Grazie, Bologna

Arrived home from Bologna on Friday.

Not for the first time, it took almost as long as the two-hour flight to escape the clutches of Heathrow.

Having circled the airport for ten minutes before the pilot was allowed to land, we had to wait 15 minutes for a jetty to become available so we could get off the plane.

We then had to stand for 75 minutes in the baggage hall before our luggage arrived so by the time I was reunited with my car in the long stay car park the Friday rush hour was upon us, which meant a long, slow crawl around the M25.

But back to Bologna. The last time I visited the city, in September 2015, it was hot and sunny. Too hot, actually. Even the 15-minute walk from hotel to conference centre was a bit of an ordeal.

This being May I anticipated plenty of spring sunshine but without the baking heat.

In fact, given the awful weather we’ve had at home, it was a significant factor when I agreed to speak at TabExpo 2023, a leading tobacco trade exhibition.

Instead, apart from a few sunny intervals, the weather was much like here - warmer but stubbornly overcast and wet, with the rain particularly heavy on Wednesday.

Fortunately, a feature of central Bologna are the distinctive porticos (arched covered walkways) that provide shelter from the rain as well as protection from the sun.

I had assumed this was deliberate but it seems they were originally built in medieval times as a means of increasing the size of a building by extending the upper floors over the public walkway below.

The practice was copied by other cities until it was outlawed in many jurisdictions because the construction of pillars or columns to bear the weight of the extended upper floors was considered an encroachment on to public land.

Even in Bologna there are strict regulations attached to porticos but as that includes maintenance much of the centuries old architecture has survived, giving the city its unique appearance.

In contrast the BolognaFiere exhibition centre, in the business district of the city, could be anywhere.

Like most exhibition centres it is functional, utilitarian, but otherwise nondescript.

Inside the large halls provide a blank canvas for exhibitors but despite that one trade fair is very much like another - apart from their size, perhaps.

Exhibitors at TabExpo ranged from manufacturers to supply chain, all showcasing their products and services.

Innovation was a major theme, demonstrating how the tobacco industry is moving towards harm reduction. Chinese companies seemed to be particularly well represented.

Alongside the exhibition, at one end of the hall, an area had been set aside for the TabExpo ‘congress’, a mini conference that took place over two half days.

I was one of four keynote speakers, added to which there were a couple of panels that addressed a specific issue. On Wednesday it was ‘Reducing the carbon imprint’, at which point I went in search of a cup of coffee.

I won’t bore you with the speech I gave because regular readers will have heard the core message - about the need to defend smoking, and smokers - a thousand times.

I even recycled a couple of anecdotes direct from this blog.

The first recalled my visit to the Global Tobacco and Nicotine Forum (GTNF) in Bologna in 2015:

On a coach to the closing reception at the Enzo Ferrari Museum in Modena I sat beside a very nice American who has spent 20 years testing smoking cessation products including patches and, most recently, electronic cigarettes.

He told me he gave up smoking around the same time he began testing alternative nicotine products, and I gathered that he saw it as his duty to improve public health and help others quit as well.

We chatted amiably throughout the 30-minute journey. I was interested to know more about his work but when it came to explaining what I did he was polite but clearly found it bizarre that anyone would defend the right to smoke.

I didn’t identify him but another speaker, who was on the Thursday panel, later told me, “I think I know who that was. It was a friend of mine, Mitch.”

The name certainly rang a bell. Thank goodness I was nice about him!

Anyway, I followed that anecdote with an observation and another story, also lifted from this blog:

Today it’s clear that I'm on borrowed time when it comes to being invited to speak at events such as this and GTNF.

In fact, at last year's GTNF conference in Washington DC, one of the first speakers actually got a round of applause when he told the audience it was six years since he'd successfully quit smoking.

Think about that. A keynote speaker at a tobacco industry event was applauded for having stopped smoking. For a moment it felt like I'd stumbled into a meeting of Addicts Anonymous.

If I was hoping for a laugh I was disappointed, but tobacco industry audiences are a tough crowd, especially if you’re defending the right to smoke.

Since I arrived home I’ve had an email from the organisers of TabExpo inviting feedback.

As it happens I do have a few thoughts, mostly to do with promotion.

The event, for example, was almost invisible on social media, unlike, say, Vape Expo UK which is taking place in Birmingham this weekend.

