Back to Bologna

I'm flying to Bologna tomorrow.

It will be my second visit to the city. The first was in 2015 when I attended the Global Tobacco and Nicotine Forum (GTNF) at the Palazzo Re Enzo which is a cut above your usual conference centre, although the acoustics in the largest room (the otherwise impressive Salone del Podestà) were a little challenging, if I remember.

I wrote about the event here, noting how GTNF was evolving:

Since it was launched in Rio in 2008 as the Global Tobacco Network Forum there's been a gradual evolution to the point where the predominant theme is now harm reduction.

Like any sane person I welcome harm reduction and I recognise it's a sensible strategy for the tobacco companies to adopt.

Nevertheless, as a representative of a group that has spent 36 years valiantly defending the freedom to smoke, it feels strange being a slightly peripheral figure at a tobacco industry supported event.

I followed this with an anecdote:

On a coach to the closing reception at the Enzo Ferrari Museum in Modena I sat beside a very nice American who has spent 20 years testing smoking cessation products including patches and, most recently, electronic cigarettes.

Hank (not his real name) gave up smoking around the same time he began testing alternative nicotine products and I gathered that he sees it as his duty to improve public health and help others quit too.

We chatted amiably throughout the 30-minute journey. I was interested to know more about his work but when it came to explaining what I did he was polite but clearly found it bizarre that anyone would defend smoking.

We didn't fall out but at that moment I felt like a pork chop at a bar mitzvah.

Since then I've arguably become even more isolated because many of the people I used to bump in to from the tobacco side of the industry have either retired or left, and those that remain are mostly full on converts to vaping advocacy.

It's clear therefore that I'm on borrowed time when it comes to being invited to speak at these events, even as a panellist.

At last year's GTNF conference in Washington DC there was a consumer panel, but every speaker was an advocate of vaping. Current smokers were not represented.

Instead I was put on another panel to discuss prohibition but our session wasn't part of the main conference. We were simply the warm up act for early arrivals before the welcome reception.

The main conference started the following day and one of the first speakers actually got a round of applause when he told the audience it was six years since he'd successfully quit smoking.

Think about that. A keynote speaker at a tobacco industry event is applauded for having stopped smoking. For a moment I thought I'd stumbled into a meeting of Addicts Anonymous.

TabExpo is different to GTNF because it's primarily a trade exhibition with lots of expensive looking stands and what they call a 'congress' tacked on, and I'm part of the congress.

The first TabExpo I was invited to go to was in Prague in 2011. Typically, the day I was due to fly out, the British Medical Association announced that they wanted a ban on smoking in all private vehicles.

It was huge story so I had to remain in the UK where I did no fewer than 23 interviews for TV and radio.

I was still hoping to fly to Prague the following day but further media work intervened and I had to cancel the entire trip which was annoying because I'd never been to Prague. (I still haven't).

Nevertheless, it's a sign, perhaps, of the fight we put up that banning smoking in all private vehicles, other than those carrying children, has never been embraced by the UK government. Nor, despite its scattergun approach to tobacco control, was it recommended in the Khan review.

But back to TabExpo.

Conceived, it says here, in the early Nineties, the exhibition only took place every four years, so it was 2015 before the next one.

This time the glamorous location wasn't Vienna, Prague, or Paris, but the ExCel centre in London's Docklands, so you'll forgive me if I don't remember much about it.

TabExpo 2019 took place in Amsterdam and although the RAI Exhibition and Convention Centre was the same as any other modern exhibition centre, at least it wasn't a million miles from the city centre.

Better still, I was invited to MC the full congress, a task I rather enjoyed. (See 'Going Dutch' and 'My flying visit to Amsterdam'.)

TabExpo was subsequently purchased by World Tobacco Events and I understand there are plans to turn it into a biennial event.

TabExpo 2023 is the first under the new management, although there is still a familiar face overseeing the exhibition and congress – Elise Rasmussen, founder of GTNF and a great friend of Forest.

I'll have more to say about Bologna, and TabExpo 2023, later in the week. In the meantime here's the defining image of GTNF 2015 – the farewell party at the Enzo Ferrari Museum in Modena.

And not a cigarette in sight!