Times Law Awards: essays on assisted dying

According to the BBC, opposition to the assisted dying bill is growing.

This then seems a good moment to mention that my son was one of six finalists in the 2025 Times Law Awards Essay Competition for which entrants were invited to submit a 1,000-word essay on … assisted dying.

Sponsored by One Essex Court, a leading set of barristers' chambers in London, the annual competition is open to ‘all students registered with UK higher education institutes, pupil barristers and trainee solicitors’.

There were over 200 entries and judges included KCs and a justice of the Supreme Court.

The finalists were notified in April and the winners were announced last month by Solicitor General Lucy Rigby KC MP at a ‘celebratory dinner’ at the Guildhall in the City of London.

The winners and runners-up, with links to their essays, are listed here. The winning entry was published by The Times here.

See: The Times Law Awards 2025 Winners

Meet a real world freedom fighter

“Once our right to smoke and vape is taken away they’re going to take away a lot of our other freedoms,” campaigner Venice Allan told Reform MP Lee Anderson on GB News yesterday.

I say ‘yesterday’ but the programme, Lee Anderson’s Real World, was recorded on Thursday morning, then broadcast ‘as live’ on Friday evening - hence the faux pub vibe, including glasses of beer that sat largely untouched.

Anderson presides over the programme like a benevolent headmaster. One guest even had to sit at the back, literally in the corner, alongside a sign that read ‘Left in the Corner’. Geddit?

At least Venice got to sit at the same table as the presenter so she could eye-ball him directly.

As it happens, Anderson (an ex-smoker) is relatively tolerant when it comes to smoking. Smoking outside hospitals, however, “winds him up”.

To be fair, with Venice’s encouragement he did concede there “should be a place” for smoking on hospital grounds, but not directly outside the building.

She has since written on social media:

‘I really wanted to talk about the madness of the generational smoking ban and the simultaneous government attack on vaping, despite vapes being the most successful smoking cessation device ever invented.

‘Freedom-loving nonsmokers, ignore the Tobacco and Vapes Bill at your peril!’

You can watch the full programme here.

The interview with Venice - a genuine freedom fighter not the vocal armchair variety - starts at 19:40 and includes an unexpected reference to “nappy fetishists”. Enjoy.

Can Ireland quit like Sweden?

According to an article in the Irish Medical Times this week:

Ireland became a world leader when we introduced the smoking ban in 2004, but since then, we have been surpassed by other countries in the fight against deadly tobacco.

The article then goes on to laud the ‘visionary founder’ of a quit smoking campaign called Quit Like Sweden who is reported to be visiting Dublin later this month.

I’d love to write more but on this occasion it’s probably best if I don’t.

However, when a smoking cessation campaign starts quoting Abraham Lincoln ("The best way to predict the future is to create it”) and Mother Teresa ("We can do no great things, only small things with great love") - as Quit Like Sweden did on social media this week - it's hard not to laugh.

Snore bore

I had to go to hospital yesterday to collect a sleep monitor.

As I’ve got older I’ve started snoring - very loudly, according to my wife - so when I mentioned it to my doctor a few months ago I did so thinking he might be able to suggest a simple solution, short of actual surgery.

Instead the conversation turned to sleep apnea, which is described as a ‘condition where breathing stops or becomes shallow during sleep, disrupting sleep and potentially leading to serious health problems’.

Hence the sleep monitor which is designed to check someone's breathing when they’re asleep. I had to wear it last night and this morning I returned it to the hospital for analysis.

I’ll keep you posted … if I can stay awake.

I’ve got a little list

Final word, for now, on the disposable vape ban.

The following is a short and far from exhaustive list of governments, NGOs, campaign groups and companies that support the policy:

UK Government
Scottish Government
Welsh Government
Local Government Authority
Public Health Scotland
Public Health Wales
Action on Smoking and Health
British Thoracic Society
Cancer Research UK
Royal College of Paediatricians and Child Health
School and Public Health Nurses Association
Fire Protection Association
Keep Britain Tidy
Green Alliance
RSPCA

To that little list you can add multiple trading standards officers, countless local authorities, and hundreds of MPs including Bob Blackman, chair of the APPG on Smoking and Health and arguably the most annoying and self-satisfied man in Parliament.

