Vaping industry forum’s headline sponsor wants to ‘ban smoking for good’

The UK Vaping Industry Association is hosting its annual forum and dinner in London today.

The event was originally scheduled for Friday September 9 but it was cancelled at the very last moment following the Queen’s death the previous day.

Prior to that announcement (ie before the event was cancelled) I posted a piece about the headline sponsor.

Given everything that happened that day I can’t imagine many people - even regular readers - saw it so here it is again.

The event, I began, will be attended by more than 90 organisations, which is impressive.

I can’t help noticing though that the headline sponsor is VPZ, the UK’s largest e-cigarette and vaping retailer, which earlier this year used the peg of No Smoking Day to launch a campaign called ‘Ban Smoking For Good’.

Bizarrely the Edinburgh-based company joined forces with former England footballer Neil ‘Razor’ Ruddock to campaign for an ‘outright ban on smoking’ in Scotland.

I wrote about it here (No Smoking Day stunt or premature April Fool?), noting that:

If governments can ban combustible tobacco they can ban electronic cigarettes too. In fact, give politicians a taste for prohibition and they might just be tempted to ban several more consumer products that are deemed to be unhealthy.

Two days later I wrote a follow-up post that highlighted some of the tweets that had been posted in response to reports of the campaign ('Ban smoking for good’ campaign unites smokers and vapers in wave of revulsion):

Analysing these and other comments, together with the various ‘likes’ and retweets, suggests that VPZ has not only scored an own goal but has unwittingly unleashed a powerful coalition opposed to prohibition.

Whether the almost universal derision had any effect I don’t know (I always suspected the 'campaign' was a stunt that would have little longevity) but it went very quiet after that, despite VPZ inviting people to sign a petition to support their goal.

Now, I don’t claim to be the world’s greatest campaigner but I do know something about petitions having overseen several in my time, including a petition against plain packaging of tobacco that resulted in over 250,000 signatures being submitted to the Department of Health in response to a public consultation.

That number didn't happen overnight and it cost money. But it was also part of a broader, well-publicised campaign.

In the wake of No Smoking Day however I struggled to find any further promotion of the 'Ban Smoking For Good' campaign or the VPZ petition after it was posted on the Scottish Parliament website in April.

Click on it now and it reads:

PE1932: Ban smoking in Scotland and develop a strategy for vaping

Petition Summary
Calling on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to impose an outright ban on smoking and develop a transformative public health strategy for vaping.

Petitioner: Doug Mutter on behalf of VPZ
Status: Under consideration
Date published: 19 April 2022

A further link informs visitors that from May 17 ‘This petition is now under consideration by the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee’ which begs the obvious question, how many people actually signed it?

I mean, are we talking tens of thousands?

Not even close. The total number of people who signed VPZ’s ‘ban smoking for good’ petition was (cue drum roll) … 103.

That’s right, one hundred and three.

Oh to have been a fly on the wall when, on June 15:

The Committee agreed to close the petition under Rule 15.7 of Standing Orders on the basis that the Scottish Government is not currently considering an outright ban on smoking in favour of vaping. 

Meanwhile the ‘Ban Smoking For Good’ campaign appears to have been abandoned for good which is a pity because I would love to have gone head-to-head with ‘Razor’ Ruddock in a public debate.

Update: I should add that VPZ’s campaign inspired the subject of Forest’s fringe meeting at the Conservative party conference in Birmingham last month.

We called it ‘Politics and Prohibition: Should smoking be banned for good?’ and it featured Baroness Fox (Academy of Ideas), Mark Oates (We Vape) and Chris Snowdon (IEA).

If you haven’t seen it click here.