Six months after Deborah Arnott retired as CEO of ASH, the tobacco control industry has lost another significant figure.
Martin Dockrell, tobacco control programme lead for the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (formerly Public Health England) since 2014, retired at the end of January.
Unlike Arnott, who was given a big send off with accolades ringing in her ears, Dockrell’s departure seems to have gone under the radar, publicly at least. I can find only one mention of it on social media and nothing anywhere else.
Prior to joining PHE, Dockrell spent seven years at ASH, where he became director of policy and research and effectively Arnott’s deputy. Commenting on his new civil service role, I wrote a blog post (Job for the boy at Public Health England), noting that it was an ‘interesting appointment’.
Later I started monitoring his social media posts and saw how his support for vaping as a quit smoking tool made him an unlikely friend and hero to some vaping activists. (His Twitter/X handle is @SwitchFinder. Geddit?)
Personally I was rather less enamoured, and I’m sure the feeling was mutual. In fact, he once ‘liked’ a tweet that described me as a "a smug apologist for deadly cigarettes". In response I wrote:
I’m flattered he found a moment to 'like' a tweet calling me ‘smug’. Pot. Kettle. Black.
More revealing perhaps was the fact that an employee of Public Health England endorsed a tweet that accused me (falsely) of being an ‘advocate of deadly cigarettes’.
Advocate of choice and personal responsibility, yes. Advocate of deadly cigarettes (or smoking generally), never.
Last year, ironically, the boot was on the other foot. In March 2024, following an ‘investigation’ by those super sleuths at The Examination, The Times reported that:
A public health official responsible for tobacco and vaping policy dined with the e-cigarette company Juul and gave advice on launching its vapes in the UK, new documents reveal.
The gist of the allegation was that Dockrell had had lunch - with Deborah Arnott also present - with a representative of Juul at a nicotine conference in Warsaw in 2017.
The IEA’s Chris Snowdon, who I rarely disagree with, described the investigation as a ‘smear campaign’.
Perhaps it is [I wrote] but I can’t help finding it funny that after years of trying to discredit tobacco companies and anyone who engages with the industry (even if it's only attending the annual Chelsea Flower Show), tobacco control campaigners are now the ones being targeted for engaging with "industry" – albeit the vaping industry.
According to The Times, Dockrell hasn’t commented but Arnott ‘disputed Juul’s characterisation of the meeting, saying it was a “misleading account of a discussion about the UK regulatory framework for e-cigarettes”.’
Instead she told the paper that ASH ‘occasionally “met with industry both to gather intelligence and to inform the delivery of more effective regulation and tobacco control measures” and denied it was inappropriate.’
As I say, I don't see anything wrong with that. What I find wrong, and hypocritical, is the indignation if a politician or civil servant should dare engage with the tobacco industry.
If it's OK for ASH and or a government official like Martin Dockrell to meet with the vaping industry "to gather intelligence or to inform the delivery of more effective regulation and tobacco control measures", why can't politicians and civil servants meet with the tobacco industry as well?
That said, it was a storm in a teacup. Far more interesting to me was the fact that Dockrell had instigated a living evidence review on smoking and Covid, but - unaccountably - seemed to lose interest in it (publicly at least).
Draw your own conclusions, but following publication of the twelfth and final version of the review in August 2021 I noted that the summary was almost identical to every previous version. Ergo:
Compared with never smokers, current smokers appear to be at reduced risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection and increased risk of greater in-hospital disease severity.
Harking back to a previous post I had written, I reminded readers that:
In recent months … Dockrell has done very little to promote the study to a wider audience.
I have just had a quick glance at his Twitter account and as far as I can tell the last time he mentioned the living review was on September 18 (2020) when he retweeted a link to version 7.
Since then versions 8, 9 and 10 have been published and not a peep from PHE's tobacco control lead.
See: End of the road for living evidence review on smoking and Covid
In 2022 I noticed that he had nevertheless found time to retweet another snarky comment, this time by LBC broadcaster James O’Brien about the Institute of Economic Affairs, which seemed a strange thing for a civil servant to do, especially when a pinned tweet on his Twitter account read:
Friends, a little note on the special constraints I operate under. Lead me not into temptation and if you ever feel I’ve overstepped the mark, shout out!
Naturally, I took him up on that (Shout out for Martin Dockrell), remarking:
I'm curious to know how RT'ing a snarky comment about a 'free market' think tank (note O'Brien's sneery quotation marks) by a radio host well known for his left wing or 'liberal' views adheres to the Civil Service Code which urges civil servants to 'apply the same standards' online and offline, 'either at work or in a personal capacity'.
I also took issue with his involvement in the ‘independent’ Khan Review, pointing out that:
There has to be a question mark over how 'independent' Javed Khan's review really is, especially after Martin Dockrell, the former director of policy at ASH who has been tobacco programme lead for Public Health England for almost a decade, tweeted: ‘Chuffed to be assisting @JavedKhanCEO on his project.’
Despite his retirement, however, we may not have heard the last of him because Dockrell is chairing a panel discussion at Smoking Cessation and Health 2025 at York Racecourse on March 5.
Panellists at the event include Hazel Cheeseman, now chief executive of ASH, and Richard Boden, deputy director, tobacco and vaping policy and legislation, at the OHID.
An ‘experienced civil servant’, Boden’s bio is interesting because it states that:
Richard has led on the design and development of the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, and prior to this led on the independent Khan Review.
This does of course beg a question similar to the one I asked in relation to Martin Dockrell: how independent was the Khan Review if it was led by a civil servant working for the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities within the Department of Health and Social Care?
Anyway, if anyone knows who has taken Dockrell’s role as tobacco control programme lead for the OHID (or if the position still exists), do let me know.
I’ve searched online (including LinkedIn and social media) but can’t find any mention of a successor.
On Monday I emailed the Department of Health and Social Care but the automated response didn’t promise a reply and added that even if they do respond it might take 20 working days (four weeks!) to get back to me.
I’m also struggling to confirm the identity of Boden’s boss - the director of tobacco and vaping policy and legislation at the OHID. Does such a post exist or is the tobacco control programme lead one and the same?
Again, if anyone has any information, let me know.