E-cigarettes and consumer choice
Friday, April 1, 2022 at 10:58 'Derek Chance' has commented on my previous post about the Adam Smith Institute's new report on vaping:
In response to the post Derek writes:
I have to say, as one of the 'confirmed smokers' you purport to support, I find this blog and the view of Forest appear increasingly distanced from supporting the freedom of choice. It's difficult to believe there is true benevolence when you ignore or belittle attempts to reduce the harm that tobacco does cause.
I may be wrong but I don't think Derek has ever commented on this blog before (I've been writing it since 2007) but it's good to hear from him because I welcome views that challenge my own.
I'm not sure however just how familiar he is either with this blog or the many interviews I have given on behalf of Forest supporting vaping or advocating e-cigarettes and heated tobacco as welcome alternatives to combustible tobacco.
Anyway, here is a passage from my 19-page letter to Javed Khan who was commissioned by the DHSC to conduct an 'independent review' on tobacco. His report is due later this month.
Under the sub-heading 'E-cigarettes and consumer choice' I wrote:
Although Forest exists primarily to defend the interests of adults who choose to smoke tobacco and don’t want to quit, we strongly support reduced risk nicotine products including e-cigarettes, heated tobacco, oral tobacco (snus) and nicotine pouches as less harmful alternatives to combustible tobacco.
Evidence suggests that e-cigarettes have played a significant role in reducing smoking rates over the past decade. The period 2012-2016 is especially notable because it cannot be coincidence that the initial explosion in popularity of e-cigarettes coincided with a substantial fall in smoking rates (from 19% in 2013 to 15.8% in 2016) that far exceeded the very small decline in smoking prevalence that followed the smoking ban and other anti-smoking measures introduced between 2007 and 2011.
Nevertheless, while we support reduced risk nicotine products and believe that e-cigarettes should be subject to light touch regulation proportionate to the much smaller risk they pose to consumers, we do not believe that e-cigarettes offer a magic wand or that confirmed smokers should be driven to use them. Switching from combustible tobacco to electronic cigarettes, heated tobacco or other reduced risk nicotine products has to be voluntary. Smokers have to feel empowered to switch to reduced risk products of their own volition, not coerced by policies designed to force them to switch or quit nicotine completely.
The crucial thing is to offer smokers a choice of reduced risk products alongside traditional tobacco products, inform and update them with the latest evidence about the relative risks and benefits, and empower them to make their own informed choices. In short, let the people – not politicians or over-zealous public health campaigners – decide. Most important, respect their choice, even if you disagree with it.
If that's not supporting freedom of choice I don't know what is.
Derek however says that 'Forest appear increasingly distanced from supporting the freedom of choice'. Clearly he hasn't read 'Nicotine Wars: The fight for choice' by Rob Lyons, published by Forest in 2019 with a foreword by me in which I wrote:
As the name, Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco, suggests, our primary aim is to defend the interests of adults who enjoy smoking tobacco. In practice however we don’t discriminate between different nicotine products nor do we discriminate between smokers and vapers, many of whom are dual users.
When we’re asked to defend vaping, or criticise regulations designed to restrict unreasonably the sale and use of e-cigarettes, we speak out. Our message is clear: choice and personal responsibility are paramount. As long as you don’t harm others, your lifestyle – including your choice of nicotine product – is nobody’s business but your own.
As a lifelong non-smoker I don’t care if you smoke, vape, use snus (an oral form of tobacco currently prohibited in the UK) or do none of these things. That’s your choice and I’ll ‘die in a ditch’, to coin a phrase, to defend it. Unfortunately many vapers seem to have a limited grasp of what choice actually means. Siding with tobacco control against smoking has become commonplace when smokers and vapers should be fighting side by side.
Some vapers are even opposed to heated tobacco, a product they apparently see as a threat to e-cigarettes. Personally I’m delighted that, as well as e-cigarettes, tobacco companies are developing reduced risk products that appeal to smokers who don’t want to give up tobacco. Time will tell but I think there’s room for both devices, and other products yet to be invented.
Btw, my beef with the way some free market think tanks promote e-cigarettes as a safer alternative to smoking is not because they're wrong to do so (they're absolutely not) but because, in their enthusiasm for vaping (which they like to describe as a free market solution to the 'problem' of smoking), they seem to have abandoned any attempt to stand up for combustible tobacco products or the adults who want to use them.
I don't recall hearing anything from the ASI, for example, when smoking in licensed pavement areas was under threat in 2020 despite the fact that it was clear attack on small businesses as well as the consumer.
But I don't want to pick on the ASI because other free market groups are just as guilty of abandoning confirmed smokers and effectively endorsing - through their lack of opposition - the Government's 'Smoke Free 2030' target.
If, when advocating reduced risk products, they also defended an adult's right to smoke I wouldn't make an issue of it. But they don’t. It’s all about quitting.
Sadly, and with very few exceptions (Chris Snowdon being the obvious one), what they say to me in private is not reflected by what they are prepared to say in public.
And that's disappointing.
Reader Comments (1)
Hear, bloody hear, Simon, Well said.