Are young people quietly rebelling against the anti-smoking killjoys?

Nigel Farage, 59, wasn't the only smoker among the cast of I'm A Celebrity 2023.

According to the Independent:

After surviving 23 days deprived of food, hot showers and a flushable toilet, Sam Thompson emerged from the I’m a Celebrity jungle desperate for one thing … a drag on a cigarette.

The 31-year-old Made in Chelsea star puffed away at the show’s wrap party and joined a long list of cool kids who love to light up.

Interestingly, the article – Why smoking is back in fashion for Generation Z – coincides with the publication of a study this week that suggests that 'more young people in England took up smoking during the pandemic, stagnating the years-long decline among 18 to 24-year-olds'.

At 31, Thompson is a Millennial rather than Gen Z, but he's arguably still indicative of something I wrote as part of my recent Letter on Liberty, 'Freedom: Up In Smoke?'.

Commenting on young people smoking, I quoted a story recorded by a student at Trinity College, Dublin:

Walking into campus through the Arts Block one morning, I was confronted by a screen declaring Trinity a ‘tobacco-free campus’. Not only was I surprised, having not heard this once in my six months of studying here, but my confusion was further justified once I walked past the arts block and saw the revolving cast of smokers standing outside. Trinity may declare itself tobacco free, but it is certainly not in practice.

Meanwhile, I added:

The Tab Student Smoking Survey 2021 revealed that ‘52 per cent of students who took our survey say they smoke cigarettes’. That surprised me, but one explanation (other than the fact that it was a self-selecting poll) may be that many students are social smokers - they can’t afford to be heavy smokers, nor are they addicted to smoking. Despite the health concerns about smoking … there remains a quiet rebellion among the young against the killjoys who want to dictate how we live our lives.

When I wrote that back in July I also had in mind some recent experiences of my own. For example, when I spoke at a small event at Edinburgh University in April, my host, an undergraduate, insisted that smoking is far from uncommon among students.

Others, also in their early twenties, have said pretty much the same thing to me, and I’ve seen it with my own eyes too.

I'm not suggesting, as the Independent would have us believe, that 'smoking is back in fashion for Generation Z', but I do think that the more the Government and the humourless anti-smoking industry continues with its war on smoking, the cooler it will be to smoke.

That's just human nature, and it's why the generational ban on the sale of tobacco will almost certainly prove counter-productive.

Ban the sale of tobacco to new generations of adults and smoking will instantly gain the allure of forbidden fruit.

The Government clearly hasn't thought this through but as Ella Whelan, editor of Letters on Liberty, said at our recent Nanny State of the Nation event:

"I think Rishi Sunak might not have met many young people ... I also know that young people haven't lost their rebellious spirit."

I think she’s right. And if it’s true (stats vary) that the decline in smoking rates among young adults has stalled, banning the sale of tobacco to that same demographic could be the most provocative thing any government could do to a generation that doesn’t expect or wish to be told how to live their lives.

Update: Chris Snowdon has commented on the smoking rate story here. I think he’s sceptical.

My response to the apparent contradiction between smoking rates flatlining and tobacco sales falling during the same period is that the cost of cigarettes and hand rolled tobacco may be forcing smokers to purchase less, legally at least.

Also, and this is pure speculation on my part, but my guess is that many smokers in their twenties are not habitual smokers but occasional social smokers.

The combination of the two would therefore explain what to Chris seems an inconsistent anomaly.

Ultimately, though, what matters is that adults of all ages have the right to purchase tobacco if they want to. Whether smoking rates are going up, in decline, or flatlining, is irrelevant.

All you can be sure of is that the tobacco control industry will spin any study to its advantage. On that I do agree with Chris.

Below: Ella Whelan speaking last month

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’.

Farewell, Mark Drakeford

Mark Drakeford has announced he will step down as first minister of Wales in March.

It wasn't unexpected. He signalled some time ago that he would resign around the mid point of the current Welsh parliament and he's kept his word.

However, while I have enormous sympathy for someone whose wife died suddenly (in January this year), I can't say I am sorry to see him go.

Thankfully, talk of banning smoking outside pubs and in town centres in Wales, first proposed by Drakeford in 2018, appeared to be derailed by Covid and other more pressing issues, but you could never be sure it was off the agenda as long as he remained in office.

