avenue is now closed to me."

"I've been a heavy smoker for 30 years. With regard to Covid, being asthmatic put me on the danger list but I understand that having been a heavy smoker actually acts an an insulation against Covid so every cloud has a silver living ..."

"I'll be completely honest with you. If I only had ten minutes to live I'd light up a cigarette rather than use one of these [holds up a heated tobacco device] but this is as close as it's come to me, as a consumer, to a cigarette."

"I don't like the state deciding what the optimal number of smokers are. I found it a bit bizarre that some of the tobacco companies are in favour of a smoke free world. It's a bit like Volkswagon campaigning for a car free world."

Pat Nurse, retired journalist
"I would never have considered myself a smoker before 2007 [when the smoking ban was introduced]. I was someone who smoked, but after 2007 I felt it was an identity that was forced upon me. It was like a sign around my neck saying 'Smoker, Kick Here' and you're either going to say 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'll never smoke again, I don't want to be bullied any more', or you say 'I've had enough of this, I'm not going to take this any more and I'm fighting back.'"

"When we talk about tobacco harm reduction we never talk about reducing how much we smoke. Basically it's a code word for quitting and being forced to quit. But if I feel I've smoked too much I literally just stop smoking for a while."

"I'm never going to quit. In ten years' time, if I'm still here, I will still be smoking, I can assure everybody of that."

Henry Hill, news editor, Conservative Home
"It's an unfortunate fact that temperance movements historically do have a strong base. One hundred years ago they were rooted in religion but I think the instinct is still there whether or not people are religious. People like telling other people what to do."

"There's a particular problem in this country because there's this sense that anyone who's living unhealthily is costing 'us' money because 'we're' paying for the NHS, which I think is particularly toxic but it's there."

"The Conservative party is not a libertarian party. It has never been a libertarian party and if [more restrictions] is the direction of travel its members will be there in line with the rest of the population."

"Public health policy is intrinsically classist and pretty much always has been."

Anita Chowdry, visual artist
"I started smoking in the late Seventies when I was an art student and I think I probably started because it was cool to be an art student and cool to be a smoking art student, but I found very quickly that it wasn't really about appearance so much as my actually enjoying it to the point where it was an adjunct to my creative work. Now I'm terrified of stopping because I don't think I can think or do creatively without feeling I've got those cigarettes there so I get terribly nervous if I'm running out."

"Because of the propaganda [about smoking] it's possible for perfectly nice people to turn into playground bullies as soon as they see the designated target and this is where my pessimism comes in when I see how easy it is to manipulate public opinion."

Andy Morrison, vaper and vaping advocate
"Vaping for me is more pleasurable [than smoking] because of all the different flavours you can have."

"A lot of people do slip back in to smoking because they don't understand how to combat the side effects [of vaping] but health wise I've never felt better."

"If anyone expresses an interest [in vaping] and want to carry it forward I'll help them but I'm not into coercion at all ... It's each to their own as far as I'm concerned."

Emily Wieja, website content manager
"Looking back smoking really helped me a lot with depression as a teenager."

"I had a lot of freedom growing up in the Netherlands. I was able to go out to bars when I was 14, 15, 16 and drink and smoke. It was a big shock when I moved back to the States around 2007. There was a lot more anti-smoking sentiment and at that time smoking bans were starting to roll in. I think at first I was affected by that. I tried to quit for a while [but] I just found I didn't feel right without tobacco."

"Pleasures in life are very important [and] coming out of Covid right now it makes you realise what makes life worth living and to me tobacco makes life worth living."