Personally I find this a bit frustrating because, if you agree to speak at an event, you want it to be well publicised.

I did my bit - here and on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn - but it all went a bit under the radar.

That said, I did enjoy the trip, even if the weather wasn’t great. The food, in particular, was delicious.

It was nice, too, to catch up with some familiar faces.

And to the local Italians, especially the staff at my hotel, who could not have been more helpful or friendly, I have one word:

“Grazie”.

Below: TabExpo 2023 at BolognaFiere

Back to Bologna

I'm flying to Bologna tomorrow.

It will be my second visit to the city. The first was in 2015 when I attended the Global Tobacco and Nicotine Forum (GTNF) at the Palazzo Re Enzo which is a cut above your usual conference centre, although the acoustics in the largest room (the otherwise impressive Salone del Podestà) were a little challenging, if I remember.

I wrote about the event here, noting how GTNF was evolving:

Since it was launched in Rio in 2008 as the Global Tobacco Network Forum there's been a gradual evolution to the point where the predominant theme is now harm reduction.

Like any sane person I welcome harm reduction and I recognise it's a sensible strategy for the tobacco companies to adopt.

Nevertheless, as a representative of a group that has spent 36 years valiantly defending the freedom to smoke, it feels strange being a slightly peripheral figure at a tobacco industry supported event.

I followed this with an anecdote:

On a coach to the closing reception at the Enzo Ferrari Museum in Modena I sat beside a very nice American who has spent 20 years testing smoking cessation products including patches and, most recently, electronic cigarettes.

Hank (not his real name) gave up smoking around the same time he began testing alternative nicotine products and I gathered that he sees it as his duty to improve public health and help others quit too.

We chatted amiably throughout the 30-minute journey. I was interested to know more about his work but when it came to explaining what I did he was polite but clearly found it bizarre that anyone would defend smoking.

We didn't fall out but at that moment I felt like a pork chop at a bar mitzvah.

Since then I've arguably become even more isolated because many of the people I used to bump in to from the tobacco side of the industry have either retired or left, and those that remain are mostly full on converts to vaping advocacy.

It's clear therefore that I'm on borrowed time when it comes to being invited to speak at these events, even as a panellist.

At last year's GTNF conference in Washington DC there was a consumer panel, but every speaker was an advocate of vaping. Current smokers were not represented.

Instead I was put on another panel to discuss prohibition but our session wasn't part of the main conference. We were simply the warm up act for early arrivals before the welcome reception.

The main conference started the following day and one of the first speakers actually got a round of applause when he told the audience it was six years since he'd successfully quit smoking.

Think about that. A keynote speaker at a tobacco industry event is applauded for having stopped smoking. For a moment I thought I'd stumbled into a meeting of Addicts Anonymous.

TabExpo is different to GTNF because it's primarily a trade exhibition with lots of expensive looking stands and what they call a 'congress' tacked on, and I'm part of the congress.

The first TabExpo I was invited to go to was in Prague in 2011. Typically, the day I was due to fly out, the British Medical Association announced that they wanted a ban on smoking in all private vehicles.

It was huge story so I had to remain in the UK where I did no fewer than 23 interviews for TV and radio.

I was still hoping to fly to Prague the following day but further media work intervened and I had to cancel the entire trip which was annoying because I'd never been to Prague. (I still haven't).

Nevertheless, it's a sign, perhaps, of the fight we put up that banning smoking in all private vehicles, other than those carrying children, has never been embraced by the UK government. Nor, despite its scattergun approach to tobacco control, was it recommended in the Khan review.

But back to TabExpo.

Conceived, it says here, in the early Nineties, the exhibition only took place every four years, so it was 2015 before the next one.

This time the glamorous location wasn't Vienna, Prague, or Paris, but the ExCel centre in London's Docklands, so you'll forgive me if I don't remember much about it.

TabExpo 2019 took place in Amsterdam and although the RAI Exhibition and Convention Centre was the same as any other modern exhibition centre, at least it wasn't a million miles from the city centre.

Better still, I was invited to MC the full congress, a task I rather enjoyed. (See 'Going Dutch' and 'My flying visit to Amsterdam'.)

TabExpo was subsequently purchased by World Tobacco Events and I understand there are plans to turn it into a biennial event.

