Irish Government seeks to further restrict access to tobacco products

My visit to Ireland last week coincided with the closing date for submissions to the Joint Committee on Health concerning a new government bill.

The Public Health (Tobacco Products and Nicotine Inhaling Products) Bill 2019 has gone unnoticed because legislation was first mooted almost five years ago when a public consultation took place inviting responses to proposed legislation concerning the ‘sale of tobacco products and non-medicinal nicotine delivery systems’.

Forest Ireland submitted a response in February 2015 but it all went quiet after that. There was no consultation report and nothing more was heard of the threatened legislation until a few months ago when the health committee published a ‘general scheme’ of a bill plus a regulatory impact analysis and invited comments from interested parties.

Cynics might say that the government has only acted now because a general election is due by May 2020 and pre-election legislation to curb the sale of tobacco and e-cigarettes is an easy win for a government that is currently struggling to win friends (and by-elections).

Indeed, the chances of it being seriously contested are very small because even e-cigarettes have very few friends in parliament, public health or the media in Ireland.
 
Anyway, as it currently stands, the Bill includes bans on:

• ‘self-serve’ vending machines (already prohibited in the UK)
• the sale of tobacco from mobile or temporary units
• the sale of vaping products to under 18s
• the sale of tobacco or nicotine inhaling products by under 18s

It also includes the introduction of a retail licence fee for selling tobacco and vaping products.

Forest Ireland’s submission included this short summary:

Children should not smoke. However, instead of imposing further restrictions that discriminate against adult smokers, more could be done to enforce existing regulations. Instead of banning self-service vending machines, for example, which will unnecessarily inconvenience some adult consumers, we urge the government to do more to enforce the age restriction by working with publicans and others in the hospitality industry and beyond to encourage them to uphold the existing law, and to penalize and prosecute with greater vigour those who are found selling tobacco products to persons under the age of 18.

Requiring retailers to apply for a licence to sell tobacco or other nicotine inhaling products will merely add to the burden and red tape of running a small business. Worse, it could add to the cost of purchasing legitimate consumer products and drive consumers to the black market. We urge the government to think again and reject this measure.

Banning the sale of tobacco products from temporary or movable premises is yet another attack on legitimate consumers that restricts access to legal tobacco products for no good reason. Again, we urge the government to think again and reject this measure or exempt specific types of event (outdoor festivals and open air markets, for example).

Help and advice should be available for smokers who want to quit. However, smoking is a lifestyle choice and individuals must take responsibility for their actions. Further regulations that restrict consumer choice for adults are not the solution to the question of youth smoking which is a separate issue that cannot be addressed by the imposition of further laws.

We do not believe the government should set targets in relation to reducing smoking rates. The government’s role is to warn people of the potential health risks in a reasoned, measured, matter of fact way, not to coerce them to quit with the imposition of more and more laws in order to meet those targets. Adults should be free to choose how they live their lives without being subjected to unwarranted restrictions.

The Public Health (Tobacco Products and Nicotine Inhaling Products) Bill 2019, will go to pre-legislative scrutiny by the Joint Committee on Health in early 2020 when ‘experts’ will be invited to address the Committee in public session.

We have nominated Forest Ireland spokesman John Mallon who knows a thing or two about smoking and vaping having quit smoking (after 40 years) and switched to vaping two years ago.

I’ll keep you posted.

Gout im himmel

How lucky am I?

Since returning from Ireland I have been struck down with an acute case of gout, an ailment often associated with Henry VIII but increasingly common, apparently, among ordinary mortals like me.

I suspected gout was the cause of the severe pain in the big toe of my left foot but I thought I’d better check with my GP, and I was right.

Inspecting the red and swollen digit after I limped into his surgery, he commented, rather too cheerfully, “Ah, yes, the classic symptoms.”

“What could have caused it?” I asked. “Luck,” he replied.

I imagine there’s a bit more to it than that but because I’m reluctant to cut down on red meat and booze - the traditional explanation for gout - I’ll take the good doctor’s word for it.

As it happens, I think this is probably my second attack. Two years ago, within days of starting a course of statins, I experienced a similar stabbing pain in my foot and put it down to that because I had been warned that statins could result in swollen ankles.

I stopped taking the statins and after a week or so the swelling - and the pain - gradually ebbed away but that may have been coincidence.

This time the pain was so severe that when I woke up on Sunday I struggled to walk the short distance from bedroom to bathroom.

Anyway, my GP has prescribed an anti-inflammatory drug that is so strong it is guaranteed, apparently, to reduce the pain and swelling within days.

