Tempted by the smoke of another

Last week, following the launch of a new "vapers' rights" campaign, it was suggested it was wrong to make vapers stand outside in the cold with smokers, breathing in their smoke.

I read that to mean it might be bad for their health even though there is no evidence that smoking outside is harmful to anyone other than the smoker - and even that should be qualified because millions of smokers live long and healthy lives regardless of their habit.

Well, that interpretation was wrong, apparently. What the author and campaign manager meant was that the smell of tobacco smoke is alluring and might tempt vapers back to smoking (which is a terrible thought, obviously).

Now I know I should let this go but I can't. This is a blog, after all, and if we can't have a lively discussion here what's the point? All I would ask is that no-one should take this personally. I'm just trying to have a debate, nothing more.

Anyway it's nagged away at me because I remember a similar argument was used to justify the ban on smoking in pubs and clubs.

According to tobacco control campaigners it wasn't fair that ex-smokers and those wishing to quit couldn't go to the pub without being exposed to an enticing pall of cigarette smoke.

Likewise the ban on tobacco advertising, graphic health warnings and the display ban were justified, in part, to stop ex-smokers relapsing.

We were told that the sight of a packet of cigarettes behind the counter couldn't fail to tempt a child or ex-smoker. Solution? Put them behind shutters. Out of sight, out of mind, and all that.

The latest thing is that "E-cigarette advertising has the power to drive former smokers back to real cigarettes."

According to the Herald Sun in Australia a new study has "prompted calls to ban e-cigarette promotions in the same way tobacco advertising was restricted decades ago."

Quit Victoria director Dr Sarah White said failing to ban e-cigarette advertising could undermine the resolve of former smokers as well as decades of gains since tobacco advertising was outlawed.

"Some of these ads look very much like people using a cigarette, (and) probably just watching people using that ­motion doesn’t help former smokers suppress their urges," she said.

The underlying message behind all these campaigns and policies is that smokers and ex-smokers (including vapers) are essentially rather dumb.

They are so easily influenced that almost anything - advertising, packaging, the smell of tobacco smoke - will encourage them to light up or relapse.

I accept that some people are weak-willed (I'm one of them) but should society be regulated exclusively for our benefit?

In my case should crisps, Bombay mix and salted peanuts be regulated to the nth degree to stop me snacking and becoming even more obese?

Should cartons of double cream carry a health warning and be hidden behind sliding doors to remove the shameful grip it has on me?

Likewise alcohol and anything else that, consumed regularly or to excess, might not be 'good' for us.

The idea that ex-smokers must be protected from the company of smokers and the "allure" of tobacco smoke is the same argument public health campaigners use to justify a ban on e-cigarette advertising.

It implies that ex-smokers (including vapers) are so feeble and lacking in personal responsibility that the state must step in and protect them - for their own good.

According to the tobacco control industry very few people choose to smoke. From that first tantalising cigarette smokers are caught up in a web of addiction and the overwhelming majority, so we are told, want to quit.

Pat Nurse has strong views on this subject and will be writing a guest post when she returns from holiday. In the meantime a comment by Nate in response to this post is worth repeating:

The idea that all ex-smokers live out the rest of their lives in some sort of "recovery" mode, wherein they are constantly tempted to "relapse" and fall off the proverbial wagon, is in itself an extension of the nonsensical tobacco control worldview.

Specifically, it requires an acceptance of the "addiction" model, in which smokers are nothing but weak-willed, morally deficient drug junkies with little or no agency over their own behavior. Under this model (which has been prevalent in tobacco control for around 30 years now), no one smokes because they want to or because they enjoy it, and no smoker can take it or leave it whenever they like.

As those of us know who inhabit a real world filled with actual people, everything about this model is spectacularly incorrect.

I couldn't agree more.

Why Sheffield's smoke free children's parks policy includes vaping

Sheffield Council has responded to Forest's criticism of their decision to ban vaping as well as smoking in children's play areas.

See: Sheffield smokefree playground campaign an ‘abuse of public money’ says lobby group Forest.

There's some logic to this which is why smokers and vapers should fight such policies together.

After all, if public health wins the argument that children must be 'protected' from the sight of anything they cannot legally purchase, it's a short step to banning smoking, vaping and drinking in all sorts of locations where children might be present.

