Unsurprising turn of events
Twelve months ago I noted that Tobacco Reporter, the world’s oldest tobacco trade magazine, was to cease publication.
A few days later I reported that the US-based Tobacco Merchants Association, the company that had purchased the magazine from SpecComm International in 2019, was about to be rebranded as the Nicotine Resource Consortium.
Another asset purchased by the TMA from SpecComm was the Global Tobacco and Nicotine Forum. GTNF was founded in 2008 by Elise Rasmussen, who was also the publisher of Tobacco Reporter.
Elise has been a good friend of Forest so I followed the story with interest. I half expected she would walk away from the NRC and GTNF but there she was, in Brussels in September, still presiding over the event with which she has become synonymous.
Then, a week ago, I received a round robin email from the president and CEO of the Nicotine Resource Centre: ‘NRC and GTNF announces departure of its founder Elise Rasmussen’. And on the same day the Nicotine Insider website reported, ‘Rasmussen leaves GTNF, starts own event’.
But the best bit was this: ‘Both the inaugural World Nicotine Congress and GTNF 2026 will be held in Brussels.’ The WNC will take place first, in March, and I can’t wait to see who the speakers and sponsors are.
Elise is a superb networker whose warm and friendly personality will generate a huge amount of loyalty and goodwill. Professionally she’s also very competitive so it will be fascinating to see how both events compare. I’m tempted to attend the inaugural WNC, but only if I can get a substantial discount on the advertised delegate price of £2,900!
That said, I am hugely disillusioned with tobacco and nicotine-related conferences. The interests of consumers who enjoy smoking and don’t want to quit have been incrementally marginalised for over a decade. Today they are largely ignored in favour of speakers who advocate not only ‘tobacco harm reduction’ (a worthy cause) but the eradication of cigarettes and smoking.
I don’t monitor every tobacco and nicotine conference but I can’t remember the last time a speaker defended the right to smoke. I suspect it was probably me, in 2022, which was the last time I was invited to speak at GTNF. (I have never been invited to speak at the Global Forum on Nicotine in Warsaw.)
Despite our friendship I suspect I won’t be invited to speak at Elise Rasmussen’s World Nicotine Congress in Brussels either. The world is moving on and even former allies are embracing the new religion – a ‘smoke free’ (sic) society.
What THR advocates don’t seem to understand is, the ultimate goal of the tobacco control and ‘public health’ industry isn’t ‘smoke free’, it’s ‘nicotine-free’, with freedom of choice and personal responsibility replaced by extreme regulations and creeping prohibition of all nicotine products.
If that’s not worthy of proper discussion and debate I don’t know what is, yet few people in the THR business want to address the elephant in the room – that every attack on combustible tobacco (smoking bans, plain packaging, the generational sales ban) creates a playbook and a precedent for non-combustible products.
We should be fighting the war on nicotine and tobacco together but we’re not because most THR advocates are determined to distance themselves from cigarettes. For many it’s only about health, with choice, personal responsibility, and pleasure coming a distant second.
Worse, many THR advocates are died-in-the-wool anti-smoking campaigners whose goal - the eradication of smoking - has never changed, yet conferences like GTNF have increasingly embraced them as part of the ‘family’ whilst denying people like me the opportunity to challenge their opinion of smoking.
Perhaps the World Nicotine Congress will be more open to views, like mine, that are somewhat out of fashion these days, and will even give me the platform to express them. The generational sales ban (curiously overlooked by GTNF this year) is one issue that needs to be addressed, but more interesting perhaps would be a session inspired by a recent Catholic Herald article that asked the pertinent question, ‘Is smoking a sin?’. ‘Smoking,’ it noted, ‘is a popular pastime, even after decades of state-sponsored condemnation.’
Elise doesn’t need my advice but, in my opinion, if the WNC is to stand out from other tobacco and nicotine conferences it should embrace all stakeholders, including representatives of those who enjoy smoking and don’t want to quit, whilst including something a little left field.
‘Is smoking a sin?’ Count me in!
See: How to get a standing ovation at a tobacco industry convention (January 2015), GTNF – making smokers history (September 2023), Stubbed out: world’s oldest tobacco trade magazine to close (December 2024), What's in a name? The slow erasure of 'tobacco' (January 2025)
Below: Elise Rasmussen receiving her ‘Voices of Freedom’ award at the Forest Freedom Dinner in 2017