If I had the time and inclination I could add many more, but it’s the following that interest me most:

Independent British Vape and Trade Association (IBVTA)
Totally Wicked (vape retailer)
Riot Labs (e-liquid manufacturer)

While John Dunne, director-general of the UK Vape Industry Association (UKVIA), was doing the media rounds telling anyone who would listen why he and the UKVIA are against a disposable vape ban, the IBVTA was highlighting the ‘environmental opportunity’ of banning single use vapes.

I’ve mentioned Totally Wicked before, most recently last week when Liam Humberstone, who is a spokesman for both Totally Wicked and the IBVTA, was on BBC Radio Sussex supporting the ban on environmental grounds. (See ‘Normalising prohibition’.)

Riot Labs’ LinkedIn account describes the company as a ‘playfully anti-establishment brand that resonated with people of all walks as we stuck it to big tobacco’.

I’m not a vaper, so forgive my ignorance, but I hadn’t heard of the company until a few weeks ago when I saw them mentioned in a report in Convenience Store.

The idea that the company considers itself ‘anti-establishment’ when it supports government and public health policy on disposable vapes and describes itself as a 'smoking cessation company' is one of the funniest things I have ever read.

After all, what could be more ‘establishment’ than that?

Riot Labs not only support the single use vape ban, they even joined forces with Laura Young (aka Less Waste Laura), the ‘environmental campaigner’ whose successful campaign to ban the device has been lauded by politicians, environmental and public health campaigners, and the BBC (ie the establishment).

To be fair, the name Riot Labs shrieks of a desire to sound edgy. However, the description of the company as ‘quit smoking missionaries’ could apply to Philip Morris and British American Tobacco as well, given the stated ambition of those (big tobacco) companies to work towards a smoke-free future.

Meanwhile I do wonder if the ‘independent’ vape sector’s support for a disposable vape ban has been thought through. Sure, it might earn them a few brownie points now, but beyond that?

The reality, as I understand it, is that rechargeable vapes that look very similar to single use devices are already on the market, and many cost only a little more than their prohibited cousin.

The chances are that these still legal vapes will be chucked away in much the same way as disposable vapes, creating the same environmental issues.

How long then before Less Waste Laura embarks on another campaign to ban these cheap reusable vapes that many customers can’t be bothered to recharge or refill because, to put it bluntly, it’s too much hassle?

ASH, of course, will demand that taxes on all vapes are increased to make them more expensive and less attractive to young people, a policy guaranteed to drive vapers to the unregulated (and untaxed) black market.

In short, I’m looking forward to seeing how this plays out because any sympathy I had for the ‘independent’ vape sector disappeared when I saw the bed they were happy to lie in, and the people they were prepared to share it with.

Riot Labs even organised a ‘disposable vape farewell party’, arguing that the ban is a ‘national moment up there with the pub smoking ban’. Seriously?

That apart, imagine celebrating the prohibition of a popular consumer product, let alone comparing it (favourably, I assume) to something that led to multiple pub closures and the loss of thousands of jobs.

But wait, what’s this?

John Dunne, director-general of the UKVIA which opposed the ban on disposable vapes, yesterday ‘liked’ a Riot Labs’ post on LinkedIn that began:

We’ve officially said good riddance to disposable vapes which have now been made illegal across England, Scotland and Wales in a landmark move for the vape industry.

While the devices helped millions of adult smokers quit - they’re wasteful, bad for the environment and we’ve always supported the ban.

John, I’m confused. Help me out here.

Smokers: the only minority group whose minority status is used as justification for abuse

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).” Mark Twain

I was pleased that Chris Snowdon featured a quote by Joe Jackson in an article for The Critic, published yesterday.

'The tyranny of the non-smoking majority’ took aim at some deserving targets including ASH and Peter Kellner, the former president of YouGov and a former board member of ASH.

Writing for The Grocer, the self-proclaimed 'bible of the UK food and drink industry since 1862', Kellner claimed that ‘Public backing for smoking reform is stronger than ever’.

He based this on a YouGov poll commissioned by ASH last week in which 59 per cent of respondents said they want to see smoking banned outside pubs and restaurants.