The downside is that it could leave me light-headed and/or cause stomach ‘problems’. I’m not sure I like the sound of that but I’ll give it a go.

Anyway, I genuinely think I have been lucky because, having spent the past few weeks travelling to Ireland, Belgium and the Netherlands for meetings and such-like, I could not have gone anywhere had this happened a few weeks ago.

It’s not all good news, though. My present incapacity caused me to miss two events last night - the first drinks party of the season and the Cigar Smoker of the Year Awards at Boisdale.

For the record, the latter was won by Swedish actor Dolph Lundgren. I bet he’s never suffered from gout.

Ireland’s leading anti-smoking warrior suffers another election defeat

James Reilly, the former health minister who once declared “war” on the tobacco industry and masterminded the introduction of plain packaging in Ireland, has suffered another humiliating election defeat.

Standing for Fine Gael in a by-election in Dublin Fingal (formerly Dublin North), a seat he held from 2007 to 2016, Reilly came fourth behind Labour, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party whose candidate Joe O’Brien won the seat and was elected to the Dáil.

Minister for health from 2011-2014, Reilly made headlines in 2013 when he described the tobacco industry as “evil”, introduced graphic health warnings on cigarette packs and said he intended to introduce unbranded cigarette packets.

Warming to his theme he later declared, “We are in a war while lives are being lost,” adding, “Standardised packaging is the next logical step in combating this public health epidemic."

His Wikipedia entry, which has an entire section devoted to ‘Smoking’, has some more information I had forgotten:

During the Irish Presidency of the European Union, Reilly prioritised the Tobacco Products Directive. He secured the agreement of the European Council within just six months. Health Commissioner Tonio Borg praised his ability in securing this agreement.

When the Tobacco Directive's future became doubtful because of tobacco industry lobbying in the European Parliament, Reilly arranged for letters supporting the directive to be sent to MEPs from himself, the Taoiseach, 16 European health ministers and the World Health Organisation.

In 2014, however, following a government reshuffle, Reilly was moved - some would say demoted - to minister for children and youth affairs, although he retained responsibility for public health and anti-smoking policy.

While this allowed him to introduce plain packaging, his political career took a further hit when he lost his Dáil seat in the 2016 general election. Ironically, he was no longer a member of the government or the Dáil when the policy was enacted in May 2017.

Instead, thanks to the patronage of Taoiseach Leo Varadkar who nominated him for the Seanad, he became Senator James Reilly and continued his war on tobacco by advocating a ban on smoking in all outdoor dining areas.

Now vaping is in his sights too. Two months ago he called for a ban on flavoured e-cigarettes in Ireland.

But back to Fingal. In March it was reported that:

A local organisation called Empower has teamed up with the Irish Cancer Society, the Department of Health and HSE to make Fingal 'tobacco free'.

The Minister of State for Health Promotion, Catherine Byrne, last week launched 'Tobacco Free Fingal', an initiative to assist communities in Fingal in implementing and maintaining a 'facility tobacco-free policy.'

The initiative will see all Fingal community facilities, homes, parks and beaches becoming smoke-free.

In theory James Reilly should have been a perfect fit for the constituency. The electorate thought otherwise. Perhaps ‘Tobacco Free Fingal’ should be put out to grass as well.

Update: More bad news for Reilly. Although he has already been selected as a candidate in the 2018 election, some of his colleagues may be having second thoughts. According to the Sunday Times (Ireland edition):

Senior Fine Gael sources indicated that Senator James Reilly, a former deputy leader and health minister, will also be replaced on the general election ticket in Dublin Fingal after scoring less than 15% in his by-election contest.

Oh dear.

Reilly meanwhile is reported to have blamed his latest defeat on both the low turnout and some controversial anti-immigrant statements by another defeated Fine Gael candidate, Wexford’s Verona Murphy.

Either explanation might hold some weight if it wasn’t for the fact that he lost in 2016 as well. What was his excuse then?

Life and liberty

I’ve been in Ireland this week.

First port of call was Cork where I met up with Forest Ireland’s John Mallon for our annual review of the year, followed by a pre-Christmas dinner at the appropriately named Liberty Grill (above).

Curiously, apart from the Budget, which saw another increase in the tax on tobacco, and John’s annual tour of the country’s regional radio stations - during which he called for an end to the war on smokers - the issue that generated most coverage for Forest Ireland in 2019 was our response to a demand by Senator James Reilly for a ban on flavoured e-cigarettes.

The former Fine Gael minister of health has been a thorn in our side (and us in his!) for several years. Indeed, of all the anti-smoking zealots we’ve come across in Ireland, Senator Reilly is still the most prominent.

