The decline, fall and irrelevance of No Smoking Day
Welcome to my annual reminder that No Smoking Day, which takes place today, ain’t wot it used to be.
Shortly after I joined Forest we marked the event by sending a crack team of operatives to Paris. The aim was to escape the annual nagathon by spending the day in what was then considered the European capital of smoking.
No Smoking Day was still a major event in 1999 and our trip attracted quite a lot of interest. I stayed in London to manage media calls while my colleague Juliette Torres did a series of interviews from the smoking coach on board the Eurostar train, and again when the group arrived in Paris.
On arrival at Gard du Nord they were met by a delegation from Le Calumet de la Paix (the French equivalent of Forest) who had arranged to host a lunch in our honour at a restaurant used by the Resistance during the war.
Another member of the group was Bob Shields, chief features writer for the Daily Record, and the result was a special feature (‘Smoke gets in your Eiffel’), with photos, in Scotland’s biggest selling national newspaper.
The following year we hosted a smoker-friendly fry-up at Simpson’s-in-the-Strand in London. Those were the days when you could still eat and smoke in some of Britain’s finest restaurants so we invited 16 or 17 people to join us for a champagne breakfast that included Cumberland sausage, honeydew bacon, black pudding, devilled kidneys, fried bread, fried eggs, hash browns, grilled tomato, grilled mushrooms, baked beans … and cigars.
According to one newspaper:
Pressure group Forest, which campaigns for smokers’ rights, staged a champagne breakfast at top restaurant Simpsons-in-the-Strand yesterday morning to mark its opposition to the day.
Supporters were sitting down to a traditional fry-up in the restaurant’s smoking room - followed by complimentary cigarettes.
Guests included journalists, parliamentarians, and friends of Forest including the wonderful Clive Turner, former director of public affairs at the Tobacco Manufacturers Association, who wrote:
Forest chairman Lord Harris of High Cross urged people to put two fingers up to to intolerance and, as your correspondent discovered, the party was both hugely enjoyable and a small blow against the unremitting necessity the state seems to have to monitor and regulate individual enjoyment and pleasure.
See: Clive Turner’s big breakfast (Free Choice)
As for No Smoking Day 2026 … seriously, what’s the point? A handful of local media stories and that’s about it. Even in 1999 interest was beginning to wane. As Martin Ball, Forest’s campaign director at the time, wrote (in a letter to the London Evening Standard):
As yet another national ‘No Smoking Day’ staggers from view, one has to question the purpose of this annual fag nag festival with its tired ‘nanny knows best’ agenda. This year’s jamboree was even more irrelevant than usual, coming straight after the launch of the Government's three year, £100m advertising campaign urging smokers to leave smoking in the 20th century.
The truth is that, under New Labour, every day is no smoking day. The central question, though, is whether this relentless harassment actually works. Writing in the British Medical Journal, Professor Shah Ebrahim of Bristol University says there is no convincing evidence that health promotion produces any practical benefit. This view is supported by newspaper columnist Dr Phil Hammond who recently wrote, ‘Study after study has shown it (health education) either makes very little difference or has no effect at all.’
No Smoking Day might seem fairly innocuous, but how many non-smokers would welcome the same level of interference in, for example, their drinking habits or their diet? Wouldn't it be healthier for society if the money spent on futile attempts to make smokers quit was spent on implementing policies which could accommodate them without annoying non-smokers? The sooner No Smoking Day is given its P45, the quicker the divisive philosophy of anti-smoking industry will disappear in a puff of smoke.
Sadly, despite the decline, fall and irrelevance of No Smoking Day, that divisive philosophy has been adopted – with few exceptions – by the entire political establishment. Indeed, as Martin correctly identified 27 years ago, ‘every day is no smoking day’ – which is why no-one (well, hardly anyone) cares.
Even Stoptober, launched in 2012, is long past its peak but staggers on, like No Smoking Day, because the public health industry can’t wean itself off its own addiction to lecturing and cajoling smokers to quit.
Pity really. No Smoking Day, along with the Budget, used to be the busiest day (media wise) in the year for Forest. I can’t remember the last time we were asked to comment because no-one, other than a handful of anti-smoking fanatics, gives a stuff.
Update: from the Sunderland Daily Echo, March 1, 1999:
Sunderland’s smokers are being urged to become “fumeurs” for a day to show their contempt for the nosmoking lobby. Forest, the smokers’ rights group, is inviting both smokers and non-smokers to ignore the “health fascism” of No Smoking Day, on March 10, and join them on a trip to Paris.
The group will board Eurostar at 8am and spend the day in what it describes as the smoking capital of Europe. Forest director Simon Clark said: “No one likes being lectured and the prospect of 24 hours’ continuous nagging from the humourless anti-smoking lobby is too awful to contemplate.” He added, “Paris offers good food, fine wine and a relaxed aptitude to life that Britain’s health fanatics could learn from."
Update: from the Morecambe Visitor, March 8, 2000:
Finally, if you're not ready to give up smoking, or just like it too much to stop, there is a group fighting for your rights. Smokers’ group Forest has said it is raising ‘two fingers to intolerance’ and has organised a special smokers’ breakfast in London.
They also organised a special Millennium party called the Big Smoke, especially for those committed smokers. “Smoking in public is still a great pleasure and avoiding censure for doing so is an even greater one,” says Simon Clark, director of Forest. “These events have been a great success for the simple reason that people who like to smoke or drink are a lot more fun to be with than people who don’t.”
Bob Shields, chief feature writer, Daily Record, at the original Eurostar terminal at Waterloo on No Smoking Day, March 1999.
