PMI's CEO: "Quit smoking or you will never date my daughter"

Fair play to Philip Morris International's PR or comms team.

Whether by luck or design (probably the latter) they do a pretty decent job promoting the company's smoke free agenda, and the way they have consistently generated headlines with occasional but widely reported interviews with senior executives should also be acknowledged.

A prime example is André Calantzopoulos' appearance on Radio 4's Today programme in 2016 when the then CEO created global headlines after he told the BBC that Philip Morris could stop making conventional cigarettes.

Another is a 2018 interview in which Peter Nixon, then managing director of Philip Morris UK, told the Independent, "There is no reason for anyone to smoke any more." (As it happens I think this was arguably an own goal but it nevertheless generated a lot of publicity.)

I could list other examples but the most recent was on Saturday when the Financial Times published an interview with Calantzopoulos' successor:

The chief executive of the world’s largest tobacco group Philip Morris International is not short of anecdotes in which he implored people to quit smoking.

Over a cigarette at a US embassy party in Warsaw in the mid-2000s, Jacek Olczak recited the health warning on a pack to the then-Polish health minister. A few years later, the minister, Zbigniew Religa, died of lung cancer.

More recently, Olczak gave his eldest daughter’s boyfriend a stark choice: quit smoking or switch to IQOS, PMI’s flagship smoke-free alternative, “or you will never date my daughter”. A year later, he switched.

Even allowing for the fact that the story was probably tongue-in-cheek, I appear to be alone in pointing out that it's 2023 yet Olczak seems happy to portray himself playing hardball with his eldest daughter's choice of boyfriend.

Did she have no agency in this?!

I sensed a similarly flippant tone when the Independent interviewed Peter Nixon in 2018:

Among his 400 employees in London apparently, there is one hold-out who still smokes. “I’m working on him though.”

It struck me then that with almost one in seven adults still smoking in the UK in 2018, it was a bit odd that of the 400 people working for Philip Morris in London only one was still a smoker.

Or perhaps, like the boyfriend of Jacek Olczak's daughter, they had been given an ultimatum.

See: Philip Morris's CEO on quitting smoking and detoxifying the brand.

Below: The FT's Oliver Barnes, who interviewed PMI's CEO, tweets ...

No Smoking Day hijacked by tobacco levy lobbyists

According to today's ASH Daily News bulletin:

Cancer Research UK have written an open letter to Steve Barclay, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, and Jeremy Hunt, Chancellor of the Exchequer, urging them to publish a new tobacco control plan to tackle smoking – the leading preventable cause of cancer. They are asking members of the public to add their names to the letter to show how much support there is for ending smoking. The letter will be published on No Smoking Day (8th March). Sign up by March 7th to make sure your name is included. You can sign the letter here.

Is this the Big Splash I mentioned last week? If so it's interesting how far No Smoking Day has moved from its original altruistic goal of helping smokers who want to quit to do so.

In those days the event, as its name suggests, was focussed on a single day, although in its prime a team of people with an annual budget of £600,000 was employed to organise it.

Now, according to ASH (whose CEO Deborah Arnott is 'helping to co-ordinate' this year's event), the goal is 'ending smoking' completely, ignoring the fact that there are still millions of people who enjoy smoking and don't want to quit.

Demanding 'Decisive Government action on tobacco now ...', the letter to Barclay and Hunt insists:

The UK Government has a duty to act to prevent young people from starting to smoke and fund stop smoking services to help people quit ...

If Government cannot pay for the measures and services to needed to help people quit smoking, then the [tobacco] industry should be made to do so. We ask UK Government to please put families and our health system first in the upcoming Spring Budget and implement a Smokefree Fund, using industry funds, without industry interference to pay for these measures and services.

As I write 1,947 people have signed CRUK's letter to the Chancellor and the health secretary, which hardly suggests mass support for a levy to fund a 'Smokefree Fund', nor does it represent a significant protest against alleged government inaction on tobacco control.

Compare it to the 250,000 people who in 2012 signed Forest's petition against plain packaging, or the 50,000 who subsequently signed a Forest-penned letter to the then prime minister David Cameron on the same issue.

The deadline to sign the CRUK letter is Tuesday March 7, the day before No Smoking Day. I'll keep you posted.

Now I’m 64

Well, this is embarrassing.