TabExpo 2023 is the first under the new management, although there is still a familiar face overseeing the exhibition and congress – Elise Rasmussen, founder of GTNF and a great friend of Forest.

I'll have more to say about Bologna, and TabExpo 2023, later in the week. In the meantime here's the defining image of GTNF 2015 – the farewell party at the Enzo Ferrari Museum in Modena.

And not a cigarette in sight!

Coronation tea (and cake)

Happy Coronation Day!

I don’t know about you but I shall be watching the event on television with friends and a bottle or two of Nyetimber English sparkling wine (limited Coronation edition, obviously).

On Wednesday I also celebrated the occasion with (what else?) afternoon tea at the House of Lords.

Hosted by Lord Kamal on behalf of the Conservative Muslim Forum (CMF), the event featured speeches by our host, the minister for London Paul Scully, and former chancellor of the exchequer Lord Lamont.

The last time I saw Lord Lamont was at the Carlton Club in February. It was at a memorial event to mark the death, last year, of Russell Lewis, who had been a non-executive director of Forest for 30 years. (I wrote about it here.)

Well, it turns out that the former chancellor is the new president of the CMF, and he sounded almost as surprised as I was.

He explained, however, that although he's a non-Muslim he had developed a strong respect for Islam and the Muslim community.

He noted that even Churchill, who began his political career with a less positive opinion of Islam and its followers, subsequently changed his mind.

I’m not entirely sure what Paul Scully’s connection with the CMF was, but I was interested to hear him say he was running for Mayor of London.

If selected as the Tory candidate the odds will be strongly against him winning, but he would run a very good campaign, I'm sure, and I wish him well.

I’m slightly biased because, before he became an MP, Scully gave Forest one of the best reviews we have ever had for one of our conference events.

Commenting on our Stand Up for Liberty event at the Comedy Store in Manchester in 2011, he tweeted:

Elected to Parliament for the first time in 2015, Scully is the MP for Sutton and Cheam. Today, as well as being minister for London, he is Under-Secretary of State for Tech and the Digital Economy.

Anyway, if you’re wondering why I was at the CMF event, I was invited by a friend.

Other guests on our table included a couple of podcasters, Javed and Dexter, a former prospective parliamentary candidate, and Helen Edward, the current PPC for Kingston and Surbiton where the sitting MP is Lib Dem leader Ed Davey.

Davey has a majority of 10,000 but Helen sounded quite upbeat about her chances. “I’ve got a plan,” she confided.

After the speeches we finished our tea (and cake, above) and wandered out on to the terrace, overlooking the Thames.

All in all, a very enjoyable afternoon meeting some interesting and friendly people, and a perfect curtain raiser to the main event.

Update:

George, don't do that

Illustration by Howard McWilliam, commissioned by Forest in 2016 for our Axe The Tobacco Tax Escalator campaign

Older readers will remember Joyce Grenfell.

Her songs and gently whimsical monologues sound terribly dated to modern ears but one, 'The Nursery School', is remembered fondly by those of a certain age.

Addressing an imaginary classroom of children, an increasingly exasperated teacher, played by Grenfell, can be heard repeatedly admonishing a small, recalcitrant child with the words, "George, don't do that."

It’s never clear what George is doing but it’s clear he was up to no good.

Which brings me, via this rather tenuous link, to his namesake, George Osborne.

As I explained here, the former chancellor of the exchequer (a smoker until at least two years ago) has been in the news this week after he urged the Government to ban smoking for future generations.

The response, I’m pleased to say, has been largely hostile.

The IEA’s Matthew Lesh was one of several commentators who poured scorn on the idea. Writing for the online edition of the Spectator (‘George Osborne’s smoking ban is deluded‘) he noted:

Not all smokers want to quit, despite the universal knowledge that the product is unhealthy. But the mark of a free society is accepting and tolerating that not everyone can, should or does live the same."

Henry Hill, deputy editor of ConservativeHome, also had a pop. Writing for UnHerd ('What is George Osborne smoking?') he declared that, under Cameron and Osborne, 'there was no vision of what a smaller state might actually look like, or which burdens the Government ought to let civil society shoulder'.

The result was a wholly unstrategic programme of spending cuts which gutted the state without shrinking it — what has subsequently been dubbed “sh*t-state Toryism”.

