Quick report following my trip to a wet and overcast Edinburgh at the weekend.
I drove home on Monday having been invited to speak at a meeting organised by Students for Liberty Edinburgh on Sunday.
SFL is an 'international libertarian organisation' founded in the United States in 2008. It now has groups all around the world, including a handful in the UK, and doesn’t appear short of money, internationally at least. Local groups operate on more of a shoestring.
The biggest events include LibertyCon, an annual US-based conference described as 'the largest international pro-liberty gathering in the world', and LibertyCon Europe,‘the continent's largest annual pro-liberty gathering'.
Ironically, while we were shivering under Edinburgh's grey and leaden skies, LibertyCon Europe 2023 was taking place in a rather warmer location - Lisbon.
Back in Edinburgh the topic of Sunday’s discussion was 'Smokers’ rights and the war on nicotine' and kudos to organiser Josh Cheshire for tackling what some might say is an increasingly unfashionable, even niche, subject.
It’s not of course because, as I’ve said for many years, the war on smoking should be of interest to anyone who cares about individual liberty because what's happening to smokers today (the so-called tobacco template) is merely part of a much broader attack on people’s lifestyles, whether it be smoking, eating or drinking.
Defending the right to smoke is not - as some idiot suggested on Twitter yesterday - the same as defending the right to drink bleach or eat glass.
Anyway, Josh had put together a rather interesting panel that also featured Tam Laird, leader of the Scottish Libertarian Party, and Steven Warden, an associate of the Ayn Rand Centre UK and a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute.
Given the reluctance of anti-smoking groups to share a platform with anyone who supports smokers' rights (ASH Scotland didn’t reply to Josh’s invitation), there is a danger that events like this become very one-sided, with everyone preaching to the converted.
On this occasion, while we were all roughly on the same page when it came to defending the right to smoke, there were enough differences to make the discussion interesting and occasionally challenging.
Tam, for example, believes that all drugs, including heroin, should be legalised. (I don’t, although I can see the argument for it.)
Steven's position was arguably more erudite and scholarly. However, I suspect that, if it came to a street fight (in the battle of ideas), Tam might be more persuasive.
Like me, neither of them have ever been smokers. The big difference was that Tam and Steven appeared to actively dislike smoking.
Tam’s antipathy seemed to stem from his childhood, while his memories of Scottish pubs are very different to mine.
Having experienced countless pubs and bars in Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Dundee and St Andrews over a 25-year period from the mid Seventies to the late Nineties, I don’t remember smoky pubs ever being an issue.
I'm sure they existed but I don’t recall a smoky environment ever being a problem, either for me or anyone I drank with.
Tam however remembered pubs and bars being thick with fug and he hated it.
The funny thing is he didn’t strike me as the type who might be overly sensitive to such things. A former soldier, he has presumably experienced far worse, but it just goes to show we are all different.
Steven didn’t like smoking either but here’s the thing. Although neither like it, they were both prepared to give up a Sunday afternoon to defend smokers (and smoking) and support the right to smoke.
That, to my mind, is the true mark of a genuine libertarian, not the type who (for example) advocates vaping in order to “beat smoking” with little or no regard for the millions who enjoy smoking and don’t want to quit.
Ironically one group that does precisely that is the World Vapers Alliance which is owned and funded by the self-styled Consumer Choice Center that was founded in 2017 by ... Students for Liberty.
CCC says it is now independent of SFL. Nevertheless it's worth repeating what I wrote here (Back Choice, Beat Prohibition). In summary:
There are millions of adult smokers who don’t want to quit and in a free society their choice must be respected and publicly defended. Abandon them and you're no liberal, however much you try to convince yourself that you are.
With that in mind, and having spoken to several SFL groups in the UK (including an SFL training day at the IEA), I look forward to being invited to address LibertyCon (or LibertyCon Europe) in 2024.
Forest and the World Vapers Alliance – who wouldn't want to see that?!
See: 'World Vapers Alliance - stoking up a stink about smoking' and 'Why are so many 'libertarians' anti-tobacco?'.
Above: One of several 'No smoking and vaping in the Quad' signs at Old College, Edinburgh, ironically the location for our meeting on Sunday.