Playing with numbers

Breaking ‘news’.

According to new calculations by the Adam Smith Institute, a leading think tank, promoting safer alternatives to cigarettes could save 19 million years of life by 2030, and up to £12.6 billion every year.

Back in 2018 the ASI claimed that switching to vaping could save one million years of life (an interesting concept that plays into the modern cult of longevity, and a nice round figure to boot).

In 2002 that became two million years of life. Now it’s 19 million. What next - 25, 50, one BILLION?

Frankly, this type of estimate is embarrassing, not just because it almost certainly bears no relation to reality, but because it is so clearly designed to generate a cheap headline.

The anti-smoking industry plays this game all the time. According to ASH last week, new estimates show that smoking costs society in England £43.7 billion a year, an estimate that has risen from £13 billion, then £17 billion, in less than a decade.

It’s nonsense, and the ASI’s calculations are nonsense too.

I have known Madsen Pirie and Eamonn Butler, co-founders of the ASI, for 45 years, and on a personal level I have much to be grateful to them for.

I have no such allegiance to the younger generation of free marketeers, some of whom are happy to jump on the anti-smoking bandwagon if it suits their agenda.

The latest ASI paper even quotes research by ASH, but that’s not surprising because their modus operandi seems much the same - think of a number then double or quadruple it.

Then, when the media loses interest, go for broke with an even bigger number, a figure so fantastical that it doesn’t just jump the shark, it uses a pole vault to do so.

As I wrote in 2018, I agree that vaping has been a free market success story. I said it again (for the umpteenth time) a few weeks ago, but to claim that switching to vapes can save one, two or 19 million years of life is absurd.

I appreciate that the the aim of the ASI paper is to highlight the counter-productive effects of creeping prohibition, including the ban on disposable vapes, but employing such a broad guesstimate doesn’t reflect well on the credibility of the research.

It’s true of course that the biggest argument in favour of switching to vapes is the probability that vaping is significantly less harmful than smoking. But that argument is looking less and less sustainable - not because it isn’t true but because the media, and therefore public opinion, is moving in the opposite direction.

A few days ago, for example, it was reported that Paul Danan, the Hollyoaks star, dies aged 46 after ‘obsessive vaping’ habit (Telegraph).

This led to a flurry of articles including The risks of vaping and how to quit (Telegraph), The truth about vaping - and real dangers you can't ignore (inews), and The dangerous impact vaping can have on your lungs (Metro).

Yesterday the Blackpool Gazette ran a story with the headline, ‘Blackpool dad, 20, in coma for two weeks with collapsed lung after continuous vaping’, and this morning it was reported that ‘Vape experts reveal how to get rid of 'vaper's tongue' as doctor issues warning about long-term side effect’.

I’m as sceptical as anyone about the veracity of these reports, but they represent a tiny, tiny fraction of the tsunami of stories and studies that are going to be published over the next decade or so highlighting the alleged risks of vaping.

We’ve seen plenty of evidence of this already but, believe me, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Public health campaigners and politicians have a template - otherwise known as the tobacco playbook - and they will follow it ruthlessly en route to prohibiting, if possible, all recreational nicotine products. It’s just a matter of time.

Part of that playbook is to commission studies that will highlight and exaggerate each and every potential risk to demonise and denormalise both the product and the user. Those are the rules of their game and anyone who plays along in a vain attempt to win their support for a less harmful nicotine product is going to get chewed up and spat out.

As I have said ad nauseum for many years, arguing that vaping is ‘safer’ than smoking will only help for a limited period. In the longer term the public health goal is to stop consumers using any product that contains nicotine (cigarettes, vapes, pouches and so on).

The health argument in favour of vaping will only go so far because as soon as the public decides that vaping has its own significant health risks (and we’re not far off that perception) the game is up, regardless of the actual evidence.

We saw it with secondhand smoke. To this day the evidence that passive smoking is a serious health risk to non-smokers is still questionable but, following decades of reports and propaganda, the public (by and large) accepts what they have read or been told.

The same will undoubtedly happen with vaping and there’s almost nothing the pro-vaping lobby can do about it. The more they play the prohibitionists’ game and bang on about the ‘millions of years’ lost to smoking, the more they are condemning vaping to a similar fate.

The health risks of vaping may be significantly less than the risks of smoking, but focussing on health as the number one argument for vaping (whilst ignoring the most fundamental argument of all - an adult’s right to choose, regardless of the risks) leaves vaping extremely vulnerable.

