We Vape’s mission statement

Postscript to Reform UK’s annual conference in Birmingham.

Greeting delegates as they entered the main hall was a stand dubbed ‘Labour’s Inconvenience Store: for a blander, safer, nanny state’.

Featuring a series of ‘nanny state’ warnings plus products, including crisps and drinks, ‘mocked up in cigarette-style plain packaging’, it was a neat if not exactly original idea designed to promote a series of messages including ‘Plain packaging, plain thinking’ and ‘The nanny state is coming for you’.

However the obvious question - who was behind it - wasn’t revealed until Saturday when the Mirror reported that the stand ‘was operated by We Vape, a group funded in part by US pro-tobacco pressure group Consumer Choice Center’ that has previously received money from Philip Morris and British American Tobacco.

Obviously, I have no problem with CCC or We Vape accepting donations (directly or indirectly) from tobacco companies, but the lack of transparency rankles a little bit because Forest has always been completely open about the sources of our funding, and that includes the Hands Off Our Packs campaign that fought plain packaging of tobacco.

Furthermore, I would question the anti-nanny state credentials of both CCC and We Vape because their commitment to consumer choice seems to stop short of defending the rights of adults to smoke tobacco. As Mark Oates, founder of We Vape, told the Mirror: “I am extremely grateful for the support provided by the Consumer Choice Centre in our mission to eradicate smoking.”

So there you have it. Funded indirectly by tobacco money, the group behind ‘Labour’s Inconvenience Store’ is, in fact, on a “mission to eradicate smoking”. You couldn’t make it up.

See also: Campaign funding: why transparency is the best policy (January 2022) and BAT and the World Vapers Alliance (December 2023)

Home page photo credit: iStock/Adam Grigor