Forest Ireland defends vaping on Ireland AM

Wednesday, October 2, 2019

Nicotine Wars: The fight for choice

Last night’s Eat, Drink, Smoke, Vape event in Manchester went pretty well, I think.

In between the eating, drinking, smoking and vaping I managed to squeeze in a short speech to mark the publication of ‘Nicotine Wars: The Fight for Choice’.

I’ll write more about Rob Lyons’ report later, but here’s what I had to say last night:

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us here tonight.

As some of you know, Forest was founded 40 years ago. I need hardly remind you of the significance of 1979 because, as well as being the year that Forest was set up by Sir Christopher Foxley-Norris, a former Battle of Britain fighter pilot, it was also the year that Margaret Thatcher was elected prime minister.

[Loud cheers!]

Here are some other notable events in 1979:

• Former Liberal Party leader and MP Jeremy Thorpe went on trial at the Old Bailey charged with attempted murder.

• The first direct elections to the European Parliament took place. In Britain the turnout was a whopping 32%.

• The new Conservative government's first budget saw chancellor Geoffrey Howe cut the standard tax rate by 3p and slash the top rate from 83% to 60%.

• The government also announced £4 billion pounds worth of public spending cuts.

• Last but not least, smoking was banned in main post offices throughout the country.

Anyway, for the last 40 years Forest has defended the rights of adults who wish to smoke knowing full well the health risks associated with smoking.

Today however the landscape has changed. Over the last decade a range of reduced risk products - notably e-cigarettes and, more recently, heated tobacco - has emerged.

Today there are approx 7.5m smokers in the UK, and 3.6m vapers, a little under half of whom still smoke. We support and defend their choice, whether it’s to smoke or vape.

We also embrace all reduced risk products.

From the beginning, Forest has never been ‘pro-smoking’. Our mission is to promote choice and personal responsibility and that will never change.

Tonight, as part of that ongoing campaign, we are launching our latest publication. It’s called Nicotine Wars: The Fight for Choice, and it explores the changing face of nicotine consumption in the 21st century as an increasing number of smokers transition from combustible tobacco to reduced risk products.

The author, Rob Lyons, is science and technology director at the Academy of Ideas and a columnist for the online magazine Spiked.

Rob can’t be here tonight so let me read a few words from my Foreword:

As the name, Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco, suggests, our primary aim is to defend the interests of adults who enjoy smoking tobacco. In practice however we don’t discriminate between different nicotine products nor do we discriminate between smokers and vapers, many of whom are dual users.

When we’re asked to defend vaping, or criticise regulations designed to restrict unreasonably the sale and use of e-cigarettes, we speak out. Our message is clear: choice and personal responsibility are paramount. As long as you don’t harm others, your lifestyle – including your choice of nicotine product – is nobody’s business but your own.

The crucial thing is to offer smokers a choice of traditional tobacco products and reduced risk devices, inform and update them with the latest evidence about the risks and benefits, and empower them to make their own informed choices. In short, let the people – not politicians or over-zealous public health campaigners – decide. Most important, respect their choice, even if you don’t approve of that choice.

Ladies and gentleman, please take a copy of the booklet with you. Alternatively, you can download a copy from the Forest website.

Enjoy the rest of the evening. Thank you for coming, and please continue to support the fight for choice.

Photo, courtesy Daniel Mcilhiney, taken last night

Tonight ...

Welcome to our new arrival

Nicotine Wars: The Fight for Choice by Rob Lyons is published today.

Rob is science and technology director at the Academy of Ideas and a columnist for the online magazine Spiked where he writes about a range of issues, including smoking.

Hard copies will be available to guests at our Eat, Drink, Smoke, Vape drinks party at the Conservative conference in Manchester this evening.

Thereafter you will be able to download a copy online. I’ll post a link here tomorrow.

I’m with Carl - advocates of the right to vape must join the larger fight

American writer and tobacco risk reduction expert Carl Phillips posted an interesting thread on Twitter at the weekend.

It concluded with him urging advocates of the right to vape to join what he called the ‘larger fight’ to erode ‘the credibility of the myth-creating [tobacco control] machine’.

But more on that later.

I have long argued that vaping advocates are making a mistake if they focus almost exclusively on health in support of e-cigarettes.

The significantly reduced risk provided by e-cigarettes is a powerful argument in their favour, but the problem, as I have said before, is that it only takes one major health scare - genuine or otherwise - to have politicians and public health officials demanding immediate action to curtail their use.

The US vape scare is a classic example. It doesn’t matter how unjust (or plain wrong) the case is against legal vaping products, those opposed to any form of recreational nicotine have been able to create a general sense of panic around e-cigarettes.

And not just in America. India recently announced a ban on the manufacture, sale and distribution of e-cigarettes.

