As some of you know I was on Good Morning Britain yesterday.
Following the implementation of a workplace vaping ban in New York State producers wanted to debate the issue on the not unreasonable grounds that what happens in New York (the smoking ban, for example) could be adopted in the UK.
The item was scheduled for Wednesday but on Tuesday it was pushed back 24 hours. During that time my opponent changed. It was originally going to be an occasional Channel 4 presenter I'd never heard of.
The following day I was told I'd be debating the issue with someone else – journalist Nilufer Atik who I discovered is an occasional guest on This Morning, the ITV programme that follows GMB.
There has been a lot of criticism of Atik on social media. Her anti-vaping, anti-nicotine stance was certainly extreme and – in the view of many people including me – wholly unjustified, but she did the job she was asked to do.
As she admitted to me after the programme, when I put jokingly it to her, she's a professional gob for hire.
Inevitably, and quite naturally, some vapers have also questioned why GMB didn't invite a vaper or vaping advocate to take part.
As it happens, when I was contacted on Monday my first response was to suggest they might invite a vaper instead of me but they were keen for me to appear and I don't like turning down such offers because you never know when they might dry up.
To put it in perspective their first choice was Forest patron Antony Worrall Thompson but he was out of the country on holiday and unavailable. I was therefore their second choice.
As for the daily 'debate', the idea, I think, is to have a bit on a bunfight early in the morning so the more argumentative it is the better.
For that reason the producers are not looking for 'experts' or people with a direct vested interest. They merely want to kick start a discussion that will generate a response while the programme is on air and, later, on social media.
They would prefer celebrities but in the absence of a 'name' they want people who have a track record for being reasonably combative on air.
I've been on GMB several times and I probably fit that category. The nature of my job means I'm also easy to get hold of.
TV producers like that. It means they can confirm their schedule and the names of guests promptly and without delay.
Anyway it was made very clear to me that the GMB producers like "really strong, lively debates ... They like anything that gets people talking."
Unusually they went to some lengths to keep Nilufer Atik and me apart before we went on set. Instead of fraternising in the green room I was ushered away to a smaller hospitality area where I sat alone reading the papers and drinking a cup of tea.
The aim, it seems, was to keep our debate "fresh". To be fair there's some sense to this. Whenever I encounter Deborah Arnott before a head-to-head interview, more often than not she wants to debate the issues before we even go on air. By the time we get in the studio it's all gone a bit flat and our best bits are left, unloved and unrecorded, in the green room.
Yesterday, seconds before we went on set, I was told not to wait to be invited to speak. If I wanted to respond to or interrupt my opponent I should do so, hence my rather shouty performance.
More seriously it's very clear, reading the comments on social media in reaction to the GMB debate, that a lot of people do not like people vaping in public places.
It may be a small minority but it's a very vocal minority, similar to the minority that supported a public smoking ban.
What strikes me is that the online vaping community is failing to respond to these comments.
Instead vapers (and vaping advocates) generally restrict their comments to 'safe spaces' like vaping forums and blogs where they are preaching almost exclusively to the converted.
Alternatively they attend vape fests where, again, they’re surrounded by like-minded people.
In the 'real' world it's rather different. A vocal minority of the general public – driven by an irrational hatred of smoking that has been fuelled by decades of anti-tobacco campaigns and regulations – considers vaping to be the bastard cousin of smoking. Like smoking, they want to expunge it from normal society.
You can bang on all you like about vaping helping smokers to quit. The anti-smoking, anti-vaping minority couldn't care less. All they know is, vapers are exhaling something unpleasant and possibly toxic. At best it's anti-social, at worst it’s harmful. Either way it should be banned.
Those are the comments that are being picked up by bar owners, employers and local councils. Intolerance of smoking has bred intolerance of vaping.
I've been going on about this for years, explaining why vapers must oppose smoking bans and other anti-tobacco regulations, but too many have chosen to remain silent or, worse, condemn smoking as a dirty, disgusting habit they are proud to have given up.
The irony, as I have often pointed out, is that many vaping advocates are actually anti-smoking campaigners whose efforts to prohibit smoking is now fuelling a similar paranoia towards e-cigarettes and nicotine generally.
My advice to vapers is that it's not enough to surround yourselves with like-minded people on vaping forums or attend 'pro-vaping' conferences that allow you to bask in mutual backslapping and the knowledge that you've fought your smoking addiction and won.
A small but vocal minority of the public hates you. They hate you for the same reason they hate smokers so get out of your comfort zone, engage with them and fight back.
To win that battle however you must forget the narrative that works so well with public health and anti-smoking campaigners. You know, the personal stories of how vaping has "saved your life".
That argument doesn't wash with vaper haters. As far they're concerned you're still an addict exhaling "toxic" or obnoxious fumes in their presence.
You need to go on the offensive – and I mean that literally. You need to be as offensive about their intolerance as they are about your nicotine habit. You have to challenge them on their own habits and behaviour, their piousness and their ignorance.
Yesterday on the GMB Twitter feed vapers were bullied almost into silence by a flood of anti-vaping comments. Over many years that's exactly what happened to smokers. So my message to vapers is this.
It helps, obviously, to win the support of public health campaigners but it's not enough (and I would treat it with suspicion anyway).
Most important, you have to win the support of the public and that's going to be a far tougher battle.
This morning's big debate was whether the UK should follow New York's example and ban vaping.
— Good Morning Britain (@GMB) November 23, 2017
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