If switching to vaping could save 19 million years of life by 2030, how many years of life could be saved if people quit smoking and vaping by 2050?

My estimate, which I have just calculated on the back of a fag packet, is 100 million. Now prove me wrong.

See: Safer Alternatives to Cigarettes Could Save 19 Million Years of Life and Billions of Pounds by 2030 (ASI, January 2025)

See also: ‘Healthier, happier, freer’ (Taking Liberties, June 2018) and Number crunching (April 2022), in which I comment on previous ASI papers in this field.

Update: The ASI also promotes its new paper by quoting Labour MP Mary Glindon:

“The Government is right to strengthen its commitment to a Smoke-Free 2030 …”

Er, why is the Government right to strengthen its commitment to a Smoke-Free 2030? How very (neo) liberal of you!

Daylight robbery!

I received not one but three penalty charge notices this week.

They arrived in the same post but it wasn’t obvious what was in each envelope so they sat unopened until yesterday when my wife suggested it might be a good idea to check.

She knows that, as a general rule, I don't open anything that looks 'official' for several months, if at all. (Note: I don’t advise this as a pattern of behaviour.)

On this occasion she was concerned I may have picked up penalty points for exceeding London's ridiculously harsh inner city speed limit (20mph on many roads).

The 'good' news is that the PCNs had nothing to do with speeding. Instead they were for parking offences timed at 11.37, 11.44, and 11.55 on the same day in east London where my daughter lives.

I can't recall exactly what happened but I think I parked, very briefly, in one street (a residential parking area) before moving my car to a neighbouring street where I have parked before without penalty.

I was parked for no more than ten minutes in each location and for most of that time I didn't even leave the car.

OK, I didn’t have a residential parking permit but I wasn't denying a resident a parking space. There were several spaces available and I could have moved at a moment's notice. (It was January 2 so the roads weren’t as busy as normal.)

Nevertheless I have no legal defence which is why I have paid the fines, which were reduced by 50 per cent if paid within 14 days, but they still cost me £195 in total!

What struck me however was the evidence, the small black and white photos that identify very clearly both my car and the registration number.

Yes, I'm bang to rights, but there's no getting around the fact that we live surrounded by CCTV cameras watching our every move.

What does it matter, some might say. If you haven't done anything wrong, there's nothing to fear.

I am reminded that, 15 years ago, we organised a Free Society debate on this very subject. It was prompted by a comment by Dr Eamonn Butler, co-founder of the Adam Smith Institute, who noted the large number of speed cameras between Cambridge (where he lives) and Ely (where he was taking some American visitors to see the famous cathedral).

One of our panellists was the Conservative MP Philip Davies (who lost his seat at the last election but has the consolation of having been knighted a few months earlier).

Like Eamonn I believe the number of CCTV cameras in Britain to be excessive. (I think we have a greater concentration of surveillance cameras per mile, or head of population, than any country in the world.)

Philip, however, took a different view, and although he was heckled for defending their ubiquity, he made a strong case and I was partly won over by his argument that without surveillance cameras many serious crimes would go unsolved.

I remain torn however. There is something about the vast number of CCTV cameras in this country that concerns me, especially when they are used to prosecute or fine people (like me!) for what I consider to be the most innocuous, victim-free, offence.

I take Philip's point that CCTV cameras are there to protect us. But then I look again at those three penalty charge notices and think ...

WTF – daylight robbery!!

Tackling smoking still not a top priority for the public

The Tobacco and Vapes Public Bill Committee (stuffed full of MPs who voted for the Bill at second reading) met twice this week to consider further amendments to the Bill.

I’ll post about them later. In the meantime, Yonder Consulting has conducted two new polls relevant to the Bill.

I wrote about the first on Tuesday (see New poll, same result).

According to the survey of 2,009 adults, 60% said people should be allowed to purchase cigarettes and other tobacco products when they are legally an adult at 18; 30% (less than a third) said they should not; and 10% said 'don't know'.

The second new poll, conducted on Monday and Tuesday (13-14 January), confirms what similar polls have demonstrated for many years.

Asked to rate ten domestic issues according to how important or not important they are, ‘tackling smoking’ once again rates very low.