In Ireland, as I mentioned on Saturday, a former minister of health has called for a ban on flavoured e-cigarettes, the president of the University of Limerick has urged the government to ban vaping across all Irish educational institutions, and a leading heart consultant has called for a complete ban on vaping, saying, “It’s more dangerous than smoking and booze combined.”

Even closer to home, it’s been reported that ‘The Scottish Government could introduce a ban on advertising for e-cigarettes and vaping products. First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said a consultation on the move would take place in the “coming months”.’

This is happening despite the fact that there is no evidence of harm caused by vaping regulated e-cigarettes or liquids. Consider the reaction therefore if genuine evidence were to emerge. Imagine, for example, that a study into long-term use of e-cigarettes concluded that there is a risk from vaping even regulated products.

Meanwhile, in the absence of evidence, the safety of e-cigarettes is likely to be left in a permanent state of limbo because how do you prove that something isn’t harmful, long-term, when it still a relatively new product? “More research is needed,” researchers will say (with no hint of self-interest), leaving the issue tantalisingly open to debate.

Even if studies find no significant risk, I guarantee there will be plenty of studies whose results are nevertheless spun to suggest a threat far beyond the actual risk.

That’s what happened with passive smoking, if you remember. The overwhelming majority of studies found no significant risk to non-smokers yet even a tiny relative risk - far below the threshold at which something might be considered a serious risk - was used to justify bans on smoking in public places.

Even when the largest study of its kind found no significant risk from secondhand smoke on spouses of smokers in the home, the tobacco control industry refused to accept it. Why does anyone think public health - or indeed the media - will act differently on vaping?

UK vapers are probably a bit complacent because, for now at least, they have Public Health England, Action on Smoking and Health and other tobacco control bodies advocating the use of e-cigarettes in preference to smoking.

But how long will that last? Let’s be clear. The only reason PHE, ASH et al ‘support’ e-cigarettes is because they have identified vaping as a weapon in the war on smoking. To date, not one tobacco control group or public health body has endorsed e-cigarettes as a recreational product. For them, it’s a smoking cessation tool, nothing more, nothing less.

None of these bodies support long-term recreational vaping yet vaping advocacy groups cite them as if they are friends and allies. If and when the number of vapers exceeds the number of smokers in the UK, I suspect PHE, ASH and even the government will adopt a very different attitude to e-cigarettes.

The problem is, if advocates of vaping put all their eggs in the health basket, where do they go if it is one day found that e-cigarettes are NOT the panacea for smokers that current evidence suggests them to be. If and when that happens there has to be another reason to defend their use, and that is why I continue to bang the drum for choice.

My point is that, whatever the health risks, adults must be allowed to smoke, vape or consume other nicotine products like heated tobacco and snus without excessive regulation. Educate, inform and update consumers about the risks, but ultimately the choice must be theirs.

That argument should be consistent across all nicotine and tobacco products. Unfortunately, by playing the ‘health’ card to the max, vaping advocates are boxing themselves into a corner because if, one day, ‘evidence’ emerges that e-cigarettes are not as safe as advocates currently say there are, there will be no room for manoeuvre. The entire basis on which e-cigarettes have been sold to regulators will be undermined overnight.

In the meantime, as Carl Phillips has pointed out, even if you accept the PHE estimate that vaping is 95 per less harmful than smoking (Carl believes the true figure is nearer 100 per cent), that is still a substantial risk, in numerical terms, if you believe everything the likes of PHE and ASH say about the dangers of smoking.

The estimated figures vary, but ASH currently claims that 100,000 people die of smoking every year in the UK. Five per cent of 100k is 5,000.

Smoking was banned in public places in the UK on the grounds that 1,000 non-smokers were estimated to die every year from passive smoking. The figure mysteriously rose to 11,000 before MPs voted for the ban, but you get my point.

Given that cigarette vending machines were banned in the UK on a 2:1 majority after the presiding Appeal Court judge argued that if the legislation saved even one life it was worth it, the precautionary principle alone would support a ban on all sorts of products.

Bans on e-cigarettes, flavoured or otherwise, are an obvious case of the precautionary principle being taken too far. They also reflect a phenomenon that, paradoxically, affects e-cigarettes more than traditional cigarettes but, to the best of my knowledge, has not been commented upon - fear of the unknown.

When you smoke the overwhelming majority of people know the long-term risks. But is that true of vaping? Current evidence suggests the risks are very small. But e-cigarettes are still a very young product compared to traditional cigarettes so no-one can truthfully say they know for sure what the long-term effect might be.

Fear of the unknown is a powerful force and it may explain why some smokers prefer to stick with what they know, including the well-publicised health risks. The key argument therefore has to be choice. Consumers should be informed about the relative risks of using cigarettes, e-cigarettes, cigars, snus and other nicotine products - indeed, they have a right to that information - but their right to choose should also be sacrosanct.