According to Snowdon, however, it:

… contradicted another YouGov poll, conducted on the same day, which found that only 32 per cent of respondents thought that there were “too few restrictions on where people can smoke”, but surveys are notoriously sensitive to the way questions are framed.

What also caught my eye was the inclusion of a quote by an old friend of Forest:

Back in 2004, the musician Joe Jackson made the shrewd observation that smokers are “the only minority who are not only abused but whose minority status is quoted as justification for abuse”.

It's a great quote that originally appeared in The Smoking Issue, an essay that was written by Joe and published by Forest with this disclaimer:

This essay was written for his website (www.joejackson.com) in response to many enquiries, interview requests, etc. Joe has agreed to allow the smokers’ lobby group Forest to print and circulate his essay. He is a supporter of Forest, but wishes it to be known that the essay was not commissioned by Forest, and he has received no money from tobacco companies or anyone else.

Copies were sent to MPs and journalists, and I remember Joe handing one to John Reid, the then Labour health secretary, with whom he shared a stage at a fringe meeting at the 2004 Labour Party conference in Brighton.

In 2007 Joe updated The Smoking Issue and gave it a new title, Smoke, Lies and the Nanny State.

Personally, I preferred the original which, in my view, was more concise, but both are still worth reading.

Joe's 'minority' quote also appeared on a billboard (or was it an ad van?) that Forest paid for as part of our 'Fight The Ban: Fight For Choice' campaign.

Two decades on it's as relevant as ever.

Update: ASH has hit back at Snowdon.

A link to The Critic article on the ASH Daily News bulletin is headlined, ‘Tobacco industry-linked lobbyist critiques polling showing support for anti-smoking measures’.

There’s also an editorial note:

Author of the opinion piece, Christopher Snowdon, is the Head of Lifestyle Economics at the Institute of Economic Affairs, a think tank with a history of receiving funding from the tobacco industry.

Meow.

Let’s support choice, not sabotage it

Further to my previous post, there was the usual deafening silence from vaping activists to the news that France is to extend the smoking ban to many outdoor public places.

I know this to be true because Forest monitors the mainstream and social media and the number of vapers who stick their heads above the parapet to defend smoking wouldn’t fill a Mini.

This includes those who, 15 or 20 years ago, were smokers and actively engaged in the battle against anti-smoking legislation.

Now they’ve switched to vaping, and describe themselves as ‘tobacco harm reduction’ campaigners, they’ve lost interest, it seems.

The irony is that smoking bans will be followed, inevitably, by vaping bans.

It may take a bit longer - several years, a decade or so, perhaps - but the process has already started, even without legislation.

For example, how many pubs have banned vaping inside, even though there is no law that says they have to?

Likewise, in the few places where smoking is banned outside pubs, proprietors often include vaping too.

Yesterday the chairman of the Independent European Vape Alliance (IEVA) posted on social media:

Banning flavours in e-cigarettes will backfire on public health.

#Vaping helps smokers switch because it tastes better than smoking — that’s the point.

Let’s support #harmreduction, not sabotage it.

In response Forest replied:

Vaping tastes better than smoking? That’s subjective.

Many smokers have tried vaping and prefer the taste of tobacco and the warmth and feel of a combustible cigarette.

Let’s support #choice, not sabotage it.

The problem is, far too many vaping advocates have convinced themselves the battle is about ‘harm reduction’ (a noble cause, I’m sure, but largely irrelevant).

What it’s really about is choice, and that means defending the right to smoke, vape etc while actively opposing excessive restrictions on tobacco, vapes, alcohol and so on.

Instead, vaping advocates - a curious coalition that includes ex-smokers and professional anti-smoking campaigners - have effectively joined forces to make cigarettes, and smoking, obsolete.

The word ‘choice’ may be in their vocabulary but only in relation to the right to vape. Smoke? Not so much.

Smoking cessation ‘experts’ I can almost forgive - it’s their job, after all.

Those I can’t forgive are the ex-smokers who, not content with quitting their old habit, are actively campaigning for a ‘smoke free’ (sic) future.

