Kill Big Tobacco and you risk killing vaping

‘Tobacco industry has least influence on the UK, watchdog ranking reveals’.

This headline, in the Telegraph last week, relates to a report published by the self-styled ‘global tobacco industry watchdog’ STOP (Stopping Tobacco Organizations and Products) funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies.

“The index shows that the UK is an international leader in resisting the unremitting attempts of the tobacco industry to influence policy,” said Dr Mateusz Zatoński from the tobacco control research group at the University of Bath. “This in turn explains why the UK is routinely ranked as having the most robust tobacco control policies in Europe. 

Quick to applaud the finding was Martin Dockrell, head of Tobacco Control at Public Health England and former head of policy at ASH. ‘Delighted to see UK top for resisting tobacco industry influence,’ he tweeted.

Imagine being in a job where one of the main indicators of ‘success’ is a child-like refusal to engage with one of the principal stakeholders.

I know one of the forces that drives many anti-smoking campaigners is a hatred of Big Tobacco and a desire to see the industry go out of business, but if you are genuinely interested in harm reduction surely it is self-defeating to deny the role the tobacco industry can play in developing and promoting risk reduction products?

They may claim the policy is helping to drive down smoking rates, but tobacco control campaigners like Martin Dockrell remind me of Japanese soldiers who, decades after 1945, refused to accept the war was over.

More interesting than Dockrell’s tweet however was the list of people or bodies who retweeted and/or ‘liked’ it.

It included Make Smoking History Greater Manchester, well-known anti-smoking voices such as Linda Bauld, Robert West and Kevin Fenton, the New Nicotine Alliance and two NNA trustees.

Meanwhile I shall resist identifying the individual who tweeted the picture below. Suffice to say I found it a little hypocritical and lacking in self-awareness.

Like it or not, the tobacco companies are pivotal to the development of e-cigarettes and other risk reduction products as a convenient mainstream method of consuming nicotine.

Kill Big Tobacco and you risk killing vaping.