Poll: Tackling smoking not a top priority

As I reported yesterday, a new poll has found that almost two thirds (64%) of adults in Britain say that when people are 18 and legally an adult they should be allowed to purchase cigarettes and other tobacco products.

In contrast, only a quarter (26%) said they should not be allowed to purchase tobacco products when they are legally an adult at 18, while 10% said 'don't know'.

In a second poll conducted by Yonder Consulting for Forest this month, 2,028 respondents were asked to prioritise a list of ten domestic issues.

The survey was carried out this week (29-30 January) and the results, just in, reveal that:

Improving the health service is the most important priority, followed by tackling crime, and tackling inflation.

Other top priorities are tackling illegal immigration, addressing care for the elderly, tackling climate change, tackling the housing shortage, and reforming and improving the education system.

Tackling smoking and tackling obesity were bottom of the list, as they always are whenever we've asked the public to prioritise a list of domestic issues.

(Tackling alcohol misuse is usually at the bottom of the list too but on this occasion there wasn't space to include it.)

I accept that governments can multi-task but it beggars belief that, at a time when so many issues need to be addressed at home and abroad, a Conservative prime minister has chosen to prioritise raising the age of sale of tobacco (and banning disposable vapes).

See also: The public has spoken but the PM isn’t listening

Red carpet ride

At the age of 64 I finally attended my first red carpet event on Sunday.

Sadly, I didn't walk on the actual carpet, or have my photo taken, but I was very close to it (above).

The occasion was the press night for Plaza Suite, a comedy of marital strife by the late Neil Simon, first performed on Broadway in 1969.

The current production played on Broadway in 2022. Starring Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker (of Sex In The City fame), it has now transferred to the West End for a short (albeit extended) run at the Savoy Theatre.

The reviews have been largely positive (although critics agree that Plaza Suite is showing its age and is not one of Simon’s best) but the three-act play in which Broderick and Parker (who are married in real life) play three different couples in a series of comic vignettes, is arguably incidental to the production’s success.

From the moment they walk on stage and are greeted with warm applause, it’s clear that the audience, many of whom are surprisingly young (in their twenties and thirties), are happy to just witness Hollywood royalty.

To be fair, this gave the show a buzz I’ve rarely experienced at the theatre. The excited chatter in the auditorium before the curtain rose was significantly louder than normal.

Perhaps this was in anticipation of the after party at the Savoy Hotel next door, for which many people had dressed up, but it certainly felt like an ‘event’.

Earlier, in the 'compact' dress circle bar before the show, we enjoyed a complimentary glass of champagne and indulged in some celebrity spotting. My wife recognised two people, one from Poldark, the other from The Forsyte Saga, while I quickly clocked the Scottish actor Bill Paterson.

I’m told that other VIPs included Sheridan Smith, Arlene Philips, Ralph Fiennes, Hannah Waddingham and many more. I’ll be honest, though. I didn’t see any of them because work commitments meant we had to give the after party a miss.

It was nice to be invited, though, and even better to be given a complimentary seat for a production for which tickets are reported to cost up to £300, or £395 for the premium package.

Now that's what I call inflation.

PS. Talking of Sheridan Smith, the last show we saw at the Savoy Theatre was Legally Blonde The Musical in 2010 starring ... Sheridan Smith.

Before that there was a revival of Carousel in 2008, and long, long ago I saw Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirates of Penzance at the same venue.

As for the The Savoy hotel, who can forget that it was in the ballroom of one of London's most famous hotels that we held our Revolt In Style: A Freedom Dinner, five days before the introduction of the smoking ban in England.

If you're interested, the Telegraph wrote about it here (Huffing and puffing: Adam Edwards joins a pack of rebellious smokers and pipemen for a last-gasp celebration of tobacco at the Savoy).

The public has spoken but the PM isn’t listening

A new poll has found that almost two thirds of adults in Britain say that when people are 18 and legally an adult they should be allowed to purchase cigarettes and other tobacco products.

The survey, conducted by Yonder Consulting for Forest, found that 64% of respondents think that if a person can vote, drive a car, join the army, buy alcohol, and possess a credit card at 18, they should also be allowed to purchase tobacco.

Only a quarter (26%) said they should not be allowed to purchase tobacco products when they are legally an adult at 18, while 10% said 'don't know'.

Interestingly, we asked the same question in November and on that occasion 58% said adults aged 18+ should be allowed to purchase tobacco, 32% said ‘should not’, and 10% said ‘don’t know’.