Or the self-styled champions of consumer choice who have turned their backs on those who enjoy smoking and don’t want to quit.

Meanwhile, the ban on disposable vapes is merely the start of the path to prohibition.

The idea that the anti-nicotine lobby will now ease off vapes is naive at best, which is why I found it so funny that the Independent British Vape Trade Association (IBVTA) were among those supporting the disposable vapes ban.

I can’t wait to see their response when renewable vapes become the next target. Oh wait …

UK single-use vape ban could fuel boom in reusable products that ‘look the same’ (Financial Times)

You couldn’t make it up.

Update: BBC News is reporting:

As disposable vapes are banned across the UK, one charity is calling on the Northern Ireland Executive to create smoke and vape-free places.

Fancy that!

Update: Honourable mention to Claire Fox for writing this on The Spectator website today:

Smoking was and is a personal choice, and in a free society we should be allowed to indulge in a legal bad habit, however risky or unhealthy.

Although Claire (below, speaking at the Forest annual lunch in London last month) has quit smoking after 40 years, she is one of the few ex-smokers who continues to publicly support the right to smoke.

That’s one of many reasons I admire her, something that can’t be said for those former smokers who have gone from poacher to gamekeeper.

See: Disposable vapes are fantastic. Naturally, they’re demonised (Spectator)

France surrenders to health fascism

It was reported yesterday that France is to ban smoking in most outdoor spaces where children are present.

Areas outside cafes and bars will, I think, be exempt (for now) but the new restrictions will include parks and beaches - you know, those wide open spaces where the chances of being exposed to even a wisp of smoke must be minimal.

After the news broke two radio stations asked me to comment.

Newstalk (in Ireland) invited me to take part in their lunchtime programme. They also invited journalist Ian O’Doherty, Professor Luke Clancy (Tobacco Free Research Institute Ireland), and Erika Doyle, a Green Party councillor in Wicklow.

Ian is a smoker and arguably the only mainstream ‘libertarian’ journalist currently active in Ireland. He has attended several Forest events and in 2018 received our prestigious (!) Voices of Freedom award (see below).

Last year he wrote an article for The Spectator that deftly summed up the dire situation facing smokers in Ireland - see Ireland’s puritanical attack on smokers.

My first encounters with Luke Clancy pre-date the introduction of the smoking ban in Ireland in 2004 when there was never any mention of smoking being banned in outdoor public places.

What we are seeing today is creeping prohibition, which many of us predicted but was flatly denied by tobacco control campaigners who insisted they merely wanted to ‘protect’ bar workers and others exposed to cigarette smoke in enclosed public places.

In 2021 Erika Doyle attracted headlines when she called for smoking to be banned in all outdoor dining areas in Ireland, so you can imagine where her sympathies lay.

The irony, as I pointed out, is that Doyle and presenter Andrea Gilligan both declared that, among their friends who smoked, none would dream of lighting up around children, and all were considerate to those around them.

Ian also said he would never smoke near children - which begs the question, why do we need yet another law dictating how people behave in public places? Can’t they be allowed to use their common sense?

He also made the point that banning smoking at bus stops is ridiculous because he would never smoke at a bus stop if other people were there, but if he was the only person waiting for a bus why should it be illegal for him to light up?

Later, I was contacted by BBC World Service and asked to send a recorded message via WhatsApp so they could drop it into the news programme OS (Outside Source).

It was needed immediately because the (live) programme was about to go on air, but I wasted several minutes trying to find the voice memo app on my iPhone and figure out how it worked.

It’s simple enough, but I rarely use it so I had to remind myself. Anyway, I got it done and sent a 75-second message that was broadcast, largely unedited, a few minutes later.

My principal point was:

Anti-smoking is becoming a moral crusade. Politicians and public health campaigners have decided smoking is a BAD thing to do, and children must be protected from the sight of it.

What we need is common sense, courtesy, and a degree of tolerance on all sides.

Smokers need to be courteous to those around then, and non-smokers need to show a bit of tolerance for other people’s habits, including smoking.

You can listen to the full eight-minute item here. It begins at 10:45 and includes another message from a guy in France whose aversion to cigarette smoke can only be described as extreme.

C’est la vie.