According to the poll, the public thinks the TOP priorities for government should be:

• tackling problems with the health service
• tackling energy costs
• tackling crime
• addressing care for the elderly

Of the ten listed issues, the least important (by a substantial margin) are:

• tackling obesity
• tackling smoking

Only 29% of respondents think it's very important that the Government tackles smoking, compared to tackling:

• problems with the health service (83%)
• energy costs (74%)
• inflation (72%)
• crime (72%)
• care for the elderly (70%)
• illegal immigration (61%)
• housing shortage (58%)
• climate change (51%)
• obesity (31%)

I know this is not ‘hold the front page’ news but it's worth noting because if Keir Starmer thinks the Tobacco and Vapes Bill might give him and his government a poll boost, he's going to be disappointed.

Tackling smoking didn’t save Sunak and it won’t rescue Starmer …

Onward!

I was a bit surprised to hear that Sir Simon Clarke, my near namesake and the former MP and Cabinet member, had been appointed director of Onward.

It’s not that I think he won’t do a good job, but Clarke is on the centre right of the party and Onward, a think tank founded in 2018, always struck me as being on the centrist, wishy washy left of the party.

Labour MP Lucy Powell, now Leader of the House of Commons, arguably thought so: “I think Onward are a fantastic think tank”, she is reputed to have said.

That may be but hopefully this is a political realignment and Clarke's appointment will signal a new dawn for a think tank that was also described as ‘close to Rishi Sunak's Downing Street’. Enough said.

Either way, now that Sir Simon is back in the Westminster bubble, does that mean I can expect more media requests that, on closer inspection, are intended not for me but for him?

At least that isn’t as bad as being summoned to the House of Commons to meet an MP, only to find that the person the MP thought he was meeting was … Simon Clarke.

See: What’s in a name?, Confusion reigns, and Another case of mistaken identity

PS. As I write this, Onward is hosting a keynote speech by Kemi Badenoch, which is a good sign. A penny for Lucy Powell’s thoughts!

Lib Dem MP proposed raising age of sale of tobacco to 25

The Tobacco and Vapes Public Bill Committee has been meeting to discuss and debate amendments to the Bill.

There will be a further two sittings today.

The biggest surprise so far was the amendment, submitted by Helen Maguire, the Lib Dem MP for Epsom and Ewell, to raise the age of sale of tobacco to 25.

It was a surprise because many of us were expecting an amendment to raise the age of sale from 18 to 21. Where 25 came from I’m not quite sure but the gist of the argument seemed to be that, as most smokers start when they are young, extending the legal age of sale to 25 should more than cover that age group so there is no need for a generational ban. (I paraphrase.)

Maguire is not on the public bill committee, and cannot therefore move amendments in Committee, so it was moved on her behalf by Dr Caroline Johnson, the Conservative shadow health minister.

Johnson, who supports the generational ban, made it clear she didn’t support Maguire's amendment but felt it should be debated "so that hon. Members can establish for themselves whether they wish to support" it.

"Although the amendments were tabled by a Member who is not a member of my party, and I do not actually agree with them, I want to ensure that they get a proper hearing."

To be clear, had Maguire's amendment been passed (spoiler alert: it wasn’t) it would have replaced the generational tobacco sales ban.

When it came to a vote it was supported by just two members of the Committee, Jack Rankin and Sarah Bool, two of the four Conservatives on the Committee, with 14 against. (Johnson and Gregory Stafford, the fourth Conservative on the Committee, both voted against.)

Neither of the two Lib Dems on the Committee (Liz Jarvis and Danny Chambers) supported their colleague's amendment, and I'm guessing the only reason Bool and Rankin voted for it is because they concluded that raising the age of sale to 25 was marginally better than a generational ban, which they oppose.

Nevertheless, fair play to the pair of them. Their voices have been loud and clear. Rankin, in particular, has spoken at length, often opposing his Conservative colleague, Caroline Johnson, who is an enthusiastic supporter of further tobacco control measures.

But I'll come back to those blue on blue divisions in another post. I'll return too to some of the other amendments that, if adopted, might be cause for concern.

In the meantime Forest’s written submission to the Committee has now been posted on the Parliament website. The full list (there are currently 53 written submissions) can be found here.

Howard’s way

Thanks to Howard McWilliam for the illustration of Keir Starmer below.

This is the third time we have commissioned an exclusive drawing from one of the best illustrators in Britain. The first time was in 2016 when we needed something to help promote our Axe The Tobacco Tax Escalator campaign.

We had been looking for an artist who could draw a recognisable likeness rather than an extreme caricature, and I had noticed Howard’s work because at that time he was often responsible for the illustrations that appeared on the cover of The Week.