Coincidentally, publication of the new poll coincided with the announcement on Sunday evening that the Government is to proceed with a bill to prohibit the sale of tobacco to future generations of adults, and ban the sale of disposable vapes.

There are also plans to restrict vape flavours, introduce plain packaging for vapes, and change how they are displayed in shops so they don’t appeal to children.

I expected to be busier, media wise, but most reports and interviews (including the handful I did yesterday) focused on the disposable vape ban.

Likewise, the one comment the Press Association picked from the Forest press release issued on Sunday was not about the tobacco sales ban but about vapes.

Guido Fawkes ran a story about the Forest poll here, and it included a direct response from former prime minister Liz Truss:

“This is what I am hearing from people I speak to in my South West Norfolk constituency. People want under-18s to be protected. They don’t want adults’ freedoms to be restricted. I fear this is a slippery slope.”

The former PM’s full reaction to the Government’s announcement that it is pressing ahead with plans to ban the sale of tobacco products to anyone born on or after January 1, 2009, read: 

“While the state has a duty to protect children from harm, in a free society, adults must be able to make their own choices about their own lives. 

“Banning the sale of tobacco products to anyone born in 2009 or later will create an absurd situation where adults enjoy different rights based on their birthdate. 

“A Conservative government should not be seeking to extend the nanny state. This will only give succour to those who wish to ban further choices of which they don't approve. 

“The newly-elected National government in New Zealand is already reversing the generational tobacco ban proposed by the previous administration.

“The Government urgently needs to follow suit and reverse this profoundly unconservative policy." 

Asked about his predecessor’s response, Rishi Sunak is reported to have said, “I don’t think there’s anything unconservative about caring about our children’s health”, which suggests he doesn’t understand the point that opponents of the policy are making.

Of course there’s nothing “unconservative about caring for our children’s health”. But when “our children” are 18 they are legally adults and whilst, as parents, we will continue to care about their health, it is ultimately their choice - not ours - how they live their lives, and what risks they take, and as parents we have to respect that.

The idea that we should dictate our children’s lifestyle long after they have grown up and left home, is absurd.

In one respect however the PM is correct. The policy is not entirely ‘unconservative’ because there is a long history of paternalism in the Conservative Party.

Banning the sale of tobacco to future generations is nevertheless a radical departure for a Tory government that nine months ago dismissed the idea as "too big a departure" and said it wasn't going to pursue it.

Anyway, I’m grateful to Liz Truss for her intervention. Following her short and turbulent period in office it’s easy for people to mock the former PM and criticise anything she says, but I have enormous respect for politicians who stick to their principles, and in this case Truss is doing just that.

After entering Parliament in 2010, she voted in favour of an amendment to the smoking ban that would have allowed separate smoking rooms. She subsequently voted against plain packaging, and I think she also voted against the ban on smoking in cars carrying children, so her response to a generational tobacco sales ban is entirely consistent.

Sunak, on the other hand, simply wants to leave a legacy. Sometimes this is no bad thing. In this instance, however, targeting smoking smacks of opportunism bordering on desperation, and it’s not a good look.

From Apricot to Apple

It’s 40 years since Apple’s famous ‘1984’ TV advertisement was broadcast at half-time during Super Bowl XVIII.

Directed by Ridley Scott, the one-minute ad was shown just once at a cost, I believe, of $300,000, although production costs took that sum nearer to a million dollars.

Small change to the company now, but in 1984 Apple was not the giant corporation we know today.

In the world of computers, that mantle was held by IBM which most businesses considered to be the ‘safe’, albeit conservative, choice.

'Nobody gets fired for buying IBM' was a familiar phrase at the time. Apple, in contrast, was largely unknown.

I can’t remember if the ‘1984’ ad was shown in the UK, but I think not. I do however remember watching Super Bowl XVIII because my old friend Brian Monteith organised a party at his flat in London.

I should explain that, following the launch of Channel 4 in 1982, Super Bowl parties were fashionable for a year or two among young twentysomethings in the UK thanks to Channel 4’s coverage of the NFL.

At that time, before I switched my allegiance to the Buffalo Bills a decade later, I 'supported' Washington Redskins because Washington was the only US city I had visited, and by coincidence the Redskins were in Super Bowl XVIII.

On Sunday January 22, 1984, I was keen therefore to watch the game, and I thought others would be too.

Instead I remember being slightly irritated that most of the party goers had little interest in the game and talked throughout, wandering from room to room, largely ignoring what was happening on the small screen in a corner of the living room.

