I've resisted writing about this subject for several months but the temptation finally proved too great.
Two things pushed me over the edge.
First, discussing e-cigarettes, someone said to me, "ASH is a more credible advocate than Forest."
His point was, if an anti-smoking group is prepared to defend and even advocate the use of e-cigs that has to be good, right?
Forest, on the other hand, will forever be associated with tobacco and all its ills.
I understand the argument but I'm not sure I agree with it. Does a proud and consistent commitment to freedom of choice, personal responsibility and fact-based evidence count for nothing these days?
Contrast that with the woeful record of ASH and many other tobacco control groups.
Yes, I welcome the fact that some public health campaigners are embracing e-cigs. I'm happy too that the tobacco control industry is increasingly split on the issue and some now see their colleagues (or former colleagues) in a new light.
Suddenly though we're supposed to forget that the same public health campaigners who currently defend e-cigarettes are often the same people who for years fought tobacco using the same dodgy research and twisted rhetoric they now accuse others of in relation to vaping.
The hypocrisy is breathtaking.
The smoking ban, let us never forget, was introduced in Britain on the back of the absurd and unfounded claim that 11,000 non-smokers were dying every year from 'passive' smoking.
There was never a hint of hard evidence to support this extremely damaging allegation. Of the four or five cases that went to court, no employee ever convinced a judge they were victims of environmental tobacco smoke.
When the definitive Enstrom Kabat study was published in 2003 (verdict: the link between ETS and coronary heart disease and lung cancer may be considerably weaker than generally believed, although a small effect cannot be ruled out), anti-smoking lobbyists like ASH pounced on the researchers who were vilified horribly for their dedicated, diligent work.
More recently it was suggested by ASH and others that smoking costs society £13 billion a year. I think that's the figure. It hardly matters. It bears little or no relation to reality but it's important to anti-smoking campaigners because it exceeds the £10 billion that smokers pay the Treasury each year in tobacco taxation and it allows anti-tobacco groups to argue that smokers are a net cost to society when the opposite is true.
Someone should write a book on the subject of smoking and manufactured evidence but in the absence of a definitive account I recommend Joe Jackson's illuminating essay Truth, Lies and the Nanny State (2007).
Clive Bates, the former director of ASH who is now a leading advocate of e-cigarettes, was at the forefront of the war on tobacco in Britain for several years. Having encouraged what I believe were unwarranted fears about passive smoking, Clive is now a hero of the vaping community thanks to his eloquent and powerful advocacy of electronic cigarettes which is driven, I believe, by the experience of his brother, a former smoker who used e-cigs to quit.
Professor Linda Bauld, another prominent anti-tobacco campaigner, was the author of an astonishingly blinkered review of the impact of the smoking ban. Her highly selective report was brilliantly critiqued in The Bauld Truth which should have won a Plain English Campaign award. Despite that, Linda is also a darling of the e-cig movement which has embraced her as one of their own.
The most recent anti-smoking campaigner to be put on a pedestal is Deborah Arnott, the current CEO of ASH. Arnott has made it her mission to reduce smokers to a rump – five per cent – of the population within 20 years. As we know, the only way that can be achieved is by denormalising the current 20 per cent, pricing tobacco out of many people's reach, and restricting areas where smokers can light up to a handful of public or private spaces.
She too became a favourite of the e-cig brigade following this recent outburst:
"There are people in the public health community who are obsessed by e-cigarettes. This idea that it renormalizes smoking is absolute bullshit. There is no evidence so far that it is a gateway into smoking for young people."
Overnight a woman who looks like she swallowed a wasp while sucking on a lemon (even when she's happy) went from zero to hero. You've got to laugh but there's a serious point to all this.
Few if any of these public health campaigners turned e-cig advocates believe in choice. Some have a genuine commitment to harm reduction which I respect. What I don't respect is their determination, by whatever means, to stop people smoking.
Their philosophy is that people must be 'encouraged', one way or another, to quit. In their world few people smoke because they want to and most want to quit so society must 'help' them. E-cigarettes are tolerated not as a pleasure in their own right but as a means to an end – the end of smoking.
The likes of ASH criticise, quite rightly, some of the more dubious studies about e-cigarettes, pointing out the flaws in methodology, sample size etc etc.
