Thoughts on GFN20

As a registered participant I received an email this morning asking for feedback on the Global Forum on Nicotine that took place this week. So here goes:

For years people have said I should head over to Warsaw for this annual tobacco harm reduction event and every year I have looked at the programme and thought, “No, thanks.”

Listening and observing from afar, it struck me that consumers who don’t want to quit smoking were being eased out of the picture, and when the organisers declined to discuss a report - funded by Forest - that addressed why many confirmed smokers won’t switch to e-cigarettes (a subject that ought to interest delegates), my suspicions were confirmed.

In recent years it has also been possible to follow the event online without leaving home and that suited me just fine.

This year, for obvious reasons, the conference was exclusively online and it vindicated, I think, my previous decisions not to go.

Although it’s not self-righteously or aggressively anti-smoking in the way that many public health conferences are, it’s nevertheless a relentlessly one-note event, with little in the way of proper debate or alternative views.

Compared to the Global Tobacco and Nicotine Forum, for example (which itself has become a little too anti-smoking for my taste), there is an extremely limited and unambitious range of speakers.

Technically however GFN20 worked really well. Every speaker had recorded an eight-minute address and these were shown, one after another, under various session headings.

Over 1,000 delegates had registered to attend and at any one time the number logged in seemed to average about 500 (more on the first day, fewer on the second).

The programme included virtual lunch and coffee breaks but I’m not sure that was a good idea because I can imagine that some people logged off for the longer lunch break and didn’t return, much as they would at many ordinary conferences.

I’m guessing too that some people did what I did and had the conference on in the background while I got on with other work.

The problem was, GFN20 was just a bit ... dull.

Occasionally a speaker would grab my attention - the excellent Marewa Glover or the combative Dr Konstantinos Farsalinos - but mostly it was same-old same-old. There were some new faces but no surprises or headline-grabbing keynote speakers.

It’s inevitable, I suppose, that the same speakers pop up again and again but there are only so many times I want to hear the same people saying pretty much the same thing year after year.

The e-cigarette ‘panic’ in America last year and this year’s global pandemic offered new angles for discussion, but I can’t honestly say I learnt anything new or was gripped by any single presentation.

The session that worked best for me was the Friday Q&A chaired by Caitlin Notley of the University of East Anglia.

One, it had a panel of four (five if you include Notley) and offered greater diversity of opinion, although the credit for that goes entirely to Dr Farsalinos.

Two, it was live and as a result felt less stage-managed.

Dr Farsalinos’s comments on smoking, vaping and Covid-19 were wonderfully off message and it was joy to watch moderator Caitlin Notley struggling not to roll her eyes. (I’m with Dr Farsalinos, btw.)

I completely get why the speakers recorded their contributions in advance but I felt the event only came ‘alive’ when it went live, although the whole thing was very well managed.

Did watching GFN online over two days persuade me to attend the event in person next year? The answer, I’m afraid, is no.

Most conferences, not just GFN, are generally quite tedious, as I’m sure many people would agree.

Why put yourself through all the hassle of international travel (at least two flights, more if you’re travelling from outside Europe) for three days in the potentially stifling heat of Warsaw in June?

Oh wait, I know why. The attraction of GFN, like many conferences, is the socialising but in my experience conference delegates mostly socialise only with people they already know and probably see several times a year, so why travel to Warsaw or anywhere else to chat to the same people?

Like almost every conference I can think of, the programme of speeches and officially sanctioned ‘discussions’ is the least enticing reason to attend.

Listening to a genuine debate is almost unheard of. Most discussions are strictly controlled with relatively little difference of opinion and GFN falls firmly into that category.

The only tobacco or nicotine-related conference I have attended regularly over the years is the Global Tobacco and Nicotine Forum (previously the Global Tobacco Network Forum).

When I attend GTNF I make a point of going to a reasonable number of sessions if only to justify my being there.