George Osborne was Chancellor when we commissioned our first two illustrations. One featured Osborne at his desk surrounded by cigarette packs and piles of cash. (See George, don't do that.)

For the other he wore an Arthur Daley style raincoat and was standing in a dark and rather seedy alleyway, as if he was an illicit trader.

Last year, in response to Rishi Sunak's plans for a generational ban on the sale of tobacco, we commissioned Howard to produce an illustration of the then prime minister pushing a pram while dressed as a nanny, and in the pram was a bearded man wearing baby clothes.

That was the illustration that led to the seizure of a banner we tried to take on to the parliamentary estate for a reception at the House of Commons. According to security staff it was “offensive”. (Guido Fawkes has the story here.)

After the election, with Labour in power and Sunak no longer in Number 10 (but with the Tobacco and Vapes Bill still a priority for the new government), we asked Howard to redraw it with Sir Kier replacing the former PM.

I should add that Howard is in great demand so a further illustration, featuring Secretary of State for Health Wes Streeting, will have to wait.

In the meantime, if you want to see more of Howard’s work ‘for magazines, newspapers, children's books, packaging and character design’, click here.

See also: Nanny Starmer reimagined by AI. I think you will agree that Howard’s illustration is a hundred times better than that conjured up by artificial intelligence!

New poll, same result

The Tobacco and Vapes Public Bill Committee is meeting in the House of Commons today.

The T&V Bill includes a ban on the sale of tobacco to all future generations of adults and I can now reveal the result of the latest poll on the subject.

The fieldwork was conducted by Yonder Consulting over the weekend (10-12 January) and the full question was:

In the UK the age at which you are legally an adult is 18. At that age a person can vote, drive a car, join the army, buy alcohol, and possess a credit card. Do you think that when a person is legally an adult they should or should not also be allowed to purchase cigarettes and other tobacco products?

The last time we asked that question was in October when the result was almost identical. On that occasion 60% said ‘should’, 31% said ‘should not’, and 9% said ‘don’t know’.

Public opinion is consistent and clear. When a person is legally an adult at 18 they SHOULD be allowed to purchase cigarettes and other tobacco products.

Shamefully, our elected representatives are not listening.

Tobacco and Vapes Bill Committee update

Quick update on the Tobacco and Vapes Bill which is currently at the committee stage in the House of Commons.

As I explained here, the Tobacco and Vapes Public Bill Committee met last Tuesday and took 'evidence' from a series of 'expert' witnesses, not one of whom opposed the Bill.

One or two were neutral but the overwhelming majority were enthusiastically in favour, rather like the Committee itself, most of whose members voted for the Bill at the second reading in November.

I was under the impression that further witnesses would be giving evidence at a subsequent sitting but I was wrong. Instead, on Thursday the Committee met again but this time to discuss and debate amendments.

This week, there are four sittings scheduled (two tomorrow, two on Thursday).

What I didn't anticipate is that someone would propose an amendment raising the age of sale of tobacco to 25 rather than 21, which many consider to be the preferred alternative to a generational ban:

This amendment makes it an offence to sell tobacco products, herbal smoking products and cigarette papers to a person under the age of 25, rather than to people born on or after 1 January 2009.

I doubt that it will be adopted by the Committee [update: it wasn't], but it’s interesting to note that it was proposed by Helen Maguire, the Lib Dem MP for Epsom and Ewell, not Dr Caroline Johnson, the Conservative shadow health minister, as I originally suggested.

Maguire is not on the public bill committee so the amendment was raised, in her absence, by Johnson who made it clear she didn’t support it but felt it should be debated. (More on this when I’ve had a chance to read the Hansard transcript of the meeting in full. I don’t want to have to correct myself again.)

Our major concern is what happens when the Bill reaches the House of Lords because that's where a small cabal of anti-smoking peers could try to drive through other amendments that are even more restrictive in other areas, especially smoking in outdoor public places.

The odds are the Government will reject any substantial amendments to the Bill as it stands, but you never know. With a huge majority in the Commons it wouldn't be difficult for ministers to push amendments through, if minded to do so.

I won't spell out what the worst case scenario might be (I don't want to give anyone ideas!) but, as things stand, nothing is potentially off the table. Either way, I'll keep you posted.

Meanwhile click here for an update of all Committee Debate sittings so far, and click here if you want to read Forest's written submission to the Committee.

Other written submissions can be accessed here. Forest's submission is not yet online but I imagine it will be uploaded sometime this week.