Likewise they are happy to go to war when the results of a fairly innocuous study will be twisted out of all recognition in an attempt to scaremonger the public about the alleged risks of vaping.
But it never seems to occur to them that many smoking-related studies suffer from exactly the same issues. Or if it does they're keeping very quiet about it.
I suspect one or two know but they're reluctant to address this inconvenient truth. Here for example is a recent exchange between Clive Bates and nisakiman (an occasional commenter here) on Clive's blog, The Counterfactual:
I don’t know why you express surprise or exasperation at the refusal of the medical profession to admit to the facts [about e-cigarettes], Clive. This isn’t about health, it’s about ideology, and has been since the ‘Godber Blueprint’ took shape.
After all, you yourself took part in leading the charge regarding the completely unsubstantiated myth of ‘Second-Hand Smoke’, which has had a devastating effect on the lives of millions of decent people and the businesses which catered to them. Hundreds of thousands lost their jobs and businesses in UK alone, and for absolutely no health gain.
And as for the social costs, they have been horrendous. A wedge has been driven into the heart of communities; bigotry and discrimination are officially sanctioned and hatred and contempt are encouraged; children are being used as political tools to divide families and ever more restrictive and illiberal laws are being passed.
We are now told that the greatest health problem the elderly face is loneliness – a direct consequence of driving out of business the majority of social venues like bingo halls, working men’s clubs, pubs etc etc where the elderly would go to socialise. And all to further the warped ideological agenda of a small coterie of zealots.
I shudder to think what damage this falsehood of the ‘dangers’ of SHS has done to the economy worldwide, with the bans and restrictions that have been enacted as a result of the FCTC’s rulings. And you were part of it, Clive, so spare us the crocodile tears for the trials and tribulations that e-cigs are suffering at the hands of Tobacco Control now. You helped create this monster, this poisonous ideology. Now you must learn to live with it.
In response Clive wrote:
Hi – grumpy rejoinders always welcome here! But sadly I’ve no time to spend on arguing about these issues – though I’m sympathetic to some of what you say. I’d rather focus on what little I can do in the limited time I have – in my case that means promoting low-risk alternatives to smoking as an option for smokers, or what some call 'tobacco harm reduction' as a public health strategy.
"Public health" is not one thing and never has been. There are many different perspectives in the people who work in this area and they change over time – sometimes in response to evidence.
So Clive is "sympathetic" but has "no time to spend on arguing about these issues". How wonderfully convenient!
Truth is, any sympathy Clive might have is worthless because he fully supports the comprehensive smoking ban and, I am sure, every single piece of anti-smoking legislation that has been introduced over the past 15 years.
The same, with nobs on, applies to every anti-smoking lobbyist turned e-cig advocate – Linda Bauld, Professor Robert West ... Lovely people, some of them, but every single one shares responsibility for the intolerant anti-tobacco environment that has been manufactured in this country.
Yes, manufactured. There was no strong public demand for a comprehensive smoking ban. Even now a majority of adults would happily allow designated smoking rooms in pubs and private members' clubs.
Inevitably, because so few non-smokers are now exposed to tobacco smoke in public or in private, the issue for many is no longer about health, it's about smell. Incredibly smokers must be driven even further into the shadows because in today's sanitised world some people can't tolerate even the briefest exposure to the smell of tobacco smoke.
Alternatively we're told that the mere sight of a stranger smoking in a public park could encourage a toddler or teenager to take up smoking. It could, I suppose, but where's the evidence that it does?
Significantly I have yet to hear a single anti-tobacco crusader turned e-cig advocate argue against a ban on smoking in outdoor public areas despite the fact that vaping is equally vulnerable to further restrictions on 'smoking' in public.
It suggests to me that the greater goal is still to stop people smoking and if vapers get caught in the crossfire so be it.
The final straw – which prompted me to revise and publish this post – was an article by smoking cessation worker Louise Ross.
What does 'ecig-friendly' really mean? asked Ross who proudly describes herself as "anti-tobacco" on her Twitter profile. Writing on Clive Bates' blog, she explained:
For me, it is welcoming people who want to stop smoking, and who might want to use an ecig to do that. They may have lots of questions, and we shouldn’t pretend to know anything that we really don’t, so being ecig-friendly can mean admitting your limits and signposting people to other sources of information, like vaping groups, sympathetic retailers who want to help, or the New Nicotine Alliance, a charity that educates and advocates for vapers.