My worry, as I wrote at the time, was that:

Tobacco control is almost a nationalised industry in Wales and the Welsh media make little or no effort to provide any sort of balance in their reports.

If you live in other parts of the UK what happens in Wales also tends to go under the radar, which in this instance would be a huge mistake.

If Wales adopts Drakeford’s proposal the policy will almost certainly be considered by the Scottish government. Even in England there will be some local authorities who want to give it a go.

Plans to extend the smoking ban to outdoor areas may have been thwarted, or postponed, but you didn't have to look far to find further evidence of Drakeford's nannying – some might call it authoritarian – streak.

This, after all, was the man who in 2016 came within one vote of banning the use of e-cigarettes in enclosed public places in Wales. Six years later he was still bemoaning it (First Minister Mark Drakeford says failing to push through vaping bill is one of his biggest regrets).

However, it's only two months since he suggested that vapes should be available on prescription only, and who can forget it was his government that recently introduced a 20mph speed limit in every town and village in the country.

We're not off the hook yet, though, because one of the two 'early front runners' to replace him is Vaughan Gething, the former minister for health in Wales, of whom I wrote in July 2020:

We already knew that minister for health Vaughan Gething wanted to extend the smoking ban to outdoor areas in Wales because he said so in a written statement on June 24:

"I remain committed to making more of Wales’ public spaces smoke free and intend to progress work in the next Senedd term to extend the smoking ban to outdoor areas of cafes and restaurants and city and town centres."

If I'm honest I sensed that Gething – who is currently minister for the economy – wasn't in the same mould as Drakeford when it came to banning things, but you can never tell.

Perhaps he was just doing his master's bidding but politicians, as we have discovered, love to leave a legacy and smokers are an easy target.

Devolved governments also have limited powers, and tackling smoking is one of few areas where they can 'make a difference', especially if it's in the name of health.

In short, it's far too early to rejoice at the resignation of one first minister when we don't know who his successor is, or what their agenda might be.

My advice? Watch this space.

Monday mourning

This morning I tweeted a link to a report that appeared on the BBC News website overnight.

Māori mourn loss of hard-won smoking reform

If anyone is in mourning, however, it’s the BBC.

When it was reported, in December 2021, that the Labour government in New Zealand wanted to ban the sale of tobacco to anyone born after 2008, I noted that:

Forest’s reaction was reported by the digital Daily Express and MailOnline and I was also interviewed by Julia Hartley-Brewer on Talk Radio, Patrick Christys and Mercy Muroki on GB News, and Darren Adam on LBC.

The glaring omission on that list is the BBC.

See: Balance and the BBC (Taking Liberties)

Two weeks ago, when the incoming centre-right government in New Zealand announced that, as part of the new coalition agreement, it would repeal the policy, the BBC sniffily ignored the news for three whole days.

When the BBC News website finally got round to acknowledging the story, it led with the views of ‘health experts’ - who were inevitably incensed by the decision - and ignored the many voices who supported it.

See: New Zealand smoking ban: Health experts criticise new government's shock reversal (BBC News)

This is important because what’s happening in New Zealand, where the idea for a generational sales ban originated, is clearly of enormous relevance to the UK where the Government has only recently closed a public consultation on the issue.

Now, two weeks later, the BBC is using the highly emotive word ‘mourn’ to describe the reaction of an entire race of people, many of whom may actually welcome the incoming government’s more liberal approach to tobacco control.

What is missing, once again, is any semblance of balance, but I’m not sure the BBC cares anymore.

Here, for example, is what I wrote in 2021 when Forest took Five Live presenter Nihal Arthanayake to task for interviewing only Hazel Cheeseman of ASH when the New Zealand ban was first announced:

What is depressing is that a leading presenter on a national BBC radio station appears to have set himself up as judge and jury on smoking and won’t acknowledge that a discussion on the subject is rather more complicated and nuanced that the bald statement that 'around 78,000 people in the UK die from smoking'.

It’s as if he has listened to one side (the prosecution) and decided that whatever case the defence might have it’s not worth listening to because the prosecution has already won the argument.

Indeed, if I understand him correctly (he may wish to correct me), Arthanayake seems to think that the health risks of smoking are so great that they outweigh any debate or discussion that might (shock, horror) offer a more positive/alternative view of smoking.

