BAT and the World Vapers Alliance

The lead story in The Times today is something we rarely see nowadays, an in-depth report of an ‘exclusive’ investigation.

No surprises, however, for guessing that it concerns the tobacco industry and e-cigarettes, and has been published at the exact moment the Government is considering its next move on smoking and vaping. Coincidence?

The headlines – ‘Pro-vaping campaign funded by Big Tobacco’ (print edition) and ‘Revealed: how tobacco giants are bankrolling secret pro-vaping campaign’ (digital edition) – speak for themselves.

I’m not going to address every ‘revelation’, most of which I was already aware of, but the 'news' that British American Tobacco (BAT) has funded ‘a “grassroots” campaign that presented itself as the voice of ordinary vapers’ won’t come as a surprise to readers of this blog because I wrote about it almost two years ago, and I wasn’t even the first to do so.

Having written about the World Vapers Alliance twice in 2021 (and not in glowing terms), in January 2022 I commented:

If the WVA stuck to advocating vaping as a safer alternative to smoking I would have no objection to the [Back Vaping Beat Smoking] initiative. However the campaign – with its boxing-related imagery – oversteps the line, as I explained here (The gloves are off).

I then added:

When I published that post I had no idea that BAT was funding the project, although according to Vaping360.com it has been an open secret among members of the vaping community for some time.

I then linked to the Vaping360.com website where it read:

A Daily Beast story published last weekend tells the story of the worst-kept secret in vaping - that British American Tobacco is behind the World Vapers’ Alliance, a supposed grassroots vaping advocacy group.

See: Astroturf vaping group exposed (for the second time)

In other words, a story about BAT and the WVA isn’t a Times’ exclusive at all because the information was already out there, courtesy of the Daily Beast, Vaping360.com, and even this blog.

Nevertheless, it does give me an opportunity to repeat the point I made in that January 2022 blog post when I wrote:

It would be hypocritical of me to criticise the WVA for accepting tobacco money (so I won't) but I'm surprised BAT didn't insist on complete transparency because that's the arrangement we've always had with the tobacco companies that support Forest.

In my experience it's the best policy because if you try to keep your corporate donors secret the outcome is endless questions and occasional investigations that are potentially far more damaging to the integrity and credibility of your campaign. The truth will come out eventually so why not be upfront and open about it?

In Forest's case the only people who bang on about our funding are spokesmen for ASH who seem to have it drilled into their heads, ready to unleash as soon as they open their mouths on air, but it's a non-story because we've never hidden it.

See: Campaign funding - why transparency is the best policy

I still don’t understand the WVA’s lack of candour. When Forest received funding from BAT we were completely open about it and the information appeared at the bottom of every page on our website.

Whether you wish to believe the additional line, ‘The views expressed on this or any other Forest-affiliated website are those of Forest alone’, is up to you, but we have never hidden or disguised the principal sources of our funding.

In fact, I have always believed we are stronger and more credible for being open and frank about it. Either way, I'm pretty certain the 'news' wouldn’t feature as part of a front page ‘exclusive’.

Comments

[Pat Nurse]

There's nothing credible about the World Vapers Alliance that takes tobacco money to bully and beat up tobacco consumers who choose not to vape.