It’s also being prepared to seek help ourselves, and educating ourselves, with a sense of diligent enquiry, about issues that are at times incredibly complex and confusing, but being prepared to put some work in and remain open-minded.
It means having the courage to take some risks, to stand up for the rights of people to be heard and to have their experiences accepted as valid, despite the crushing weight of disapproval from a hostile sector of ‘experts’.
It means developing a team of people who chat to vapers in social settings, always keen to learn more about choices, flavours, health changes, problem-solving.
It means remembering that as stop smoking teams, we have heaps of experience helping people to stop smoking – we know how to make it more likely they will succeed, by changing routines, by building motivation, and by showing that we really care about the outcome. We’ve made this same journey with so many diverse people who aspire to no longer smoke, and we often know many more choices than people are aware of, such as different ways of using nicotine replacement therapy, which appears to work rather well with ecigs.
Recently I’ve thought of the advisor/service user relationship more like a coach with a sportsman or woman in training – the coach is there to help set goals, to improve performance, to urge on, to get the person back on track when they despair. Mostly though, a coach can see the desire for success in their trainee’s eyes, and they don’t deter them or send them away saying they can’t help them.
An ecig-friendly stop smoking team will welcome anyone who wants to stop smoking, and they will work with them, listen to them, encourage them, and respect them. It’s the way of the future.
It's pretty clear, reading Ross' post, that 'e-cig friendly' and 'stop smoking' are one and the same thing whereas to me 'e-cig friendly' means being tolerant of those who want to vape, in the same way I'm tolerant of those who choose to smoke.
Sadly tolerance and choice have long since disappeared from the anti-smokers' vocabulary and if Clive, Linda and Louise have one thing in common it's this – they're all fully paid up members of the tobacco control industry.
As for standing up for the rights of people to be heard and to have their experiences accepted as valid, despite the crushing weight of disapproval from a hostile sector of 'experts', that's precisely what Forest has been doing for 36 years.
And at the forefront of that hostile sector of 'experts'? Why, tobacco control campaigners like Clive Bates, Linda Bauld and, er, Louise Ross!
Update: Smoke Free North East (Fresh) has just tweeted:
To which Clive has replied:
We need to see others like
@FreshSmokeFree grasping the health opportunities of
#vaping - so glad they speaking up.
Hugs all round! x
Update on Sunday, July 19, 2015 at 12:20 by
Simon Clark
Carl Phillips has posted some thoughtful points, including a staunch defence of Clive Bates, in the Comments.
I've no wish to have a public disagreement with Carl, whom I consider an ally, because on many things we're largely in agreement.
Nevertheless I would just reiterate that Clive supports comprehensive smoking bans and, to the best of my knowledge, all other anti-smoking legislation (including plain packaging) so his support for "real human rights" clearly doesn't include smokers' rights or, by extension, consumer rights in general.
Personal friendships and the fact that Clive is not (allegedly) as fervently anti-tobacco as other tobacco control activists cannot disguise the fact that he is (or has been) fiercely anti-smoking. As a former director of ASH he has to bear some responsibility for the unnecessarily intolerant attitude that some people have towards smoking and, more recently, vaping.
Clive may have softened his views but "authoritarian" is the only word I can think of to describe someone who supports a ban on smoking in every single pub and private members' club in the country, with no exemption for well-ventilated designated smoking rooms that could remove most if not all the particles from environmental tobacco smoke. If there's another word I'd like to hear it.
I understand completely why advocates of e-cigs embrace Clive and other tobacco control campaigners (the strategy is spot on) and I accept too there are different levels of tobacco control. But I can't pretend it doesn't leave me feeling a little queasy, especially when the likes of Louise Ross describes herself as 'anti-tobacco' on her Twitter profile.
There are lots of things I don't like but I wouldn't dream of saying I'm anti-this or anti-that as part of my personal profile. If you're 'anti-tobacco' you're anti-smoking and, effectively, anti-smoker. Inadvertently (or deliberately) you're also saying you can be my friend but only if you don't smoke or consume tobacco.
How shallow and intolerant is that?