Growing up in Scotland in the Seventies I remember pubs having frosted glass and customers being barred from taking their drinks outside. The reason, or so I was told, was to 'protect' children from the sight of people drinking.

And this is where many vapers are getting it wrong. They are so desperate to draw a distinction between smoking and vaping they shy away from defending smoking in public places - even outside - preferring to look the other way.

Sheffield Council's policy on smoking and vaping in children's play areas demonstrates the misguided nature of this one-eyed, ostrich-like approach.

If you keep quiet about smoking bans (effectively endorsing them) you open the door to similar bans on vaping for the reasons the council has given.

In any battle there is a frontline. If you concede territory the battleground moves closer to home. Vapers are not immune to the war on tobacco so every time smokers lose ground the threat to vaping increases because a precedent has been set.

Unfortunately many vapers are either too blind to see the danger to their own habit or they have been convinced of the virtues of vaping as a weapon in the war on tobacco.

Having effectively joined forces with tobacco control they believe, optimistically, they will be exempt from excessive regulations.

It's a naive and blinkered view that ignores the reality that most public health advocates of vaping want e-cigarettes to be a smoking cessation tool and nothing else.

On no account should vaping be 'normalised' among the general public nor should it be allowed where it might be seen by children - hence the bans on the use of e-cigarettes on beaches, hospital grounds and in play areas (not to mention Nottingham City Council's ban on vaping during work breaks).

Admittedly there are relatively few policies like that at present but the fact that some exist - without a murmur of protest from pro-vaping public health campaigners - ought to concern our vaping buddies.

Instead many persist in seeing the tobacco control industry as their friend. Good luck with that.

Forest's response to council's smoke free children's parks policy

I was disappointed a week ago when the Sheffield Star published a report about the council launching a campaign to ban smoking in the city's play areas without a single dissenting voice.

We got in touch, the paper invited us to comment, and the result is published today under the headline Sheffield smokefree playground campaign an ‘abuse of public money’ says lobby group Forest.

Credit to the Star and reporter Alex Moore.

Prior to this I don't think Alex was aware that Forest (or a group like Forest) existed. Fair play to him – and his news editor – for offering some balance.

Meanwhile the campaign by singer-songwriter Annie Dressner for the government to introduce legislation to 'make smoking in and near children's parks and playgrounds against the law' appears to have stalled.

After feverishly tweeting the likes of Adele, Taylor Swift and Katie Price in the hope of getting their support, Annie's last campaign tweet was on July 19.

Meanwhile her petition – launched on July 1, four days after she finished recording her new album – currently has 2,889 signatures, a meagre number given the publicity she briefly enjoyed.

1966 and all that

Just arrived in Dundee ahead of my first football match of the season.

Today's big match is Dundee United v. Dunfermline in the Betfred Cup (otherwise known as the Scottish League Cup).

It's on TV so I could have saved myself an 800-mile round trip but it wouldn't have been the same.

For example, had I stayed at home I would have missed having supper in Anstruther, the Fife fishing village just down the coast from St Andrews.

What could be better than fish and chips followed by a twin cone with strawberry and chocolate ice cream washed down with a can of ginger beer whilst overlooking the harbour?

This morning I even got up early and had a short bracing walk on the Tay road bridge (from where I took the photo above).

I grew up in a house that overlooked the Tay. You can't see it but it's just beyond the rail bridge.

When my family moved there in 1969 they had just closed the railway station on our side of the river.

Until then people living in Fife but working in Dundee would cross the river by train or by ferry. When the road bridge opened everyone went by car or bus instead.

In 1970, when I was eleven, my parents bought me a racing bike. We picked it up in a shop in Dundee but it was still a bit big for me. Once in the saddle my toes were struggling to touch the ground.

Despite that they waved me off and I cycled home across the mile-long bridge, not daring to stop peddling in case I slowed and fell off.

Looking back it seems remarkable that a child - not yet a teenager - was allowed to cycle across the bridge alongside cars and lorries. The dual lanes are quite narrow even for smaller vehicles but we thought nothing of it.

Today cyclists are restricted to the central walkway which in those days was reserved for pedestrians only.

Anyway, had I stayed at home I would have also missed the marathon series of programmes broadcast by the BBC yesterday to mark the 50th anniversary of England's sole World Cup win.