As readers know, Forest has never encouraged anyone to start smoking and we fully acknowledge the health risks associated with the habit.

Nevertheless we cling to the old-fashioned view that, in a liberal and mature society, the ability to make informed choices and take responsibility for our own health - especially when it involves known risk factors such as diet, alcohol and combustible tobacco - are principles worth fighting for, and discussing.

I’m not sure the BBC agrees, which is annoying because they are happy to demand from millions of people an annual licence fee, but they seem increasingly unwilling to broadcast or publish views that are entirely mainstream and, in this instance, supported by 58 per cent of the adult population in Britain.

BAT out of hell

From The Times last week, a column by chief business commentator Alistair Osborne:

No smoke without fire at BAT

Commenting on the company’s drive towards ‘A Better (ie smokeless) Tomorrow’, Osborne wrote:

What is this supposed to mean? “We will leverage our market archetypes to guide how and where we deploy our products.” 

Or this? “In Heated Products, we continue to invest to rejuvenate our momentum with an enhanced cadence of innovation.” 

Does smoking stop you talking properly too?

Brutal, and a lesson for everyone in corporate communications.

Stick to plain English!

Great Scott wins Cigar Smoker of the Year

Actor Dougray Scott, currently starring in series two of Vigil (BBC1), was crowned Cigar Smoker of the Year at Boisdale of Canary Wharf last week.

I couldn’t go because I had something else on and, to be honest, I’m not a huge fan of award dinners, many of which are over-long, chaotic, or both.

But that’s just me. Others enjoy them enormously.

The event was launched in 2013 as The Spectator Cigar Smoker of the Year awards.

I wrote about it here and re-reading that ten-year-old post I am reminded that I was invited to present an award for ‘Best Cigar Terrace’, which I don’t remember at all.

MC was The Spectator’s Andrew Neil and the star guests were Simon LeBon and David Soul.

Since then guests and award winners have included some stellar Hollywood stars, notably Arnold Schwarzenegger, Burt Reynolds, and Charlie Sheen.

Jonathan Ross and Jeremy Irons have also featured so credit to the organisers.

This year, in addition to Dougray Scott, guests included fellow actors Ray Winstone and Kelsey Grammer.

Grammer has attended the event several times and whenever he’s in the UK (his wife is British) there’s every chance you’ll find him at Boisdale with a fine cigar.

(I once sat at the same table as Grammer for an impromptu late night dinner. Unfortunately we were at opposite ends so I didn’t get to speak to him. From what I could tell, however, he seemed very nice and down-to-earth.)

Anyway, since The Spectator helped launch the Cigar Smoker of the Year awards in 2013 there has been a revolving door of sponsors. (This year the principal sponsor was Santa Rita, a brand of Chilean wine.)

Nevertheless the event appears to be in good health, unlike the Pipe Smoker of the Year luncheon that succumbed to an increasingly small field of famous pipe smokers and was knocked on the head 20 years ago.

From 1964 to 2003, however, it was something of an institution with the award - presented at London’s Savoy Hotel - going to some very famous people including Harold Wilson (1965 and 1976), Eric Morecambe (1970), Edward Fox (1980), Henry Cooper (1984), Ian Botham (1988), Tony Benn (1992), and Ranulph Fiennes (1994).

The final award went to Stephen Fry in 2003 but this was a last hurrah, the writing having been on the wall for several years.

Today I would be hard pushed to think of a single well-known pipe smoker. Even the Lords and Commons Pipe and Cigar Smokers’ Club has been renamed the Lords and Commons Cigar Club.

At this point I ought to say that former Forest chairman, the late Lord Harris of High Cross, would be turning in his grave.

However, after a lifetime of smoking a pipe, even he quit the habit a year or two before he died in 2006.

See: Santa Rita Cigar Smoker of the Year Dinner and Awards 2023 (Cigar Journal)

Heart of the matter

Two weeks ago I mentioned that I had been invited to have an abdominal aortic aneurysm screening:

The purpose, I was told, was to 'help find an aneurysm' in the main blood vessel that supplies blood to the body.

What they were looking for was any swelling – which can be serious – but they couldn't find anything so I passed that test and we move on.

Yesterday I received an email from an old friend telling recipients that he is due to have open heart surgery before Christmas to repair an aneurysm.

I have known him since university. We met at a cheese and wine party (!) in our first week at Aberdeen in 1976 and have remained good friends ever since, although it’s a few years since I last saw him.