With that in mind, perhaps it is not surprising to find Osborne spending his political afterlife striking bold poses against Conservative shibboleths such as opposition to the nanny state for the benefit of applauding progressives. Such behaviour was, in the end, all the Cameroon project really was.

Writing for Spiked ('George Osborne’s miserable plan for prohibition') Chris Snowdon, head of the IEA’s Lifestyle Economics Unit, took his own cudgel to the former chancellor but saved his most vituperative comment for The Sun:

“This is crazy talk from George Osborne. Perhaps it’s time for him to head off into the sunset, smoke his fags and count his money."

Ouch.

The same report had this comment from me:

"Like many politicians, past and present, George Osborne wants to control how millions of people live their lives.

“Osborne's comments are a classic example of 'Do as I say, not as I do'.


“Fortunately he's no longer in government, or politics, so his views should be treated with the contempt they deserve.”

Meanwhile an anonymous Conservative MP was quoted as saying:

“And we wonder why we didn’t win in Red Wall seats when he [Osborne] was Chancellor.”

Good point.

Noting ‘Osborne’s joyless crusade’, another commentator, Joseph Dinnage, writing for The Critic, added:

Osborne has been photographed smoking on a number of occasions, so perhaps he is practicing the sanctimony of many ex-smokers or if he still indulges, self-hating current smokers. By sneering at his moral inferiors, he might feel vindicated for his respiratory wrongdoings.

Depressingly, however, Osborne’s comments represent the tip of the iceberg and his attitudes are growing among a cultural elite increasingly disconnected with the population at large. Disconnection alone would be tolerable, at least indifference implies a disinterest in meddling with peoples’ lives.

This clearly is not enough and Osborne, the Times Health Commission clique and many others will not rest until they deem Brits to have been sufficiently infantilised.

Addressing the Commission, the man himself had declared that “anti-nanny state Conservatives” were “not worth listening to”.

I've never been a member of the party but I've voted Conservative all my life so I guess that includes me.

How wonderful, then, to read Stephen Glover's almost perfect response to Osborne’s arrogance in yesterday’s Daily Mail.

Co-founder of the Independent in 1986 and founding editor of the Independent on Sunday in 1990 (when both were proper, printed newspapers), Glover has been a columnist on the Mail for many years and, I may be wrong, but I'm fairly sure he is one of their leader writers as well.

He's what I would call a small 'c' conservative, with serious, considered views, so when he writes 'I can’t abide entitled Tory know-alls like George Osborne who want to tax orange juice and cake and ban smoking', the Conservative party should take note.

The entire article is worth reading but one sentence stood out:

Scratch a paternalist Tory who is certain what's best for you, and it's likely you'll find a socialist.

How true.

The good news is that the current Conservative prime minister also seems to disagrees with Osborne. According to the Mail Online:

Rishi Sunak today [May 3] rejected George Osborne's call for a ban on smoking and taxes on orange juice in a bid to boost Britons' health.

Downing Street said there were 'no plans' to follow Mr Osborne's advice and pointed to how the inclusion of fruit juices under the sugar tax had been rejected when the levy was first introduced ...

No 10 also dismissed the prospect of a complete ban on smoking and said such a move would represent 'major departure from the policy pursued over recent decades, which has emphasised personal responsibility'.

‘It's worth emphasising smoking rates in England are at an all-time low - currently 13 per cent, down from 20 per cent in 2010,' the spokesman added.

Funnily enough, those are pretty much the same arguments that Forest has been making for years.

You can read our response to Osborne's comments here:

UK should ban smoking and slap taxes on fruit juice says George Osborne (Mirror)

BUTT OUT George Osborne blasted over calls for a smoking ban with experts branding comments ‘crazy talk’ (The Sun)

Smoking ban ‘would fuel huge tobacco black market’ warns lobby group (Convenience Store)

The funniest reaction, however, came from former Spectator journalist Petronella Wyatt who tweeted:

Perfect.

PS. Yesterday, on TalkTV, Maxwell Marlow, director of research at the Adam Smith Institute, told presenter Julia Hartley-Brewer:

"If [George Osborne's] concerned about smoking, and I think it's right that people are ... it is right that we go towards a smoke-free future."

Seriously, Maxwell? What next? Alcohol may not be responsible for as many premature deaths as heavy smoking, but it arguably costs society more in other ways.

