GTNF - making smokers history

The 2023 Global Tobacco and Nicotine Forum (GTNF) begins today with two afternoon panels and a welcome reception in the evening.

The event is taking place in Seoul, South Korea, which is eight hours ahead of the UK so do your own maths!

I'll be following the main conference online when it starts tomorrow (full agenda here) and if there's anything of interest to report I'll let you know.

In 2017 GTNF coincided with the launch of the PMI-funded Foundation for a Smoke-Free World, which featured prominently, but I’m not expecting anything as newsworthy as that.

It’s more likely to be something on the level of last year’s conference, in Washington DC, which began with a speaker from Philip Morris International (PMI) declaring that it was six years since he’d quit smoking, prompting a round of applause.

This year, the session that ought to interest me most is ‘Putting Consumers First'. Ironically, however, ‘Putting Consumers First' is not part of the main event.

Instead it has been squeezed on to the agenda (a bit like the ‘prohibition’ panel I was on last year) as one of two sessions that are taking place today (07:45-08:55 UK time) ahead of the conference proper and before the welcome reception.

Moderated by public health policy expert Nancy Loucas, who is also executive coordinator of the Coalition of Asia Pacific Harm Reduction Advocates (CAPHRA), the panellists are:

Alex Clark, CEO of the Consumer Advocates for Smoke-Free Alternatives Association
Samrat Chowdhery, former president of the International Network of Nicotine Consumer Organisations
Matt Drodge, research director at Walnut Unlimited
Fiona Patten, Reason Party leader and former member of the Legislative Council of Victoria
Clarisse Yvette Virgino, member of CAPHRA

I’ve met Alex because I invited him to be on a consumer panel I helped organise at GTNF 2017 in New York. A nice guy, he's a vaping advocate.

The International Network of Nicotine Consumer Organisations (INNCO) and CAPHRA also represent consumers of reduced risk products.

Fiona Patten is an Australian politician and another supporter of vaping.

Finally, Matt Drodge works for a company that describes itself as a 'human understanding agency', but I can’t imagine it's dedicated to upholding the rights of adults who enjoy smoking and don't want to quit.

Forgive the rose-tinted nostalgia, but I remember when the views of confirmed smokers were valued at GTNF (formerly the Global Tobacco Networking Forum).

Today a session dedicated to 'Putting Consumers First' can't find room on a panel of five people (six if you include the moderator, another vaping advocate) for a single current smoker, or someone who will stand up for confirmed smokers.

If this feels familiar it’s because it is. At last year's conference in Washington DC (which I attended and wrote about here) there was a panel called ‘Forgotten Smokers’.

I found that title a bit ironic too because every speaker was a vaper, or vaping advocate, and there was no mention of what, in the context of a tobacco and nicotine industry conference, is the single most forgotten group of all - smokers who enjoy smoking and don't want to stop.

This year I won't even be in the audience to make that point, so I think we’ve probably reached the moment when confirmed smokers and their representatives have, finally, been consigned to history at GTNF.

It’s been a long time coming so while I’m not surprised I am a bit sad. For the record, this is what I wrote after GTNF 2022:

Next year’s GTNF is in Seoul, South Korea, which has been talked about as a potential location for several years.

I’d love to go - I’ve never been to that part of the world - but I sense that after twelve years my time at GTNF may be coming to a close.

When a session called ‘Forgotten Smokers’ makes no mention of consumers who enjoy smoking and don’t want to quit (the most forgotten group of all), focussing instead on smokers who are being denied the opportunity to switch to vaping, you know your time is almost up.

Meanwhile, a journalist who recently accused a fellow political commentator of being "in the pocket of the pro-smoking (sic) lobby" for accepting "slap-up free dinners and wine" (courtesy, as it happens, of Forest) is on the ‘Meet the Press’ panel on Wednesday afternoon (07:55-09:05 UK time).

You couldn’t make it up!

PS. Consumer advocates can register to watch GTNF for free here. ‘Putting Consumers First’ is not being live streamed.

Below: GTNF Networking Reception hosted by Forest in Brussels, 2016