The irony is that I have always thought of him as much fitter than I have ever been.

He has never been overweight and has always looked after himself, so news of his impending operation adds fuel to my belief that, while it’s sensible to take precautions to lower the risks in later years, there is a Russian roulette aspect to health that limits what we can do.

Perhaps it’s hereditary or just bad luck, but some things are beyond our control.

My father, for example, was never overweight and enjoyed far more exercise as an adult than I ever have, yet he suffered heart problems from his early fifties and ended up having two heart by-pass operations and a heart transplant.

According to my mother - and this was news to me until yesterday - he also had aortic aneurysm surgery.

My grandfather died of angina in 1972 before heart by-passes were common procedure, so perhaps my father inherited some of his problems from his father.

The good news is that my friend’s issue has been identified - perhaps through a similar screening to the one I had last month - and is being dealt with.

I wish him all the very best.

Ugly? That's my uncle Roy's old house!!

My mother, 93 last Sunday, has been staying with us for the past few days.

Yesterday I took her to see her brother Roy in West Mersea in Essex where he lives with his wife Sarah.

I’ve written about Uncle Roy before. Like my grandfather before him, he was a GP with a keen interest in boxing that led, eventually, to him becoming chairman of the British Olympic Association Medical Committee.

In his younger days he was also an amateur racing driving whose luck eventually ran out when he rolled his Mk1 Lola-Climax once too often and my aunt ‘suggested’ he quit for the sake of his young family.

Anyway, back in the Sixties, before my family moved to Scotland, we would visit them in Colchester, where Roy and Sarah had moved shortly after getting married.

It helped that my grandparents on my mother’s side had also moved to Colchester, following my grandfather's retirement a few years later, because that enabled us to see them at the same time.

In fact, we could see the back of Roy and Sarah’s house from my grandparents’ house, which brings me to the point of this post.

I was chatting to Sarah over lunch yesterday when she mentioned that their old architect-designed house (above) had featured in a Channel 4 TV programme a few years ago, and not in a good way.

Ugly House to Lovely House with George Clarke features leading architects transforming ‘some of Britain's most unloved homes’.

Ugly house? Unloved homes?!!

It’s true, says Sarah (who wasn’t the least bit bothered by their old home being traduced in this way), that the house looked dated and had a slightly strange layout, but that was because it was designed in 1962 as a family home and doctor’s surgery, with two rooms being allocated for use as a surgery and waiting room.

I imagine there was also a separate entrance for patients.

By today’s standards, the original house certainly looks ‘of its time’ but when it was built it was considered extremely modern, and I remember it reasonably well.

Thanks to the large windows it was very bright. The sitting room, on the first floor above what I think must have been the surgery, seemed enormous, and there was a modern, open plan feel to the place.

Subsequent owners seem to have built a two-storey extension at the side of the house and knocked down an internal wall creating an even larger kitchen/diner/living room.

The major crime, however, was adding a horrible boxed porch to the front of the house.

I remember going there for Christmas lunch one year and that was an eye-opener because it was the first year I discovered that other families have different traditions on Christmas Day.

I was surprised, for example, that we had to wait until late afternoon for ‘lunch’. (I believe it was because Roy had to visit patients on Christmas Day. Can you imagine GPs doing that today?)

At home Christmas lunch was normally done and dusted in time for the Queen’s Speech at 3.00.

But the bigger surprise was that my cousins weren’t allowed to open their presents until 5.00pm because my sister and I always opened our presents at 7.00am sharp.

But I digress.

From Ugly House to Lovely House is available on the Channel 4 app and I have to say it’s extraordinarily rude about the original building which is described as looking like a ‘block of flats’.

The original architect is invited to comment and he is remarkably gracious - on screen at least - about the criticism of his work.

According to the programme (first broadcast in 2017), the budget for modernising the house was £150,000, but the final cost of reburbishment, which included an impressive new extension at the back, was nearer £250,000.

The irony is that while the re-fashioned house does look better and more practical to modern eyes, from the front it could easily pass for a small modern office and my guess is that in another 50 or 60 years it will look just as dated as the original building does now.

Below: Trailer for Ugly House to Lovely House: 60s house transformed into modern home. The full progamme, Colchester Revisit – is on the Channel 4 app.