Should we move towards an alcohol-free future as well? And after that?

I've said it before and I'll say it again. By endorsing a 'smoke-free future', free market think tanks like the ASI are not helping the cause of individual freedom.

Let society evolve naturally and if that means even more people choosing not to smoke, or smokers quitting or switching voluntary to reduced risk products, that's absolutely fine.

What is not acceptable, in my view, is 'free market' think tanks and 'consumer choice' advocacy groups embracing the language of tobacco control and effectively endorsing a highly illiberal 'smoke-free' agenda.

I know the ASI loves the idea that e-cigarettes, heated tobacco, snus and nicotine pouches are the future, but what about consumers who, in decades to come, may still want to smoke a cigarette or a cigar?

What about their rights and freedoms, or do they no longer matter in the race to embrace the new 'smoke free' religion?

Peas in a pod - Osborne, Blair, and Britain’s political elite

George Osborne, former chancellor of the exchequer, has urged the government to phase out smoking by adopting the New Zealand policy of banning the sale of tobacco to anyone born after 2008.

‘Giving evidence’ (sic) to The Times’ self-styled and self important Health Commission, David Cameron’s former right hand man also called for the sugar tax on soft drinks, which he introduced, to be extended to cover fruit juice, milkshakes, biscuits and cakes.

On the issue of smoking, Osborne said:

“You basically phase it out. Of course you’re going to have lots of problems with illegal smoking, but you have lots of problems with other illegal activities. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try and ban them and police them and make it less readily available. I thought that was a compelling public health intervention.”

Significantly he added:

“In my political lifetime, far and away the most audacious and productive period of health reform happened under the Tony Blair government.”

Draw your own conclusions but it’s clear that, like many members of Britain’s political elite (past and present, and across the political spectrum), Osborne wants to control how millions of people live their lives.

The bizarre thing is that banning younger generations of adults from smoking would not only infantilise millions of people, it would also fuel a huge black market in tobacco.

The loss of revenue to government would be enormous (at least £10 billion pounds every year), not to mention the cost of trying (and largely failing) to enforce it.

As a former chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne ought to know that, which is presumably why he didn't propose anything like it when in office.

To compound matters it’s only two years since he was caught in flagrante with a fag himself. According to the Daily Mail:

Drawing heavily on a cigarette, a familiar figure in casual attire ambles along a cobbled London street. Witnesses to George Osborne's lone stroll – for it is the former Chancellor lurking beneath that baseball cap – report that he seemed pensive, as if carrying some weighty burden.

Osborne's comments yesterday are a classic example of 'Do as I say, not as I do'. It was alright for him to smoke, but now he wants to deny future generations the same opportunity.

Fortunately he's no longer in government, or politics, so his views should be treated with the contempt they deserve.

David Cameron was a smoker too, of course, and not only did his government enforce Labour’s tobacco display ban within a year of becoming prime minister (having opposed it in opposition), he also introduced plain packaging.

Perhaps we should be thankful they didn’t do more than they did, but Osborne’s praise for Blair’s government shows how little there is, policy wise, between the leading members of Britain’s political elite.

It’s clear too that despite having not stood for election for years, former politicians like Blair and Osborne still consider themselves part of that influential circle, which is hardly surprising given the way some people seem to hang on to their every word, even now.

On this occasion, though, I think most people will recognise Osborne’s stage-managed intervention for what it was - a small and largely irrelevant act of political theatre, quickly forgotten.

PS. I’m quoted by the Mirror here - UK should ban smoking and slap taxes on fruit juice says George Osborne.

A quiet rebellion

'Smoking down 79 per cent on Trinity College campus but vaping up', reported the Irish Independent this week.

That was the headline. The actual report was a little more nuanced:

Trinity College in Dublin has seen a 79pc reduction in observed smokers on its campus following the introduction of restrictions.

Note the words 'observed' and 'restrictions'.

Inevitably, if you impose localised restrictions on where people can smoke, the number of 'observed' smokers in that area will drop.

It doesn't mean that significantly fewer students are smoking, though, and certainly not by as much as the headline might imply.

In reality all that happens is that smoking is displaced from one area to another.

I remember this happened when, in 2004, the Oxford Union banned smoking in its previously profitable bar.

Many students voted with their feet and started drinking in the local pubs where smoking wasn't banned. As a result the Union found itself losing so much money they had to reverse the ban a few months later.