Given our record since 1966 it seemed like overkill, especially the live stage show broadcast on Radio 2, Five Live, and screened in selected cinemas nationwide.

Would Germany celebrate like this? Italy? Brazil?

Of course not but they've won multiple times. When you've only won the damn thing once it assumes greater significance, I suppose.

Faced with an eight-hour car journey I quite enjoyed it, although I'd be interested to know what the listening figures were in Scotland.

It certainly made me feel a little nostalgic although my own memories of the '66 World Cup can be counted on one hand.

In fact the only thing I remember about the earlier rounds was listening to the roar of the crowd on our little black and white television set after I'd gone to bed.

Likewise the only thing I remember about the final is the moment West Germany equalised at the end of 90 minutes.

My father (who was never a big football fan) jumped up, turned the TV off, and went out into the garden.

He eventually came in and switched it on again but we'd missed extra time and, if I remember, the presentation of the trophy.

The curious thing is I have lots of memories like that from my childhood – some of them involving my parents or relatives – but whenever I mention them to my mother or aunt or whoever they either have no recollection of the incident or deny it ever happened.

It's maddening but it explains the expression, "alone with your memories".

The nice thing about the BBC's rather overblown coverage of England's World Cup win is that people were able to share their memories without being told they'd imagined the whole thing.

It's time however to give the whole thing a rest. No more mentions of 1966 until 2066, I beg you!

Todd Buchholz for President!

I have written about Todd Buchholz before.

We met in 1983 on my very first visit to Washington DC and we've kept in touch ever since. He and his family are occasional visitors to the UK and three years ago we visited them at their home in San Diego.

Todd is one of the smartest – and funniest – people I know. He's studied at Harvard and Cambridge. He's worked as an economic advisor in the White House. He's written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, as well as appearing on all the major television networks in America.

His books have been translated into numerous languages and his first book, New Ideas from Dead Economists, is considered a “classic” by the American Economic Association.

His latest book, The Price of Prosperity: Why Rich Nations Fail and How to Renew Them, published by HarperCollins in June, prompted this review in the Sunday Times last week:

The Price of Prosperity is one of those swaggering, world-ranging “big ideas” books that sets out to analyse the world’s problems and then provide solutions ... Highly entertaining, far-sighted and enjoyably acerbic, [it] vividly evokes the vast centrifugal forces that threaten the First World today.

Immigration breaks the bonds between neighbours, wealth separates the rich and poor, government debt abuses the trust between present and future generations — and the anxiety engendered by such forces is now producing populist counter-movements that, as Britain’s Brexit experience shows, are very much one-nation, anti-global and anti immigration. Doctrinaire liberals might despise them, but they might do better to understand them.

Todd's Midas touch also extends to Broadway where he was a founding producer of Jersey Boys, the musical that became a smash hit worldwide. (For "founding producer" read "investor" or, better still, "angel".)

With that sort of luck (and CV) Todd Buchholz would make the perfect President.

You read it here first, folks!

It's journalism, Jim, but not as we knew it

Here's an interesting business model:

Journalistic.org is a non-commercial, co-operative model where the journalists do not accept or expect remuneration for their work but only due credit.

And here's an example of their work:

Vaping vs. Smoking: The price of our healthcare system, environment and cost to businesses!!

A shocking £12.9billion is the total cost of smoking to society every year! Not only could switching to vaping save a life, £3.2billion could be re-located to impoverished areas of the world!

Action is needed to make a change!

At journalistic.org we collected research and data in conjunction with vapourlites.co.uk to compare the true cost of vaping, against smoking. We analysed three keys areas of society: health, environment and cost, valuing each factor against each other.

Not only are 5.6 trillion cigarettes smoked every day in the world, but in the UK alone, 80,000 people die every year from smoking. To put that into perspective 86% of cancer cases in the UK could be avoided. 

If it costs currently £2billion every year to the NHS from smoking-related diseases and deaths, think about what £2billion a year could be spent on instead??

The Royal College of Physicians, released a report entitled: Nicotine without Smoke: Tobacco Harm Reduction. In the report, they stated that ‘electronic cigarettes have the potential to make a huge contribution towards preventing the premature death, disease and social inequalities in health that smoking currently causes in the UK’.