As I say, I don’t remember Apple’s iconic ad being broadcast at half-time in the UK, but I saw a clip not long after and it’s hard to describe to a modern day audience the impact it had.

To put it in perspective, the Soviet Union - the epitome of an authoritarian, Big Brother society - was still perceived as a threat to the West.

In truth, however, the ad was directed not at the USSR but at IBM, the enormous behemoth that seemed to have a stranglehold on the computer market in the US and abroad.

Apple, the ad implied, could set you free from its giant competitor.

As it happens, I couldn't afford the new Apple MacIntosh 128k so my first PC, which I bought in 1985, was an Apricot xi.

Apricot was a British company founded, I think, in 1965. In the Eighties it trailed far behind IBM but I didn’t want an IBM PC, partly for the reasons hinted at by Ridley Scott’s advertisement.

Also, a friend of mine, whose father worked for the company, had a portable IBM PC and it was an ugly thing that looked more like a suitcase with a tiny screen and weighed a ton.

It was desperately clunky and used 5 inch floppy disks that were called floppy for a reason.

In comparison, the Apricot xi – which used the smaller, and rigid, 3.5 inch disks – looked quite nice. It also had a 12 inch monitor (the Macintosh screen was only nine inches).

Like the IBM, however, the Apricot xi still had a text-based user interface (ie no graphics). That didn't bother me, however, because in 1985 I was still using an electric 'golfball' typewriter so any computer was an upgrade on that.

Older, manual typewriters featured type bars that swung up and hit the ribbon. With a 'golfball' or 'type ball' machine, the 'ball' would spin round and hit the ribbon with the appropriate character.

To use a different font, you simply changed the ‘ball’, something you couldn’t do on older typewriters.

Electric typewriters had been around for a while (IBM launched its Selectric range in 1961), but it was 1978 before I used one, and comparing it to the old Remington portable I had used previously was like night and day.

Ironically, within a few years it too was rendered obsolete ... by the personal computer.

In 1990, five years after buying my Apricot xi, on which I typed all my media monitoring reports, I finally got my hands on an Apple Macintosh when I joined a small company publishing magazines.

Before then I had produced magazines by sending typed copy to the printers, who would send it back, typeset in neat columns that I would cut and paste on to thin cardboard grids that were then returned to the printers, who would scan and add any photographs or illustrations.

With its graphical user interface (GUI) the Apple Macintosh was a revelation because you could by-pass not only the typesetter but even the traditional graphic designer, many of whom were struggling to make the switch from drawing board to computer.

Sadly for them, many were replaced by young IT specialists who understood the hardware and the software even if they lacked the design skills of the designers they replaced.

The Mac, which has always been incredibly intuitive, made things even easier, especially for people like me.

In hindsight, the mono screen on the Macintosh Classic I worked on was absurdly small for designing magazines, so I'm wondering if our designer didn't use the (older) Macintosh II that had a larger monitor and was the first Mac to have a colour screen.

I definitely had the Classic, though, but the GUI was such a leap forward compared to what I was used to the size of the screen didn’t seem to matter.

In fact, computing became fun because the Macintosh was more than just a glorified typewriter. Strange as it may sound, it had a personality that was demonstrated as soon as you switched it on and the word 'Hello' appeared on the screen. (I never grew tired of that.)

Despite this, Apple struggled for much of the Nineties and it took the return of co-founder Steve Jobs, and the launch of the iconic coloured iMac in 1998, to revive its fortunes and set the company apart from most of its rivals.

In those days Forest's corporate colour was orange and it would have been fun to equip the office with orange iMacs. Unfortunately I inherited an office full of Windows PCs and it was too expensive to switch and start afresh.

Personally, however, I couldn't manage without an Apple computer and my ownership record – from Power Mac to Power Mac G3 and Power Mac G4, followed by various MacBooks and iMacs – now goes back 30 years.

As for Apricot, the company was sold to Mitsubishi Electric Corporation in the early Nineties and the brand gradually disappeared, gone but not forgotten by those who began our computing journey by patriotically buying British.

Masterstroke – Patti Boulaye lights up tobacco livery dinner

Enjoyable evening in the City of London last night.

I was a guest of The Worshipful Company of Tobacco Pipe Makers and Tobacco Blenders whose current 'Master' is our old friend Elise Rasmussen.

Elise has various job titles but she is primarily the organiser of the annual Global Tobacco and Nicotine Forum (GTNF), an event she founded in 2008.

Last night's event was a black tie dinner at Drapers' Hall, close to the Bank of England and described as 'one of the most magnificent venues in London'. I wouldn't disagree.