Likewise, after the introduction of indoor smoking bans in England, Scotland and Wales, a significant number of urban, land-locked pubs closed because many smokers switched to pubs that had outdoor areas where they could light up.

Hospital smoking bans are another example. Far from being stubbed out, smoking is merely displaced from one location to another (often to the annoyance of local residents).

But this post is about students.

Last weekend, as I wrote here, I visited Old College, part of the University of Edinburgh.

Prominent signs informed students, staff, and visitors that neither smoking nor vaping is permitted in the large open air quad.

It's unclear what impact this and other restrictions have had on the number of students who smoke, but I was told that smoking is still common among students in Edinburgh.

So with that and the Irish Independent story in mind, I went online and found this:

Walking into campus through the Arts Block one morning, I was confronted by a screen declaring Trinity a “tobacco-free campus”. Not only was I surprised, having not heard this once in my six months of studying here, but my confusion was further justified once I walked past the arts block and saw the revolving cast of smokers standing outside. Trinity may declare itself tobacco free, but it is certainly not in practice.

See 'Student social smoking at an all-time high in Dublin' (Trinity News, April 2022).

I also found this – The Tab Student Smoking Survey 2021 – which revealed that '52 per cent of students who took our survey say they smoke cigarettes'.

That figure surprises me, if I'm honest, but one explanation (other than the fact that it was a self-selecting poll) is that many students, as the Trinity News article suggests, are social smokers who enjoy the occasional cigarette when they are out drinking with friends.

They are not, in any sense, heavy smokers, nor are they addicted to smoking.

I can’t imagine that any of them will be taking to the streets demanding the right to smoke, and I doubt that many would even consider themselves to be libertarian, politically speaking.

But what's happening is nevertheless a quiet rebellion against the killjoys who want to dictate how they live their lives.

Don't forget that most undergraduates have only recently left school, and home. Age wise they are mostly young adults and going to college is often the first step to becoming fully independent of their parents.

Unless your mum and dad are hard-core anti-smokers, having the occasional cigarette while sharing a drink with your mates is – on a scale of one to ten – nearer one than ten as an act of defiance. In other words, it really isn't a big deal.

So to those who want the nation's campuses to be smoke free, the message is simple. Evidence suggests that, even when smoking is banned, it doesn't stop students smoking.

And to the person who read the Trinity story and wrote, "God, not like that in my day, must be depressing being a student now", I don't think things are as bad as they might appear.

Students are still having a good time and if they want to smoke they will find a way. Furthermore, very few of their peers will disapprove or consider it anything other than perfectly normal.

In fact the biggest threat to today's students is not the war on smoking and drinking, but the increasingly frequent attacks on freedom of speech.

But that's another matter ...

Smoking - a true test of liberty

Quick report following my trip to a wet and overcast Edinburgh at the weekend.

I drove home on Monday having been invited to speak at a meeting organised by Students for Liberty Edinburgh on Sunday.

SFL is an 'international libertarian organisation' founded in the United States in 2008. It now has groups all around the world, including a handful in the UK, and doesn’t appear short of money, internationally at least. Local groups operate on more of a shoestring.

The biggest events include LibertyCon, an annual US-based conference described as 'the largest international pro-liberty gathering in the world', and LibertyCon Europe,‘the continent's largest annual pro-liberty gathering'.

Ironically, while we were shivering under Edinburgh's grey and leaden skies, LibertyCon Europe 2023 was taking place in a rather warmer location - Lisbon.

Back in Edinburgh the topic of Sunday’s discussion was 'Smokers’ rights and the war on nicotine' and kudos to organiser Josh Cheshire for tackling what some might say is an increasingly unfashionable, even niche, subject.

It’s not of course because, as I’ve said for many years, the war on smoking should be of interest to anyone who cares about individual liberty because what's happening to smokers today (the so-called tobacco template) is merely part of a much broader attack on people’s lifestyles, whether it be smoking, eating or drinking.

Defending the right to smoke is not - as some idiot suggested on Twitter yesterday - the same as defending the right to drink bleach or eat glass.

Anyway, Josh had put together a rather interesting panel that also featured Tam Laird, leader of the Scottish Libertarian Party, and Steven Warden, an associate of the Ayn Rand Centre UK and a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute.

