I was interviewed for the European Correspondent at last week’s Global Forum on Nicotine, which I assume will publish the usual “Big Tobacco Stooges” style hit piece on us at some point. The journalist (who asked me not to mention their name) made a couple of interesting challenges that gave me pause for thought.
As anyone who’s read our About Us page knows, we’re funded by the Consumer Choice Center (and, more recently, through ad revenue too). It’s been fairly widely reported that CCC has taken money from some of the large tobacco and nicotine manufacturers.
Now, as anyone who knows me professionally (or has read my views on the subject here) probably knows, I’m very much in favour of the strongest possible marketing restrictions for cigarettes: plain packaging. I still remember being curious about what the brightly coloured boxes behind the supermarket counter were as a child.
(I’m in two minds about display bans. If you’ve taken the trouble to put nasty health warnings on cigarette packs then it probably makes sense to force people to look at them).
This makes me somewhat of an outlier among folks who campaign in support of tobacco harm reduction, who tend to come from Libertarian perspectives, as CCC does. It certainly puts my views at odds with big tobacco.
That said, I’m vehemently opposed to anything similar when it comes to safer products: vapes, pouches and the like, and the logic is simple. Cigarettes are the only consumer product that kills half its users if you use them as directed. I’m still unaware of there having been a single death attributable to legally sourced vapes or pouches used as directed.
CCC has in the past opposed plain packaging for cigarettes. So on learning of my support for it, the journalist asked whether they’d stop funding Clearing the Air if I came out with the opposite position.
Well, if you’re reading this, they didn’t. We are, and will remain, editorially independent come what may.
If that’s the case, the journalist reasoned, then why not put resources into a campaign in favour of plain packaging?
Well, I suppose we could – in the context of regulation based on harm – but what would the point be? There are already plenty of well funded and well connected NGOs doing that, there are already plenty of governments who’ve implemented it, and there aren’t all that many people in health policy left to be convinced of the merits of it. Besides, I did try once, and it didn’t go well.
In 2012, age 26, I accidentally gave up a 30-a-day smoking habit with a vape I bought as a novelty purchase because I saw the packet on the counter at Sainsbury’s. It was one of the most positive and transformational things I’ve ever done and it would never have happened had vapes been in plain packs.
Through a series of serendipitous events, a couple of months later I wound up representing the (then very small) independent vaping industry as their lobbyist in Brussels, opposing a de facto ban on vaping products. None of the tobacco companies had at that time launched a vape.
My strategy was simple. Here was a technology that could quickly lead to Big Tobacco’s Kodak moment. The anti-smoking lobby wanted to get rid of smoking and so did we. They had a support base among MEPs and so did we; and between us, I reasoned that we had a majority. So I knocked on all the doors of the public health NGOs and said “look, you support us on harm reduction and we’ll support you on plain packaging”.
The strategy dissolved almost immediately upon contact with reality.
In the eyes of the public health NGOs I was a stooge for big tobacco (at that point in my life I’d never even met a tobacco lobbyist); the WHO said Article 5.3 (no contact with the tobacco industry) applied to me (which any sane reading of its treaty contradicts), and they had every intention of campaigning for plain packaging and a ban on vaping products. We needed a plan B.
In the end, our winning coalition was a mix of public health minded liberals and conservatives, not the broad left leaning one we could have had. The public health coalition didn’t get plain packaging: in fact, cigarette pack warnings were made slightly smaller by Members of the European Parliament. The compromise ended up sidelining plain packs in favour of harm reduction. I’m perfectly happy with that outcome: the countries that have been most successful in reducing smoking are the ones that embrace harm reduction, and so if forced to choose, I’ll pick harm reduction every time.
But it didn’t need to be that way. In almost every other area of health policy, those who call themselves public health advocates make common cause with harm reduction specialists. We interviewed Gaby Zabala-Aleman from the US National Harm Reduction Coalition at GFN (we’ll get that posted soon), and she’s as surprised as we are that smokers are discouraged from using harm reduction products, but hard drug users are actively signposted towards them. David Zaruk wrote here last week about how the AIDS epidemic was successfully curbed by harm reduction, and the profound effect that has had on his generation. Why is smoking different?
So having had a little time to think about this journalist’s challenge – why not campaign for plain packs if you believe they’re a good thing? – I’m going to reiterate my 2013 offer to the Brussels public health community. Here it is:
Dear Smoke Free Partnership, European Network on Smoking Prevention, European Public Health Alliance, and anyone else currently campaigning for bans, medicalisation, flavour bans and ridiculous nicotine limits on safer nicotine products like pouches and vapes.
You must know by now that safer nicotine products are…well…safer. You look at all the same data we do. Sweden – the first country in the world to be declared smoke free under the generally accepted definition – has got there through harm reduction. I don’t know why you’ve decided to alienate people who need safer nicotine products, or why you refuse to accept the well evidenced fact that tobacco harm reduction saves lives.
So I’m not asking you to argue for anything that isn’t true.
The offer is this: with the EU about to revise its tobacco and nicotine laws, it’s time to accept what the data says and support tobacco harm reduction. Drop the demands that adults shouldn’t have access to a vape in the nicotine strength and flavour they like. Work with us on sensible packaging requirements and advertising restrictions so we can get rid of all the rubbish marketing that does sadly go on in the nicotine business. Let nicotine companies talk honestly about relative risk and help smokers switch.
And in return, Clearing the Air will do everything in its power to move the safer nicotine community to support plain packs for cigarettes and any other restrictions on smoking – the thing that kills you – that you think will work.
We’ve got a pretty significant reach now, both on our site and across social media; and most of our readers are politically motivated users of safer nicotine products (as of today over 30.000 of them have replied to the EU’s Call for Evidence on revising the tobacco products Directive). While I won’t be lobbying on this file, I will be covering it as a writer for Clearing the Air, and I’ll make sure our news and editorial is clear in its support for plain packs. And we’ll provide tools to help vapers and pouch users call for plain packs for cigarettes just as we do to help them oppose restrictions on their access to safer nicotine products.
Hell, if you really wanna screw the tobacco companies, we’re actually better off campaigning for spherical packaging: it’d totally mess up their entire supply chain and people wouldn’t be able to put them on a table at a bar or restaurant.
And if all of this causes me to lose my funding, then so be it. Getting this right is more important, and the best way to do that is for tobacco harm reduction and public health to work together. But if we can’t, my priority will always be protecting access to safer nicotine products.
My personal email is here. I’m looking forward to hearing from you.