In short, none of these products should be prohibited. Unfortunately we live in a world governed by politicians and public health campaigners who want to create a risk averse society that puts prohibition and the infantilisation of adults above pleasure and personal responsibility.

Anyway, as I said at the beginning, Carl Phillips posted a long thread on Twitter that is well worth reading. However, I can spare you the effort by reproducing his final comments:

Which brings us to the final and most important point here: if you are an advocate for the right to vape, please learn some history and join the larger struggle. Don't just fiddle at the surface.

Of course you are most focused on educating and fighting myths about vaping. But the larger fight is eroding the credibility of the myth-creating machine in general. So learn about and speak up about the myths about snus, environmental smoke, the effectiveness of tobacco control measures, that all smokers want to quit, etc.

And FFS, at least stop perpetuating tobacco control myths yourselves, or allowing other ostensible THR advocates to do so with impunity. The Tobacco Wars will [be] won or lost in toto. I trust it is finally clear that vapers are not going to be granted a deferment.

The message "yeah sure, most of what tobacco controllers say is true, but their stuff about vaping is wrong" is a sure loser. “Most of what tobacco controllers say is bullshit, including what they say about vaping" takes more effort, but it is what has a chance to succeed.

I agree with every word of this. Indeed, I’ve been banging a similar drum for some time. Unfortunately, I sense we are fighting a losing battle persuading vaping advocates to join what Carl rightly calls the ‘larger struggle’.

The problem is that many vaping advocates are tobacco control activists of long-standing and their goal is the eradication of smoking. Those who don’t share that aim (ex-smoking vapers mostly) nevertheless see an alliance or accommodation with tobacco control as the best way to secure vaping’s future.

Long-term they will be proved wrong (and Carl and I will be proved right!) but by then it will be too late. Tobacco control’s grip on all forms of nicotine consumption will be so strong it will be almost impossible to reverse.

Sadly, but perhaps understandably, hardly anyone is taking the long-term view. In the UK, many vapers and vaping advocates bask in the hilarious illusion that PHE and ASH are somehow the ‘good guys’. The reality, as I have noted before, is that the tobacco control industry in the UK now ‘owns’ vaping.

With the exception of the UK Vaping Industry Association (UKVIA), all the prominent ‘pro-vaping’ spokesmen are professional tobacco control campaigners. They include Martin Dockrell, head of tobacco control at PHE; Prof John Newton, director of health improvement at PHE; Deborah Arnott, CEO of ASH; and Prof Linda Bauld who has so many job titles I can hardly keep up.

To overcome this imbalance, more people from outside the tobacco control bubble need to step forward and join the ‘larger fight’.

This morning on Newstalk (Ireland’s largest independent radio station) Forest Ireland spokesman John Mallon went head-to-head with Senator James Reilly who has called for a ban on flavoured e-cigarettes in Ireland.

Contrast this with the fact that the leading ‘pro-vaping’ advocates in Ireland have so far shunned Forest because of our connection with Big Tobacco. Sooner or later they need to understand they won’t win the war on vaping by ignoring the bigger picture or the one ally that has spent decades fighting for consumer choice.

From the archive: Stand Up for Freedom

According to Facebook this was my ‘most liked’ photo of 2014.

It was taken at the Hyatt Hotel, Birmingham, during Forest’s Stand Up for Freedom event featuring Comedy Store ‘veteran’ Chris Barrie.

As you can see, it was genuinely standing room only.

Tomorrow in Manchester I’m going to Comedy Unleashed at The Comedy Store.

I’m looking forward to seeing how it compares to our own Stand Up for Liberty events at The Comedy Store in 2011 and 2013!

Cigarettes, vending machines and vaping - is Ireland having a collective meltdown?

John Mallon, Forest’s man in Ireland, has been on the road again.

Once a year John embarks upon a media tour around the country. It’s a good opportunity to visit and maintain contacts with radio stations outside Dublin.

Each tour has a theme. This year, knowing that health minister Simon Harris was about to announce plans to ban cigarette vending machines in a forthcoming health bill, we chose to focus on that.

As luck would have it, Harris made his announcement the day before John began his tour in Limerick where he was launching Forest Ireland’s ‘Butt Out’ campaign.

Initially this gave the tour a boost because the subject was seen as topical. Within 72 hours however interest in vending machines began to wane and we were struggling to book interviews for week two of the tour.

It didn’t help that the US vape scare was also in the news, added to which two domestic vaping stories hit the headlines.

The first appeared last Sunday when the Irish Sunday Mirror reported that:

A leading heart consultant called for a ban on vaping and warned: “It’s more dangerous than smoking and booze combined.”

President of the International Society For Vascular Surgery, Prof Sherif Sultan, described e-cigarettes as “the disaster of the century”.

He told the Irish Sunday Mirror: “We need to ban them immediately.”

