Smoke Spots: enjoy it while you can

Uninteresting fact.

For 17 years Simon Chapman (see previous post) was deputy editor and editor of the BMJ’s Tobacco Control.

On Tuesday Tobacco Control posted an article (paper?) arguing that Imperial Tobacco's Smoke Spots website is "inconsistent with FCTC's ban on directly or indirectly promoting tobacco use".

According to this logic, if anyone highlights a smoker-friendly venue – Boisdale, for example – they are "promoting tobacco use".

I can see the argument - just - but it's pretty twisted. You may as well argue that cigarette bins promote tobacco use. (Update: I know, I know, some councils do.)

Like cig bins, Smoke Spots isn't targeting non-smokers. It's quite clearly aimed at existing adult smokers, people who have made an informed decision to smoke and want to find somewhere where they can socialise without being made to feel unwelcome or uncomfortable.

What about the rights of smokers to (a) smoke in some public/private places, and (b) assemble freely with other smokers?

Should they be denied information that allows them to do so because, "directly or indirectly", it promotes tobacco use?

Smoke Spots is a great site, by the way. Enjoy it while you can.

See Smoke spots: promoting smoking with social media (Tobacco Control)

Prime time for e-cigarettes in Ireland

Ireland is waking up to e-cigarettes.

This morning the Irish Times asks, 'Is vaping safer than smoking?'.

Intellicig (part of the CN Creative Group, "a bioscience company committed to the development of the next era of nicotine products") reports that:

The phones are hopping on Liveline, Joe Duffy can’t believe the amount of people calling him to tell their stories of how they made the switch to electronic e-cigarettes … E-cigs are fast becoming the alternative of choice for many smokers throughout Ireland.

Last night Prime Time, RTE's flagship current affairs programme, even featured a debate on the subject.

Guests included Kathleen O'Meara of the Irish Cancer Society, someone representing the pharmacists (I'll have to check his name and organisation), and Clive Bates, former director of ASH and a leading e-cig campaigner, on a link from London.

John Mallon, our man in Ireland, reports:

They played a tape of a doctor claiming that e-cigs are a stepping stone to smoking, that far from quitting smokers are using both to get around the bans and restrictions, and that no research has been done into them.

Bates wiped the floor with him, explaining we know EXACTLY what goes into them and that they are 99-100 per cent safer than smoking. He went on to suggest that the big loser was Big Pharma.

Credit where credit's due, "Bates was good!" says John. O'Meara however was "quieter than normal".

Meanwhile, in the words of Intellicig, here are some reasons for switching to e-cigarettes:

• Significantly less harmful chemicals compared to smoking cigarettes
• Much cheaper. Save up to 80%.
• Smoke anywhere
• No need to smell like an ashtray
• No tobacco or no smoke tar
• Cleaner smoking experience

"No need to smell like an ashtray"? Charming. I know lots of smokers and none of them smell like ashtrays.

If the e-cig industry could cut out these unnecessary comments it would help them enormously, I would suggest. Politely.

One other thing. In my previous post I highlighted the fact that e-cig campaigners want e-cigarettes removed from the Tobacco Products Directive.

Perfectly understandable.

Then again, the e-cig industry doesn't help itself by consistently using words like "smoke" ("smoke anywhere") and "smoking" ("cleaner smoking experience") to promote itself.

I understand why they do it but it's a bit rich to use the language of combustibles and then complain when the product is included in legislation designed to regulate combustibles.

They can't have it both ways.

PS. To view the Prime Time debate click here. It begins at 13:32.

The other guest in Prime Time's Dublin studio was the Secretary-General of the Irish Pharmacy Union. Needless to say, both he and O'Meara were in favour of medicinal regulation for e-cigs.

ECCA et al: e-cigs can "rid the world of tobacco"

Over the weekend I spoke to several journalists about e-cigarettes.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of time I have spent supporting their use.

I have criticised councils, hospitals and others who want to see them banned, and I have attacked those who want their sale, promotion or manufacture severely restricted.

This evening, via this blog, I read a letter from eleven e-cig associations that allegedly represent the "vapers of Europe".

One of them is the Electronic Cigarette Consumer Association of the United Kingdom, better known as ECCA UK.

The letter calls on MEPs to "remove from the TPD [Tobacco Products Directive] any reference that treats electronic cigarettes as tobacco products".

Fair enough. What bothered me was this:

All recent evidence shows that [electronic cigarettes] should be welcomed and encouraged as a unique opportunity potentially to rid the world of tobacco [my italics].