It's my birthday today and I genuinely thought I was 63 but it turns out I’m 64. So it's no longer when but now.

Your man in Havana (revisited)

The 23rd edition of the Habanos Festival is currently taking place in Havana, Cuba.

Apart from a two-year hiatus caused by the pandemic, this annual event attracts cigar lovers and industry reps from all over the world. It also attracts the curious, like me.

Ten years ago I travelled to Cuba for the 15th Festival. On that Virgin flight from Gatwick to Havana were fellow members of the Boisdale Jazz and Cigar Club.

Led by Boisdale MD Ranald Macdonald, who had travelled to Cuba ahead of us, we were a motley group.

There was a journalist (the Daily Mail’s Peter McKay), an eccentric publican (more of whom later), a restaurateur (the son of a prominent Conservative politician), a PR woman (who told me she once did the PR for No Smoking Day), and the girlfriend of a reasonably well known punk rock star.

It was my first (and only) visit to Cuba so I didn’t know what to expect, but when we landed Ranald was there to fast track us through passport control so we avoided what looked like an interminable queue.

From the airport - which looked like something out of a Sean Connery era Bond film - we got a coach to the Hotel Nacional de Cuba where we were staying.

Opened in 1930, the Nacional is a reminder of pre-Castro Cuba when Havana attracted the likes of Frank Sinatra and some of the great Hollywood stars.

Official Habanos Festival events included an extraordinary gala dinner on the final evening when special guests included Boris Becker and the American actor Danny Glover.

The previous evening I stood a few feet from Becker, inhaling his cigar smoke, at another function. As I noted at the time, we were in almost identical cream linen suits and could have been doppelgängers, although he had more hair than me.

Mostly we followed an alternative programme of events - organised by Ranald - that ran parallel to the Festival which I soon realised was far more corporate than I had anticipated.

The Boisdale programme was therefore a lot more fun (in my opinion) and being Ranald there was no shortage of fine dining - and lots of wine, even on the coaches that took us from one location to another.

You can read the full story of our trip here (Your man in Havana - notes from a Caribbean island) but if anything sums up the sometimes bizarre nature of the week it was this.

Writing about one member of our party, I noted:

Gerry is the proprietor of the Mason Arms in South Leigh, Oxfordshire. If the name sounds familiar it's because Gerry was fined £5,750 in 2008 after he admitted six separate charges of flouting the smoking ban. Following his conviction, he told the Oxford Mail:

“You make up what you want, old boy. I'm not making any comment, except Tony Blair can stick his anti-smoking law up his a***."

Funnily enough, our friendship was cemented in a rather strange fashion following our return from Havana. The last of our party to emerge from baggage collection at Gatwick Airport, we made our way to the South Terminal Car Park where we had left our cars. Lo and behold, Gerry couldn't get into his car because the central locking system wouldn't work.

Good deeds don't come naturally to me but on this occasion I didn't think twice. It was a fine sunny day and even after an eight hour flight I was curious to see the Mason Arms so I drove him to his Oxfordshire village where he gave me a quick tour of his idiosyncratic pub.

Gerry has since sent me some promotional material including several impressive reviews. According to Raymond Blanc, for example:

“I often drive around Oxfordshire to look for places to recommend to our guests. The minute I stepped into the Mason Arms I knew I had stumbled upon somewhere very special ... It's the sort of place where you never want to leave."

To his credit Gerry also sent me an absolute stinker of a review by the late Michael Winner that had me in stitches. It wasn't the pub or the food that Winner couldn't stomach, it was Gerry himself ("the most arrogant man in England", according to Winner, which is quite an accolade).

To thank me for driving him home Gerry invited my wife and me to have dinner at the Mason Arms at a later date and stay overnight.

Sadly, he shut the place down and put it in the market a few weeks later after he lost two head chefs in quick succession so we never got to experience his unique hospitality.

As I wrote here, I was genuinely gutted.

In praise of BBC local radio

The first interview I ever gave as director of Forest was with BBC Radio Leicester.

I remember it because it was booked two days in advance and, given all that time to think about it, I was extremely nervous.

I had done radio interviews in previous jobs but never in front of colleagues on a subject I was still getting to grips with.

Fortunately, in our old London office, I had a small office within an office so I was able to close the door so none of my colleagues could hear my first stumbling steps.