Given the reluctance of anti-smoking groups to share a platform with anyone who supports smokers' rights (ASH Scotland didn’t reply to Josh’s invitation), there is a danger that events like this become very one-sided, with everyone preaching to the converted.

On this occasion, while we were all roughly on the same page when it came to defending the right to smoke, there were enough differences to make the discussion interesting and occasionally challenging.

Tam, for example, believes that all drugs, including heroin, should be legalised. (I don’t, although I can see the argument for it.)

Steven's position was arguably more erudite and scholarly. However, I suspect that, if it came to a street fight (in the battle of ideas), Tam might be more persuasive.

Like me, neither of them have ever been smokers. The big difference was that Tam and Steven appeared to actively dislike smoking.

Tam’s antipathy seemed to stem from his childhood, while his memories of Scottish pubs are very different to mine.

Having experienced countless pubs and bars in Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Dundee and St Andrews over a 25-year period from the mid Seventies to the late Nineties, I don’t remember smoky pubs ever being an issue.

I'm sure they existed but I don’t recall a smoky environment ever being a problem, either for me or anyone I drank with.

Tam however remembered pubs and bars being thick with fug and he hated it.

The funny thing is he didn’t strike me as the type who might be overly sensitive to such things. A former soldier, he has presumably experienced far worse, but it just goes to show we are all different.

Steven didn’t like smoking either but here’s the thing. Although neither like it, they were both prepared to give up a Sunday afternoon to defend smokers (and smoking) and support the right to smoke.

That, to my mind, is the true mark of a genuine libertarian, not the type who (for example) advocates vaping in order to “beat smoking” with little or no regard for the millions who enjoy smoking and don’t want to quit.

Ironically one group that does precisely that is the World Vapers Alliance which is owned and funded by the self-styled Consumer Choice Center that was founded in 2017 by ... Students for Liberty.

CCC says it is now independent of SFL. Nevertheless it's worth repeating what I wrote here (Back Choice, Beat Prohibition). In summary:

There are millions of adult smokers who don’t want to quit and in a free society their choice must be respected and publicly defended. Abandon them and you're no liberal, however much you try to convince yourself that you are.

With that in mind, and having spoken to several SFL groups in the UK (including an SFL training day at the IEA), I look forward to being invited to address LibertyCon (or LibertyCon Europe) in 2024.

Forest and the World Vapers Alliance – who wouldn't want to see that?!

See: 'World Vapers Alliance - stoking up a stink about smoking' and 'Why are so many 'libertarians' anti-tobacco?'.

Above: One of several 'No smoking and vaping in the Quad' signs at Old College, Edinburgh, ironically the location for our meeting on Sunday.

Objectivism, libertarianism, and smoking

I shall be in Scotland this weekend, speaking to members of Students for Liberty Edinburgh and the Edinburgh University Objectivist Society.

Subject: ‘Smokers’ rights and the war on nicotine’.

I’ve spoken to Students for Liberty groups several times but I had never heard of the Objectivist Society, or objectivism, so I had to look it up.

According to one definition:

Objectivism holds that reality is an absolute - that facts are facts, regardless of anyone's hopes, fears, or desires.

Another writer describes it as ‘the philosophy of rational individualism’:

Objectivism holds that there is no greater moral goal than achieving one's happiness. But one cannot achieve happiness by wish or whim. It requires rational respect for the facts of reality, including the facts about our human nature and needs.

Objectivism is credited to author and philosopher Ayn Rand but as I’ve never read The Fountainhead (1943) or Atlas Shrugged (1957), the novels she is best known for, her philosophy had passed me by.

Yesterday, to help shed light on the subject, I bought the Kindle edition of ‘Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand’ by Leonard Peikoff, which I will do my best to read before Sunday, but it doesn’t strike me as a page turner.

Happily, one of the other speakers is Steven Warden, an associate of the Ayn Rand Centre UK and a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute, so he will no doubt make up for my ignorance.

The third speaker is Tam Laird, leader of the Scottish Libertarian Party, a former soldier and ‘one of the foremost libertarian voices in the UK’, so I’m looking forward to what should be a lively discussion.

The event will take place at Old College which was originally called New College when it was built in the late 18th to early 19th century.

If the sun comes out (rain is forecast) I’ll take some pictures and post them here.