A drinks' reception was followed by dinner that took place in the Livery Hall whose 'vast ceiling is adorned with scenes from Shakespeare’s plays The Tempest and Midsummer Night’s Dream ...

Marble-columned, galleried, gilded and hung with royal portraits, this is where members of the royal family and other heads of state have dined. No surprise then, that it has appeared on television as Buckingham Palace.

There were 228 guests (according to the seating plan) including several familiar faces, among them Fran Morrison who I have 'known' since I was at university in Aberdeen in the late Seventies.

In those days she was a reporter and presenter on BBC Reporting Scotland, the evening news programme. A decade earlier she was at St Andrews University, graduating (I think) the same year I started secondary school in the town.

We finally met in person after I began working for Forest and Fran was head of corporate communications at British American Tobacco, and it was weird because I felt I knew her already.

She retired from the tobacco industry some time ago but our paths continue to cross (sometimes at Forest events) and there was lots to talk about last night.

Fran's place card described her as a livery 'assistant', a title 'first applied [in 1521] to those members of the Court who were neither Master nor Wardens'.

Seated next to us was another Scot whose card described him as a 'freeman'. Others were identified as a 'liveryman' but the process by which one becomes one or the other was slightly lost on me.

The Master however is the most senior liveryman, and I believe Elise is the first woman ever to hold that position in The Worshipful Company of Tobacco Pipe Makers and Tobacco Blenders.

Livery companies, many of them hundreds of years old, are big on ceremony so last night we sang the national anthem and toasted (with port) various people whose names I didn't quite catch.

Another tradition at tobacco livery events is the after dinner snuff-taking. Snuff is passed round in a large silver vessel and guests are invited to take a pinch of the brown powder and inhale.

I noticed that most guests declined to partake but I quite liked it, although I was probably a bit conservative with the amount I inhaled.

During the evening guests were also entertained by Guildhall School pipe scholars, young musicians from the Guildhall School of Music who receive grants from the livery company.

Amid the pageantry, snuff, and music, the most surprising bit of the evening was arguably the identity of the guest speaker – singer and actress Patti Boulaye who brought a welcome dash of glamour to the evening.

It turned out she's a friend of a friend, and the friend of the friend is ... the Master of The Worshipful Company of Tobacco Pipe Makers and Tobacco Blenders.

See also: The Worshipful Company of E-Cigarette Makers and E-Liquid Blenders

Above: The magnificent ceiling of the Livery Hall at Drapers' Hall
Below: Livery Hall last night

Charlie Amos – defending freedom

You may not have heard of Charlie Amos and nor, to be fair, had I until a few months ago.

Then, two days after Rishi Sunak announced a generational tobacco sales ban, Charlie sent me an article he had written opposing the ban and asked if we would publish it on the Forest website.

I replied that we don’t publish articles on the site, but I suggested he try the online magazine Spiked, or CapX.

I heard nothing more but it was subsequently published on the 1868 website (The Terrible Reasoning Behind Sunak’s Smoking Ban).

A second article (Against the Tobacco Ban) also appeared on Charlie's blog, The Musing Individualist.

On January 4 he followed it with a third article (The Battle against the Tobacco Ban), an amusing piece in which he described a day spent gathering signatures for a petition against the tobacco sales ban.

The responses he received from members of the public rang true, and I was impressed.

Last week Charlie contacted me again and asked if we would support an action day in Parliament Square, collecting signatures and handing out leaflets.

I wished him well but declined for several reasons that I won’t go into here, although it was partly to do with the fact that we have our own event taking place in the House of Commons next month and all our efforts are focused on that.

Also, I had one or two reservations about his messaging. For example, his leaflets and banner argue that the generational ban would ‘put thousands of people in the tobacco industry out of work’, which I’m not sure is a vote winner unless you extend the definition of tobacco industry to retailers.

I also discovered that Charlie has a mildly chequered political past. A few years ago he was ousted as president of King’s College London Conservative Association only weeks after he was elected. Then again, that’s student politics for you, so I would be a fool to hold that against him.

Check out his videos on YouTube (notably this one, although there are several more) and you’ll discover a rather eccentric figure, to the point where I began to wonder whether 'Charles Amos' was actually a rather clever spoof.

But no, Charlie Amos is real, and has a genuine sense of humour. Better still, he's not afraid to laugh at himself, which is refreshing in politics.