So that's the end game, is it?

While Forest supports the development of e-cigs and other nicotine delivery systems because we are committed to choice, ECCA, their allies and their cheerleaders in the blogosphere sound more like Tobacco Control every day.

Who could have predicted that?!

Our man in Ireland embarks on another mini media adventure

Forest Eireann's John Mallon is on the road – again.

Nine months after his last tour of Ireland (the first was in 2011), our man in Ireland is embarking on yet another mini media marathon.

Starting tomorrow in Cork, where he lives, John is scheduled to visit Waterford, Tipperary, Kilkenny, Tullamore, Tralee, Limerick, Sligo, Galway, Ballyhaunis, Longford, Roscommon, Droheda and, finally, Dublin.

The aim of the tour is to promote Forest Eireann's new campaign, Plain Packs Plain Stupid.

In the next few weeks the Irish Parliament's Joint Health and Children Committee will meet four times to consider the Public Health (Standardised Packaging of Tobacco) Bill 2013.

Last week was the deadline for submissions and we will find out shortly who will be asked to give oral evidence to the Committee.

You can follow John's latest adventure on the Forest Eireann blog and I'll post occasional updates here.

See also: 'Voice and friend of the smoker' to fight plain packaging of tobacco (Forest Eireann)

Forest: legislation for standardised tobacco packaging is not fit for purpose (Retail Times)

Do you think ecigs should be banned in all public places?

Further to my previous post, today's Daily Record has a short report with this headline:

'Smokers slam ban on cigs'.

It's based on some comments I gave them yesterday.

The Record piece is not online but yesterday's report in the Sunday Mail – the Record's sister paper – now features an online poll:

Do you think electronic cigarettes should be banned in all public places?

Click here to vote.

I have just voted and the current score is:

Yes – 5%
No – 95%

PS. Can you imagine a headline that read 'Vapers slam ban on cigarettes'?

Why newspapers print comments by Forest on e-cigarettes

Someone has tweeted:

Why do @Forest_Smoking get statements printed in newspaper articles on ecigs? Genuine question!

We replied:

Because we believe in choice, are appalled by misinformed attacks on a legitimate consumer product, and are prepared to say so!

And:

Another reason: lots of smokers who don't want to quit use e-cigarettes when they can't smoke and we defend their right to do so.

We could also have added:

Who else is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week?!

PS. I have just spoken to another journalist in Scotland about e-cigarettes.

I suspect my comments will be reduced to the usual single sentence soundbite but I'll post a link here tomorrow.

I understand there will also be an online poll on the subject so watch this space.

The Derby Telegraph replies

Further to my previous post ...

The Derby Telegraph has suggested I "write a letter expressing your view on the subject" or a 450-word "soapbox".

Fine.

But if they'd published my original comment - which they sought from me, not the other way around - it wouldn't be necessary.

Newspapers, eh?

Hospital: staff will be trained to approach smokers

The Derby Telegraph reports:

Royal Derby Hospital gets tough on enforcing smoking ban.

I'm a bit cheesed off because the reporter rang me yesterday for a quote.

We spoke for several minutes. I queried whether getting staff to "patrol the grounds" or training them "to approach smokers" was the best use of scarce NHS resources.

I also said the usual things - hospitals can be stressful places, blah blah blah, and being harassed to quit smoking was unlikely to help.

None of my comments are included in the story, which is incredibly one-sided.

I don't blame the journalist. What normally happens is that the reporter includes the quote in the copy he or she files but the sub editors delete it for reasons of space (not applicable online) or because it doesn't suit the newspaper's agenda.

As it happens, the Derby Telegraph is strongly in favour of a ban on smoking on hospital grounds, as this editorial comment makes clear:

Total smoking ban is correct for Royal Derby Hospital

As it happens I'm familiar with Derby Royal Hospital because my father, who is on dialysis, has been going there - three days a week - for several years.

It's a vast, relatively new hospital with long soulless corridors that take an age to walk.

It also has a restaurant, a convenience store and a Costa Coffee franchise.

Yes, I've seen patients and visitors hanging around the entrance having a cigarette.

Am I bovvered? No. They're in the open air and the area around the entrance is so spacious you would be hard-pressed to get close enough to someone to inhale even a whiff of their tobacco smoke.

Frankly, this is a storm in a teacup whipped up by a local newspaper with nothing better to write about.