Having campaigned successfully for plain packaging of tobacco he then demanded a ban on smoking in al fresco dining areas and although that threat is currently on hold we’re under no illusions that it could be resuscitated at any time, a bit like Reilly’s political career.

Recently he has been attempting to regain the seat in the Dail that he lost in 2016. The Dublin Fingal by-election took place on Friday and if Reilly gets re-elected it’s a good bet he would be even more insufferable.

Thankfully that doesn’t look like happening. One early report put his share of the vote at 13.4 per cent, in fourth place behind Green Party candidate Joe O’Brien on 24 per cent, Senator Lorraine Clifford Lee (Fianna Fáil) on 16.2 per cent, and Labour’s Duncan Smith on 16.4 per cent.

Clifford Lee was the early favourite but social media was her undoing after it emerged she had posted derogatory comments - several years ago - about travellers and Kim Kardashian whom she accused of having a “fat arse”.

Reports that Reilly might benefit from the furore don’t seem to be playing out but we’ll know when all the ballot papers have been counted. I’ll keep you posted.

Update: I’d forgotten that in Ireland they use proportional representation with a single transferable vote (PV-STV) system so there are a number of counts as the candidate who is last drops out and his or her votes are allocated according to voters’ second, third, fourth etc choices.

Thanks to Tom Gleeson for providing this link to the live count.

Below: With John Mallon (far left) outside the Liberty Grill in Cork

Smoking in the European Parliament

The European Parliament chamber yesterday afternoon.

As you can see there was no-one there, which is how I was able to wander in and take a photo.

My Brexit party contacts were back in Blighty, campaigning. In their absence I was given a tour of the building by a member of the team who I shall call ‘Tony’.

Tony, 23, is a smoker so after visiting the chamber we sought out the main smoking room which is a large, easily accessible room in the heart of the building.

When I say large, it wasn’t enormous but I’ve been in smaller cafes and restaurants. It felt like a canteen without the food.

It was quite busy too. There was a coffee machine and people were sitting and smoking at many of the tables.

There were no clouds of smoke but I did notice a difference in air quality as soon as I entered the room through a double set of doors.

Perhaps I got used to it or it improved as several people finished their cigarettes and left. Either way, it didn’t bother me.

Elsewhere there were small smoking booths, like the one below. Whatever your view of smoking, I really don’t see how anyone could object to having similar booths in enclosed public places in the UK, which raises an important point.

There is a lot wrong with the European Parliament, and I shall be gutted if the UK is still in the EU the next time I visit Brussels, but the accommodation of smokers within the main Parliament building should be applauded.

It may be too much of a compromise for some, but it seems to work for the people working there.

Why a similar policy can’t be adopted in the UK is a mystery but it’s a reminder that Brexit won’t cure all of Britain’s ills, one of which is an appalling addiction to petty regulations.

See also: MEPs enjoying a smoke in the European Parliament

Below: smoking booth in the European Parliament

Channel hopping

Just arrived in Brussels.

Unlike my trip to Amsterdam last week I travelled via Eurostar, which I generally find quite relaxing compared to flying.

This morning however I had to share a coach with a businesswoman who spent the entire journey making hands free calls on her mobile phone, even when we were in the tunnel. (“Super, Tom, it’s lovely to connect.”)

At one point she purchased something - slates or paving stones, I think - and read out her full credit card details - name, number, expiry date and the three digit security code - loud enough for everyone to hear.

Anyway, it’s exactly 25 years since passengers first started arriving on the continent via the Channel Tunnel.

We take it for granted now but a 31.5 mile long undersea tunnel remains a remarkable feat of civil engineering.

It’s a very easy journey for me because the train from Cambridgeshire goes direct to Kings Cross/St Pancras and within minutes I can be in the Eurostar departure lounge.

Before the first Eurostar service on November 14, 1994, there were two ways to cross the Channel - by air or by ferry.

I don’t remember cheap flights being a thing in the Eighties so bargain bucket weekends in Paris would begin at Victoria Station, often late at night. (Travelling overnight was one way to keep costs down.)

If I recall, the departure board would specify the service as the ‘boat train’ which sounded impossibly exotic.

In reality we would trundle through the Kent countryside in a dingy British Rail carriage that was at least 30 years old and in need of serious TLC.

We would arrive at Dover around midnight and board the overnight ferry which would dock in Calais in the middle of the night after a less than luxurious crossing.

Passengers would disembark and be escorted to another train that was waiting to take us to our destination.

We would arrive in Paris, tired and hungry, in time for breakfast, having had little or no sleep.