Since then I've done hundreds of interviews, probably more (I've lost count), the majority on BBC local radio.

The great thing about local radio is you generally get more time – seven or eight minutes perhaps – and although there is never enough time to say everything you want, it's better than the two or three minutes you’re lucky to get on national radio (which is sometimes reduced to no more than a soundbite).

Anyway, I was on BBC Radio Nottingham yesterday. The seven-minute discussion was prompted, I think, by the fact that a local publican has decided to ban smoking on his premises, by which I mean outside. (He was on before me but we were kept apart on air.)

As it happens, I don't have a major issue with his decision. If I was a landlord it wouldn't be my choice but it’s his pub and if he wants to ban smoking on his own property that's up to him.

Before the current smoking ban was introduced we took the same attitude to smoking indoors. If proprietors wanted to ban smoking in their pub or restaurant that was their choice and good luck to them.

In practice very few pubs banned smoking before the legislation was introduced. The Free Press in Cambridge was one but at the time it was the only non-smoking pub in the city, and who could object to that?

Today, if we are to be consistent, the same must apply to smoking in beer gardens or outdoor terraces. It should be up to the proprietor not government whether smoking is prohibited.

What I do have an issue with is the argument that the ban should be extended to outdoor spaces to 'protect' the health of non-smokers, hence the following exchange with BBC Nottingham presenter Mark Dennison:

Me: When the smoking ban came in … we were told it was to protect the health of bar workers. Now they're talking about extending the smoking ban to outdoor areas, like parks, beaches and so on, where there is absolutely no risk to anyone else's health whatsoever. You're in the open air.

Dennison: How do you know? How do you know that?

Me: Because it's my job to study the evidence … 🤣

Dennison: Yes, but hang on there ...

Me: ... and there is no evidence that there's [a] risk to other people's health.

Dennison: Sorry, Simon, there's been a lot of science and research into secondhand smoke inhalation, hasn't there? And how do you know that that is only a thing indoors rather than outdoors?

Me: Well, it's up to the anti-smoking lobby to produce clear evidence that smoking outside is a risk to other people's health [and] they've been unable to do it.

After that the discussion continued as follows (I’ve edited it for brevity):

Dennison: OK, well, you say that but, equally, a lot of people are already saying, look, I don't want to breathe in, apart from just the health side of things, I don't want to breathe in other people's smoke, whether that's indoors or outdoors. Let's leave that to one side just for a moment.

I want to talk about what you mentioned there, about being pro-choice, people have smoked for years and years and years. Isn't the difference nowadays that we know so much more about the harm that smoking does? You can't deny that we know so much more about the science, what it does to the human body, don't we?

Me: Oh, indeed, and that's why it's important that in a free society adults should be allowed to make an informed choice. The trouble is, these days we're treating adults increasingly like small children. We're infantilising Britain and it's not just with smoking.

I mean, although Forest is primarily about smoking, what we're really against is excessive intrusion into people's private lives and excessive regulation. And that's what we've seen over the last 20 years with smoking. We began with the ban on tobacco advertising and sponsorship. Then we had the smoking ban. Since then, we've had a ban on display of cigarettes in shops, as if we cannot be allowed to see a packet of cigarettes, otherwise we're going to be reaching for our bags. And then we've had plain packaging, a ban on menthol cigarettes.

What we're seeing is creeping prohibition. And I think most people in this country would be very alarmed at the idea of prohibition, because this won't stop with smoking and tobacco. The public health lobby is now so powerful, we already see that they're moving on to things like alcohol. We're constantly told that even a single drink of alcohol is bad for our health.

I'm afraid this is just utterly nonsense. People get through life in different ways. Some people choose to smoke. Of course some people wish they'd never started smoking, and wish to quit but there are great many people who take pleasure from smoking. And I think the war on tobacco could actually be said to be a war on pleasure, just as the war on alcohol could be said to be a war on pleasure. We have to be allowed to make these choices for ourselves.

Dennison: What do you say, Simon, to people that say, and this applies to smoking as well as drinking now that you bring that up, what about the burden on the NHS? Why should I pay? And why should an already overburdened NHS be dealing with all of these self inflicted problems?