If medical professionals agree, then what’s stopping you?

When I left university in 1980 with every intention of pursuing a career in journalism (it had been my ambition since the age of nine or ten) there was a very clear distinction between journalism and public relations.

To put it bluntly, old school journalists hated PR execs, especially those who had been to university.

Then again, many viewed all graduates with suspicion, dismissing them as smart alecs who thought they knew everything after a couple of years on some crummy student rag.

The best age for joining a newspaper, it was explained to me, was 17, before you had time to pick up any bad habits.

Anyway there was a clear line you didn't cross and when, hot out of university, I accepted a job in PR I knew I was almost certainly torpedoing a career in mainstream journalism (although by then I was more interested in writing for The Spectator or Private Eye).

Today the line between PR and journalism has been breached and twisted on its head so much it's difficult to spot the difference – unless it comes with an obliging note that reads "in conjunction with vapourlites.co.uk".

So thank you, journalistic.org, the home of "innovative and unique journalism", I'll politely decline your interesting graphic "detailing the true cost of vaping against smoking".

I don't really have room for dubious stats and colourful estimates on this blog. 

I'm sure there's a market, though. Have you tried tobacco control?

Smoke screen

There was a wonderful documentary on BBC2 on Saturday night.

Produced and directed by Julian Temple, Keith Richards - The Origin of the Species was a documentary about "Keith Richards's postwar childhood in Dartford and London, exploring the cultural undercurrents and transformative thinking which occurred between 1945 and 1962."

Having read his autobiography a couple of years ago I've become a big fan of Richards. He clearly has the constitution of an ox (there are very few people who could have survived his lifestyle) but what comes across in the book – and every interview – is his sense of humour and live and let live philosophy.

Like David Hockney Richards is rarely interviewed without a burning cigarette in his hand and Temple's documentary was no exception. In fact the director was so keen to highlight this endearing characteristic whole scenes were bathed in tobacco smoke.

It was beautifully filmed – some of the frames should be included in an exhibition on smoking. You can watch it on BBC iPlayer here.

Viewers are warned that it 'Contains some strong language'. Amusingly there's no mention of the devilishly alluring smoke that snakes and swirls across the screen for much of the documentary's 60 minutes.

Campaign for vapers' rights

Wow. Didn't see that coming.

The Freedom Association has launched a campaign, Freedom to Vape, that will make the "positive case for vaping" as well as promoting "vapers' rights".

Nothing wrong with that. Curiously however the explanation for this anti nanny state campaign could have come straight from the tobacco control handbook:

E-cigarettes have the potential to save millions of lives. Public Health England has urged employers to have separate vaping rooms to encourage staff to move away from smoking cigarettes, and along with the Royal College of Physicians, has said that they are 95% safer than smoking combustible tobacco.

There has been talk of the NHS prescribing e-cigarettes as one of their stop smoking aids. What is the point of banning people from using e-cigarettes, making them go out into the cold, and not only breathe in the cold air, but also the second hand smoke of other smokers? It makes them less likely to quit smoking. Encouraging pubs and restaurants to say that vapers are welcome in their establishment not only gives more freedom to vapers, it is better for public health and encourages more vapers to frequent those businesses.

According to a recent article in the Daily Mail, since e-cigarettes went on sale, they have reduced smoking-related deaths in the US by more than a fifth in those born after their introduction. Let’s encourage their use before either the bureaucrats regulate them into a slow death, or the nanny statists put them to the sword more quickly.

"Encourage their use"? What, by repeating the mantra that if smokers switch to vaping it will save "millions of lives"?

Or suggesting, on the basis of a single report based on "computer modelling", that e-cigarettes have already reduced smoking-related deaths in the US by a fifth?

Or implying that "second hand" smoke, even outside, is a risk to other people's health?

What other fallacies will they promote on behalf of "vapers' rights"?

I like Andrew Allison, the man behind the campaign, but I can't help feeling that The Freedom Association is jumping on the pro-vaping, anti-smoking bandwagon – and there's nothing libertarian about that.

If I'm wrong I'll hold my hands up. For now the jury is out.

PS. The campaign's Twitter account has tweeted this article, E-cigarettes are a critical tool in the war on smoking. Just saying.