When you’re young it’s all part of the ‘charm’ of international travel but I was still doing it in my early thirties!

In fact, the only time I flew to Paris in that period was on business in 1987 when the organisers of a conference I was addressing put me up at the five star Intercontinental Hotel and paid all my expenses.

After Eurostar launched in 1994, cross-Channel trains were notorious for the fact that on the English side they ran so slowly on our ageing tracks it was possible to see into people’s houses.

As soon as the train reached the tunnel it would suddenly speed up and maintain the same breathtaking pace all the way to Paris.

Eventually the UK built a high speed rail link on our side of the Channel and moved the Eurostar terminal from Waterloo to St Pancras.

Aesthetically, the Eurostar terminal at St Pancras is possibly the one port of entry into Britain we can actually be proud of.

After Brexit the Government must improve first impressions of the country at every entry point because at the moment many are just not good enough.

Personally I can’t think of a better statement that Britain is open for business and welcomes visitors - businessmen and tourists - than upgrading our arrival terminals.

Some friendly smiles from our rather austere Border Force officers wouldn’t go amiss either!

Above: Bob Shields, feature writer for the Daily Record, at the original Eurostar terminal at Waterloo before joining Forest staff and supporters (below) aboard a Eurostar train travelling to Paris on No Smoking Day, 1999, when you could still smoke on board. Those were the days!

TabExpo - a lesson in resilience

I was going to write about TabExpo, the tobacco trade exhibition that took place in Amsterdam last week, but I’m not sure there’s much to say that would interest readers.

The congress part of it, which I MC’d over three days, was like a mini conference. It took place on the floor of the exhibition hall that was filled with over 100 stands representing the entire tobacco chain from leaf growers to tobacco manufacturers from all over the world.

Naturally, many companies wanted to promote their latest innovative products, most of them smoke free, but it wasn’t like combustible tobacco was the black sheep of the family, as is the case at most tobacco-related events these days.

My favourite part of each day was before visitors started to arrive. Getting there early, I would grab a double espresso from a pop-up coffee stand and wander around the almost deserted exhibition hall before finding a quiet corner where I could sit and edit the opening comments I had drafted the night before.

In truth, I was a bit concerned when I found out I was expected to give a ten minute ‘overview’ at the start of each day’s programme, as well as a 15-minute summary at the end of the final day, but it worked out OK and I told myself that no-one would remember what I said anyway, which is probably true.

MC’ing even a small conference like this was a new experience for me and I enjoyed it more than I expected. The biggest problem occurred on the first day when we inexplicably under-ran by 30 minutes and I had to think of something to talk about to fill the vacuum while we waited for the panellists to arrive for the final session.

Another issue concerned the pronunciation of some of the speakers’ names. I did my best and whenever I could I asked them in advance so I could write the name phonetically, but some names I mangled out of all recognition.

The name Omar Rahmanadi, CEO of BMJ, one of the industry’s leading producers of tobacco papers, doesn’t look too difficult but the way he said it, and the way I said it, were poles apart.

The biggest tongue twister was Stavroula Anastasopoulou of ECigIntellence. After several stabs I gave up and she became, simply, ‘Stav’.

Even some of the simpler names proved problematic. For example, I discovered too late that Maggie Gowen, executive director of the Global Vaping Standards Association, should have been pronounced ‘Go-wen’ not ‘Gow-en’.

Anyway, the agenda was pretty wide-ranging and it concluded on Thursday with a session hosted by the Foundation for a Smoke-free World whose chosen panellists discussed the organisation’s ‘Smoke-Free Index’ which is intended to rate the world’s top 15 tobacco companies in terms of their perceived commitment to achieve a smoke-free world ‘within this generation’.

During the Q&As I couldn’t help asking the question that I’m sure other people were thinking and had indeed been hinted at by a member of the audience:

The Foundation is funded by Philip Morris International. I appreciate you say you are independent of PMI but how do you think other tobacco companies will respond to being evaluated by a body funded exclusively by a commercial rival?

Wearing my Forest hat I also queried another Foundation initiative - a series of global stakeholder meetings - pointing out that no-one from the Foundation had reached out to Forest despite the fact that we have been representing a rather important stakeholder, the consumer, for 40 years.

I later addressed the Foundation’s key goal in my closing remarks:

While I respect the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World, I reject their goal of a smoke-free world. I reject it because there are millions of adults who know the health risks but choose to smoke because they enjoy it.

Many confirmed smokers admit they are addicted but the pleasure outweighs the problem of addiction.