Me: Well, that's a very good point, but the actual facts are that the estimated cost of treating smoking related diseases on the NHS is £2.5 billion a year. Smokers contribute over £10 billion through tobacco taxation. That's a combination of excise duty on tobacco and VAT. So smokers more than pay their way. And the trouble is, if you go down the route of saying, well, hang on, why should the NHS pay for self inflicted problems, do you therefore ban contact sports like rugby, where you could be seriously hurt? Where does this stop?

Dennison: It's been fascinating. Simon, we'll have to leave it there for time reasons, but thank you for coming on. A lot to unpick from that. What do you make of what you've just heard? And maybe as a smoker, you are livid at the idea of being pushed further and further out. And the prospect of it being illegal might just well make you reach for your cigarettes because it stresses you out so much, to be honest.

I’ve not published the full transcript but can you imagine getting that much time on most national radio programmes?

Sadly BBC local radio faces significant cuts to programming and that could have major repercussions for public debate on a range of issues.

TalkTV and GB News are doing their best - with variable degrees of success - to tackle what might be called the democratic deficit by giving less mainstream views a platform, but BBC radio has its part to play too and I worry that we are in danger of losing some valuable programming where issues can be debated at greater length.

So let’s hear it for BBC local radio. In the words of one producer, “We’ve spoken to you in the past and really enjoyed the discussion.”

Me too!

Baroness Boothroyd, RIP

Sorry to hear that Baroness Boothroyd, former Speaker of the House of Commons, has died.

Not a bad age, though – 93.

Known for her "no-nonsense style", she is pictured above enjoying a cigarette ahead of the annual Lords and Commons Pipe and Cigar Club lunch on No Smoking Day, March 2007.

I suspect she may have given up in later years but she smoked well into her seventies (a pack a day, apparently) and made no attempt to hide her habit.

Business Live, for example, reported that:

Lady Boothroyd, better known as Betty, once revealed the secret of her success lay in smoking a packet of cigarettes a day. This was the cause of what she called her "lovely deep voice", which helped her lay down the law with hearty cries of "order! order!"

In 2018, recalling her time in office as the first woman Speaker, The House magazine noted:

Every day, Boothroyd and her deputies would go through the list of people due to speak in the Commons, interspersed with cigarette breaks for Boothroyd.

Reporting her death, The Telegraph adds that:

William Hague, the then Tory leader, remarked on how she had governed the lower chamber with "exemplary courtesy, charm and when necessary a little firmness… augmented in pitch by a packet of cigarettes every day".

The late Lord Harris, chairman of Forest from 1987 until his death in 2006, also spoke warmly of Boothroyd, although their political beliefs (she was a staunch socialist, he was a free marketeer) were poles apart.

Thanks to their mutual enjoyment of smoking, however, they shared a rather different bond.

PS. The Press Association adds:

She described herself as “pleasantly plump” and had no inhibitions about what she ate. “I just like good food, beef steaks, and I enjoy the House of Commons chips. They are terrific.”

RIP.

Why the Chancellor must resist temptation to hike tax on tobacco

Reports suggest the cost of a pack of cigarettes could rise by a record £1.15 after next month’s Budget.

Likewise the smallest pouch of rolling tobacco (30g) could go up by £2.

This is based on the fact that the tobacco duty escalator (which was reintroduced by George Osborne in 2010 and has been imposed almost every year since) is inflation plus 2%, and the measure of inflation used is the Retail Price Index (RPI) which is currently 12.7% or 13.4%. (Reports seem to vary.)

Either way, if you add 2% you have an increase of close to 15%.

What made me choke on my croissant though was ASH's reaction. After years of demanding ever higher tax hikes (inflation plus 5%, for example), it appears that ASH is ambivalent about the possible increase (which I suspect was someone flying a kite).

According to the Mirror:

[The] group noted that RPI is "not a good measure of affordability" at the current time when wages are not keeping pace with inflation.

In a statement, ASH said: "A better measure of affordability is average earnings, as is used in Australia, and we recommend that the UK switch from using RPI to average weekly earnings increase as the foundation for the tobacco tax escalator.

They add that:

"The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) estimates that average weekly earnings will have grown by 5.4% in the fiscal year 2022-3, and are expected to grow by 4.2% in 2023, while the figures for RPI are 13.0% and 8.3%."

So, while I note ASH's unexpected concern (?) for smokers who may be feeling the pinch financially, you'll forgive me if I raise a quizzical eyebrow.