I know some delegates however who miss 70 per cent of the programme in favour of propping up the bar with other miscreants. Fair play to them. It’s a toss up who gets most out of the event but I suspect they enjoy it more.

Btw, if you are asked to speak at a conference I suggest you engineer a spot on the first morning. In my experience that’s the only time you’re guaranteed a full room and won’t be speaking to empty seats.

Come the second or third days all but the most committed delegates will be found in a nearby bar or cafe, or they’ll be sleeping off a hangover. Trust me, it’s the law of diminishing conference returns.

Anyway, online may be the future because a regular and enthusiastic GFN delegate told me this week, “I miss far more when I attend in person!”

To sum up, GFN20 was fine as far as it went, but it could be so much more if the organisers were prepared to welcome a wider range of opinion from outside the little bubble they have created for themselves.

It may also explain why the rise of vaping has stalled in some territories. Create an echo chamber and you end up talking only to yourselves, which is what I sense is happening here.

I do however applaud the organisers for not giving up on the event and for overcoming all the difficulties they must have faced. In that respect GFN20 was a triumph.

The problem they seem unwilling to address however is this. Preaching to the converted is rarely an effective long-term strategy.

Where were the politicians and public health campaigners who are committed to eradicating all forms of nicotine use, including vaping?

More important, where were the consumers? Apart from Greg Conley, representing the American Vaping Association, and Clarisse Virgino representing the Coalition of Asia-Pacific Tobacco Harm Reduction Advocates (CAPHRA), I saw no other consumer representatives on the list of speakers.

‘Nothing about us without us’ is one of the most irritating slogans ever, but if you’re going to support that mantra you have to back it up by giving consumers a platform and I rarely see that at GFN which appears to be driven not by consumers but by public health and tobacco control campaigners (albeit the slightly more liberal wing).

Instead of being players, consumers are largely restricted to a more passive, observer role.

Ironically, while GFN was taking place, it was Forest, a ‘pro-smoking’ (sic) group, that invited consumers to explain what they enjoy most about smoking, vaping or snus.

Speakers and participants described the Forest event as “great fun” which is not a word you generally hear in relation to public health or THR conferences, not the formal part anyway.

Harm reduction and tobacco control are serious issues - I’m not suggesting they should be comedy events - but the pleasure of smoking/vaping/snus is a legitimate issue that needs to be discussed, not swept under the carpet.

The pleasure of vaping is one of the strongest arguments in its favour as a reduced risk alternative to smoking, so let’s hear more on the subject at GFN and other THR conferences.

To be fair, Louise Ross, a smoking cessation advisor who gave the keynote Michael Russell Oration speech, did mention the pleasure of vaping, but hers was a lone voice on this key subject and she didn’t dwell or elaborate on it.

Banging on about harm reduction and the risks of smoking are not enough to convince more smokers to switch.

If you want more smokers to switch to vaping, vaping advocates - and that includes the organisers of conferences like GFN - have to put pleasure at the heart of their programme, alongside harm reduction. It can’t be an afterthought.

The pleasure of smoking is an equally important issue to address because it explains why many confirmed smokers are reluctant to switch. Instead of acknowledging this, and asking ‘How can we make vaping a better experience for more smokers?’, most vaping conferences ignore the issue, confident that if only more smokers were better informed they too would switch.

I’m sorry, but it’s far more complicated than that. Year after year however the organisers of GFN choose not to address it. Why?

I would attend GFN21 in Warsaw but on one, not unreasonable, condition - that the organisers invite me to moderate a debate/discussion on ‘The Pleasure of Smoking, Vaping and Snus.

This can be done as a serious discussion (my preference) as part of the daily programme. Or it can be an add-on, a light-hearted balloon debate at the end of the day.

That’s my offer. I expect it to fall on deaf ears because not once have the organisers of GFN reached out to us, and I don’t expect them to now, but you can’t say I haven’t tried.

And they did ask for feedback!

See also: GFN - just another echo chamber? (June 2019)

Update: The videos from GFN20 are online here.