An inconvenient truth – many smokers actually enjoy smoking!

I've spent half my working life arguing that many smokers enjoy smoking.

Increasingly I've been made to feel a bit of a Luddite, even at tobacco conferences where all the talk is about harm reduction and non-combustible products like e-cigarettes.

A typical speech on behalf of Forest to a tobacco industry audience would conclude:

Embrace developing trends and products but don’t forget your core customers, millions of whom enjoy smoking and have no wish to quit. They, and we, need your support.

I've repeated the same message ("millions of people enjoy smoking") countless times on television and radio.

Needless to say I'm often interrupted by presenters and tobacco control campaigners who refuse to accept the bleedin' obvious.

As far as they're concerned all smokers are "addicts" and most wish they'd never started.

Today therefore I feel slightly vindicated.

Published on the Nicotine Science and Policy website, The Enjoyment of Smoking begins:

When it comes to policies aimed at reducing the harm of smoking there is a truth that daren’t be spoken, namely that many smokers actually enjoy smoking. In the current climate of tobacco control policies aiming for a tobacco free world, the realization that many people want to continue to engage in a behaviour that they know to be harmful is hard to acknowledge.

Author Neil McKeganey then continues:

In research looking at the reasons why smokers are not interested in trying an e-cigarette, despite knowing that these devices are much less harmful than combusted tobacco, one of the most powerful reasons cited was the fact that the person actually enjoyed smoking. Hard as it might be to acknowledge that many smokers actually enjoy smoking that realization may explain why more than a third of smokers in Great Britain have not even tried an e-cigarette, despite their being a substantially less harmful than smoking, and nearly seven in ten of those that have tried e-cigarettes do not go on to use the devices long term (ONS 2015)

To put this in perspective, Professor Neil McKeganey is director of the Centre for Substance Use Research, formerly the Centre for Drug Misuse Research.

You may remember the name. In December last year Neil's colleague Dr Christopher Russell invited friends and supporters of Forest to complete an online survey, Smoking and Electronic Cigarettes.

I believe several hundred people responded but, like all surveys, the questions didn't please everyone. Some thought they were biased in favour of e-cigarettes and there were several comments to that effect on the Friends of Forest Facebook page.

I was rather more relaxed because, having met Christopher and Neil at various conferences around the world, I know their abilities and the esteem in which their work is held.

I know too from a conversation I had with Neil that the 'enjoyment of smoking' issue is based on genuine responses from a significant number of smokers.

Apart from the bold statement that "many smokers actually enjoy smoking" his article includes a further radical thought:

It is not only the public health doctors that may be discomforted by the recognition that many smokers enjoy smoking. Ironically the tobacco industry itself may struggle with that realization. The biggest hitters in the tobacco industry have come out in favour of electronic nicotine delivery systems. Within a new fangled world of tobacco heating systems and e-cigarettes, lighting up a combustible stick of leaf tobacco can seem frankly out of date.

The tobacco companies that are investing heavily in the new technology have wisely (as far as their shareholders are concerned) refused to identify a date when they will have moved out of the smoked tobacco business. Their hesitancy in that regard may be justified given that so many of their current customers are saying they actually enjoy smoking.

'The Enjoyment of Smoking' is essential reading therefore not just for tobacco control campaigners but for all tobacco stakeholders.

Having banged this drum for many years it's a relief to know that a well-regarded researcher has, quite independently, come to the same conclusion as me.

Prof McKeganey is right too when he says the harm reduction battle will only be won when a product is developed "that is not only associated with lower harm than smoked cigarettes but is just as appealing and just as pleasurable to smokers."

Don't get me wrong. E-cigarettes are a superb invention but they don't appeal to every smoker – not by a long shot – for one very good reason.

Even with the well known health risks there are millions of people who still find smoking far more enjoyable. It's as simple as that.

The Enjoyment of Smoking by Neil McKegney (NSP).