After all, raising excise duty to make tobacco less affordable to more people has been ASH’s policy for years, so why the sudden interest in a better (fairer?) measure of “affordability”?

Inflation is expected to fall later this year so pinning an increase in excise duty to average earnings growth - which is likely to exceed inflation in the not too distant future, especially if public sector workers get their way - may not be as attractive as it sounds.

I’d have to check the figures but had a similar policy been in place over the past decade or so, during which inflation has been consistently low, the price of tobacco may have been even higher than it already is.

Either way, this is the first time I've heard ASH challenge the use of RPI as a measure of inflation in relation to excise duty on tobacco. Why now?

The Retail Price Index is one measure of inflation used by government. Another is the Consumer Price Index (CPI) which tends to be lower, so using the RPI to calculate tobacco duty has always been problematical for smokers.

In October 2017 - long before ASH expressed a view on RPI - Forest published a briefing paper, 'The impact of using the RPI in the tobacco duty escalator', that began:

The reintroduction of the tobacco duty escalator (the policy of raising taxes above inflation) in 2010 has led to very large tax increases on tobacco products. Compounding the issue, the government has used an inflation measure – the Retail Price Index – that is known to be higher, in general, than the rate of inflation.

A review of price indices by Paul Johnson, director of the Institute or Fiscal Studies, found that the RPI is fundamentally flawed because it s "upwardly biased". It also argued that taxes should not be linked to the RPI inflation measure because of its flaws and that its continued use risks the integrity of the public finances.

The tobacco duty escalator has therefore used an inflated (and discredited) inflation rate and has risen much faster than it would have if an accurate measure of inflation had been used. This has punished smokers by raising the cost of living.

In particular it has hurt those on low incomes for whom tobacco duty is highly regressive. This in turn will have driven smokers to the illicit and cross border cigarette market that has grown as a percentage of total consumption since the reintroduction of the duty escalator.

As I say, I don't remember ASH objecting to the use of RPI to calculate tobacco tax hikes before, so forgive me if I’m sceptical about their motives.

It's particularly odd that they are commenting on RPI now because, as I understand it, it’s due to be dropped as a measure of inflation (for tobacco at least) later this year, although any tax hikes in next month’s Budget may still be based on RPI.

Could it have something to do with the fact that ASH is also calling for an additional levy on the tobacco companies that everyone knows will be passed on to the consumer?

The levy is far more important to ASH and the tobacco control industry because the money raised - whether it be £125m or £700m a year - is supposed to be spent on tobacco control initiatives. (Nice work if you can get it.)

As for raising duty on tobacco using a method employed in Australia, the motive for that also needs to be looked at. Is it coincidence, for example, that Australia, has the highest rates of tobacco duty in the world?

The country also has a significant problem with illicit tobacco, grown domestically or smuggled into the country, but that doesn’t get a mention.

My immediate concern however is the fact that the Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, is a former health secretary who in 2014 argued that Britain should “aspire” to be a country where nobody smokes.

Let’s hope that ambition doesn’t drive him to overplay his hand. We know smokers are an easy target but if the Chancellor succumbs to temptation poorer smokers will be pushed further into poverty and there will be only one group that wins - not ASH, but criminal gangs and illicit traders.

Fighting talk

I was reminded yesterday that it's eight years since Forest hosted a special one-off event at the Institute of Directors in London.

'Stop The Nonsense: Plain Speaking on Plain Packaging' took place on February 24, 2015, a few weeks before MPs voted to introduce standardised packaging of tobacco.

After a three year campaign we knew were likely to lose the vote but we gathered the troops for one last push and what a night it was. Eight people agreed to speak:

Mark Littlewood (Institute of Economic Affairs), John O'Connell (TaxPayers Alliance), Madsen Pirie (Adam Smith Institute), Claire Fox (Academy of Ideas), Rory Broomfield (Freedom Association), Emily Barley (Conservatives for Liberty), Angela Harbutt (Liberal Vision), and Chris Snowdon (IEA Lifestyle Economics Unit).

They were each given two minutes to argue against plain packaging and this resulted in a fast paced and surprisingly entertaining evening with everyone given a standing ovation.

We subsequently produced a DVD and USB stick that featured every speech, plus a short video, which we sent to MPs.

The vote in parliament still went in favour of plain packaging but we made our point and went down fighting. It was the least we could do.

See also: 'Invitation to Stop The Nonsense'.