It’s not, perhaps, the type of humour that translates to a Forest campaign (although I am reminded of a video we shot for the Hands Off Our Packs campaign in 2013), but I nevertheless admire anyone who takes the time and trouble to stand up and be counted, even at risk of public humiliation.

It takes courage, and if I had one I’d take my hat off to him.

As it happens, the only negative comment I’ve seen so far was the suggestion that he ‘looks likes a 1970s accountant’, which I’m sure the winner of the IEA Intern of The Year Award in 2019 will take with a large pinch of salt.

War on smokers backfires, pushing up inflation

The punitive hikes in tobacco duty introduced by Chancellor Jeremy Hunt last year may have backfired.

Reports this morning suggest the UK inflation rate has ‘unexpectedly’ taken a turn for the worse. According to the Guardian:

The increase in the annual rate was largely the result of a government increase in tobacco duty, after the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, announced higher taxes in the autumn statement.

Given the importance Rishi Sunak has placed on reducing inflation to two per cent, this is nothing short of a disaster for Downing Street, and it’s pretty clear who is to blame.

But first, a quick recap:

In his Budget statement last March, the Chancellor stuck to the tobacco escalator and increased duty on cigarettes using the Retail Price Index (RPI) of 10.1%, plus 2% – in other words, an increase of 12.1%.

And if that wasn't enough, in November he raised the duty on cigarettes by RPI plus 2% again. Furthermore (to reduce the gap with cigarette duty), he increased the duty on hand-rolling tobacco by RPI plus 12%.

This was just seven weeks after the prime minister announced plans to introduce a generational tobacco sales ban, so the Chancellor no doubt thought he was kicking on an open door.

However, the economic consequences of the Government's war on smoking are now coming home to roost, and it's not good news for Rishi Sunak or the Conservatives, whose election schtick will be based largely on their ability to reduce inflation and improve the economy.

Instead, according to the Bank of England, inflation is currently at four per cent and the target of two per cent is further away than it was before the latest figures.

Of course, given that smoking is a minority habit, there have already been people questioning why the price of tobacco could impact the inflation rate.

It's true that tobacco is just one of hundreds of consumer items used to calculate inflation, and it's also true that increases in tobacco duty won't directly affect the vast majority of the population.

But that's true of many items in the 'basket' used to calculate inflation. I don't use e-bikes, for example, nor have I ever purchased security or surveillance cameras (items recently added to the list).

I rarely use the train, either, yet train tickets are included, so the inclusion of tobacco (which is still consumed by almost one in seven adults) is perfectly legitimate, especially if you contrast tobacco with two items recently removed from the list – digital compact cameras, and non-chart CDs bought in store.

But there are two other aspects to this.

One, by having an impact on the inflation rate, Hunt's decision to impose further punitive tax hikes on tobacco last year has marked him (and therefore the Government) as economically incompetent.

Most people won't care that they don't smoke and are therefore not directly affected by an increase in tobacco duty.

The only thing that will register is that efforts to reduce inflation have stalled and the Government is struggling to achieve its target of two per cent. Politically, that's another error by the Chancellor.

Two, most smokers are from poorer backgrounds. Forcing people who are already on lower wages to pay significantly and disproportionately more for tobacco is hardly levelling up – it's discrimination, pure and simple.

Not for the first time, the war on smokers, and smoking, has backfired. If that doesn't give Rishi Sunak pause for thought before he steams ahead with his generational tobacco sales ban, I don't know what will.

PS. I don't claim to be economically literate myself, so if I've got anything wrong do let know. Then again, I'm not Chancellor of the Exchequer!

Talking liberties

At the Battle of Ideas last year I took part in a session entitled ‘Freedom: Up In Smoke?’.

It was prompted by my essay of the same name, which is one of a series called Letters on Liberty published by the Academy of Ideas.

Letters on Liberty are published three at a time, and one of the essays published at the same time as mine was ‘Boxing: Don’t Count It Out’ by Chris Akers.

Chris has written about boxing for 15 years, covering title fights and interviewing domestic and world champions.

He also has a podcast, The 286 Project, in which he discusses sport, politics, and the arts with a wide range of interviewees.

The latest edition, recorded last week, features an interview with me which you can watch on YouTube (below) or listen to on Spotify.

We discussed the proposed generational smoking ban and other tobacco-related issues and, although I didn’t go into it too much, I think there are similarities between the war on boxing (a predominantly working class sport) and the war on smoking, which is now a predominantly working class habit.

I’m not sure if that bit of the conversation survived the edit, or took place after we stopped recording, but have a listen anyway.