The following day the president of the University of Limerick urge the government to ban vaping across all Irish educational institutions.

According to the Irish Independent:

Dr Des Fitzgerald, a professor of molecular medicine and former chief academic officer for the Ireland East Hospital Group, said vaping is now “a real health risk and is being directly implicated in health crises and even deaths among users.”

As a result of this story, an interview we had arranged with Cork’s 96FM became a discussion about vaping on campus rather than cigarette vending machines!

We managed to regain momentum by changing the theme of the tour, so instead of talking exclusively about one issue (vending machines) we sold it in broader terms, how it was ‘Time to give smokers a break’.

That seemed to do the trick. We didn’t hit all our target stations but, given the circumstances, the final list wasn’t bad.

Tues 17th - Limerick 95FM, Limerick Today
Wed 18th - Galway Bay FM - Keith Finnegan
Thurs 19th - Ocean FM, North West Today
Friday 20th - Midlands 103 - Midlands Today
Tues 24th - Cork 96FM, The Opinion Line
Thurs 26th - Radio Kerry, Talkabout
Friday 27th - Tipp FM, Fran Curry

As for vaping, I’m beginning to wonder whether Ireland is having some form of collective meltdown.

Yesterday former health minister James Reilly today weighed in to the debate by calling for a ban on flavoured e-cigarettes.

Dr Reilly has been on an anti-smoking crusade for several years now. Having introduced plain packaging when he was in government, he then urged the government to ban smoking in al fresco dining areas.

Now he’s targeting e-cigarettes.

And he’s not alone. The anti-vaping hysteria that has gripped parts of America now seems to be infecting Ireland too.

A poll asking ‘Should Ireland ban flavoured vapes?’ is currently showing 50% in favour, 45% against, and 5% don’t know.

To vote click here.

Below: John Mallon on Ocean FM

Lost in translation

Reports say Russia is banning smoking on apartment balconies.

It’s actually part of new fire regulations but it's smokers on whom it will have the greatest impact.

According to the head of the All-Russian Movement for Smokers' Rights, Andrey Loskutov:

“They've banned it everywhere they could. Now they remembered they forgot about balconies," he told Interfax news agency.

Andrey Loskutov. The name rang a bell. And then, prompted by Chris Snowdon, I remembered.

I met Andrey in Zurich in July 2014. The meeting was instigated by an intermediary who wrote:

The proposal is for a smokers' rights conference two weeks in advance of the next COP meeting [in Moscow]. Preliminary dates are 9/10 October. The goal is to have international speakers from Austria, Denmark, the US, Ukraine and more. The objective will be to launch an official paper/document about smokers unions around the world.  

As I wrote here, Andrey doesn’t speak English and I don’t speak Russian so we were joined by a translator.

Also at the meeting was an Austrian who had flown in from Vienna. ‘I was beginning,’ I wrote, ‘to feel like a character in a John le Carré novel.’

I had been briefed that Andrey was the founder of a consumer organisation in Russia called the All-Russian Movement for Smokers' Rights, also translated as Smokers Union (literally, a ‘movement’). Founded in 2012, it grew out of a cigar club.

Andrey had plans, I was told, for an international smokers’ rights conference to be held in Moscow shortly before the sixth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP6) to the WHO FCTC, and he wanted me to be the main speaker.

My notes at the time read:

Andrey is very charming but he was unable to provide much information about his plans. We had a good translator so nothing was lost in translation! He said he had invited participants from a number of countries – including China – but I understood that they were all from cigar groups.

Andrey himself was keen to embrace cigarette smokers but [the Austrian] made it clear he did not want to support cigarette smokers. He wanted to defend cigar smoking and to do that he felt cigar smokers should be differentiated from cigarette smokers. 

I said I understood his position but said that Forest could not take a similar position. We support and defend all tobacco smokers.

To cut a long story short, the date of the event was changed to September 30, 2014, which meant I couldn’t go because it clashed with events Forest was hosting at the Conservative party conference and the Global Tobacco Network Forum in West Virginia that began a day or so later.

Originally billed (without my knowledge!) as one of the three conference organisers, I was disappointed because it would have been good to meet smokers’ rights activists from other countries.

I would have also liked the opportunity to go to Moscow in less stressful circumstances than my only previous visit in 1981 - ‘What did you do in the (Cold) War?’.

Nevertheless I did get some feedback, and I posted one or two details here (Russian smokers behind international movement for smokers’ right).

You can read a Russian journalist’s report about the event here (the original, in Russian, can be found online here), and there are photos of the conference here (scroll down).

Sadly, I heard nothing more of Andrey’s plans for a worldwide smokers’ rights movement, and nothing more of Andrey until yesterday.

In hindsight I do regret a lost opportunity. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts and a willingness to cooperate, something must have got lost in translation.