In the future the important thing is to offer adults a wide range of products – including a range of reduced risk products – inform and update them with the latest evidence about the pros and cons, including the potential health risks – and empower them to make an informed choice. In short, let consumers – not politicians or over-zealous public health campaigners – decide.

As long as there are adults who choose to smoke and don’t want to quit, we must never abandon them because in a free society choice and personal responsibility should be paramount.

Smoking has been around not for decades, not even for centuries, but for thousands of years. So let me conclude with this observation:

If the tobacco industry is to meet the needs and desires of all its customers it has to balance the brave new world of electronic nicotine delivery systems with the familiar old world of tobacco.

In my view, talk of a smoke-free world is not just unachievable, it is also undesirable because the only way we can get there is through denormalisation and creeping prohibition.

I also addressed the issue of regulation which was a recurring theme during the congress:

One speaker compared the US and the UK and said that in the US there is no clear path to regulation, no marketing standards, no nicotine strength restrictions, and conflicting government agencies.

No-one, of course, believes that e-cigarettes should be unregulated, but be careful what you wish for. Public health is always looking for the next logical step and I don’t believe anti-smoking campaigners will ever be satisfied until they have eradicated all nicotine use. Their goal is not a smoke-free world but a nicotine-free world.

Another speaker, I noted, felt that Juul has been unfairly made a scapegoat but he added that, in his view, it was a tactical error for the company not to push back.

He’s right, I said. The more concessions you agree the more concessions will be demanded of the industry.

Overall, though, the lesson I took from TabExpo was one of resilience. However it evolves, the tobacco industry will outlive us all. That much is very clear.

My flying visit to Amsterdam

Just back from Amsterdam where I was MC’ing the Congress at TabExpo 2019.

What a great city. I’ve been to Amsterdam once or twice before but can’t remember when exactly - the late Eighties and early Nineties, I think.

I didn’t see it at its best this week because the weather wasn’t great, which limited the opportunity to wander around without getting very wet.

On Monday night it rained so hard I thought water was leaking into my room from the floor above. But it was just the noise of the rain on my window.

I was also working most of the time but I’ll definitely go back - next year, perhaps.

One incentive is that Eurostar is launching a direct service from Amsterdam to London.

At the moment you can travel from London to Amsterdam direct, but on the return journey you have to stop and change at Brussels, which can mean a wait of up to two hours.

I don’t really enjoy flying so I considered the Eurostar option before I went to TabExpo but due to engineering works between Brussels and Amsterdam even the direct journey from London was scheduled to take six hours.

If you add an hour and 30 minutes to get to St Pancras from my house in Cambridgeshire, plus an hour going through security and waiting for the train to depart, the whole outward bound journey would have taken eight and a half hours.

In contrast, the flight from Stansted to Amsterdam was just 40 minutes. Add the one hour drive to the airport, plus the two hours at the airport prior to boarding, and the journey took four hours in total.

No contest, then. Nevertheless I will probably give Eurostar a try once the Amsterdam service goes direct in both directions.

Then again, I was impressed with Schiphol Airport. It felt clean, spacious and, on a Thursday afternoon in November, not unduly busy. There were lots of places to eat and drink, and no shortage of seats.

Smokers were pretty well catered for too. I saw several indoor ‘smoking lounges’, all well signposted. One or two were quite small and not somewhere you’d want to spend a long time, but they weren’t hidden from view, nor were they a long walk away.

Two were directly adjacent to bars, and another - which took the form of a rather impressive glass cube - was directly en route to my gate and very close to a cafe and Internet zone.

They were all in use which is why I didn’t take any photos because I felt it might be a bit intrusive. I can report however that the air filtration systems must have been working well because there was little or no sign of any smoke.

The fug that would fill poorly ventilated airport smoking rooms and the condensation that would drip down the walls 20 years ago were completely absent. Technology, eh?

Talking of which, I saw several areas where you could sit at a desk or table and plug in your laptop or iPad.

Most impressive, perhaps, were the dispensaries marked ‘toilet seat cleaner’ in the cubicles in the gents’ loo. How civilised is that?

I believe that Schiphol rivals Heathrow in terms of the number of flights and passengers but security was a breeze compared to most airports. Belt, shoes? No problem, sir, you can keep them on.

Even when I forgot to take my tube of toothpaste out of my case in order to present it as a separate item in a plastic bag, that wasn’t an issue either. Instead of redirecting my X-rayed case for a top to bottom security check, no-one even mentioned it.

In my next post I’ll write a little bit about TabExpo Congress which concluded with a session hosted by representatives of the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World. Interesting times.