Thursday saw the staging of the second UK Vaping Industry Association Annual Forum and the NNA was invited to participate. The keynote speaker was TV’s Dr Christian Jessen, an outspoken supporter of e-cigarettes as an innovative solution for smokers who wish to switch away from tobacco.
He delivered a highly amusing and thought-provoking speech on the “mistrust of science” in many policy areas, and how vaping suffers from the same interferences from people whose intentions are far from altruistic. Particularly disturbing was his passionate account of how vaccines have revolutionised the world and led to many diseases – which used to account for vast amounts of deaths globally – now being all but extinct, but how just a few miscreants can cause immense damage to public perception.
Dr Jessen referenced Andrew Wakefield, who produced a now very much discredited study on how the MMR vaccine causes autism and described the drop in public acceptance of vaccines which resulted. The upshot was that measles particularly is enjoying a resurgence and doubt in proven health interventions has proliferated.
Those of us who are involved in the debate around safer nicotine products all know a few prominent individuals who are the equivalent of Andrew Wakefield towards tobacco harm reduction, but Dr Jessen was optimistic that over time their message will be diluted and become increasingly irrelevant. We hope he is correct.
Following his speech, Dr Jessen then joined a session on smoking cessation services chaired by MP Sir Kevin Barron of the APPG on Smoking and Health. Sir Kevin introduced the panel by explaining why he is in favour of industry getting involved in making reduced risk products after a lifetime of his opposing the companies’ very existence. As far as he was concerned, if the products switched smokers away from lit tobacco, he didn’t care much who makes them, and he described how this is one of the few areas where he disagrees with Action on Smoking and Health (ASH).
Sir Kevin was not the only MP on display at the event, with APPG on Vaping founder Mark Pawsey MP chairing a panel entitled “Has the UK become vape unfriendly?”. This is where the NNA came in with our Chair Martin Cullip being invited to speak on the subject.
Martin Cullip speaking at the VApril Forum last week
As you can imagine, considering we have a Challenging Prohibition campaign, Martin expressed our concern that vaping consumers are not being afforded places where they can vape while at work or at leisure, and that this illustrates a general lack of understanding of how e-cigarettes are designed to function. One of the other panellists was Andrew Green of the British Beer and Pub Association who described the concerns of his organisation’s member pub owners and managers towards vaping. It was a robust discussion but Martin spoke to Andrew after the panel finished and there was a definite willingness from the BBPA to better inform their members about the benefits of welcoming vapers – even if only for the boost to their profits which could result – and we hope to continue a dialogue with them so that more pubs might welcome vapers in the future.
Of course, the debate around over-cautious vaping bans is not restricted to pubs. As our last blog article describes in relation to the NHS and other places, there is a lot of undue panicking about vaping which needs to be addressed if the public are to fully understand safer products and to not fall victim to the increasingly isolated siren voices of Andrew Wakefield-esque fearmongers in public health.
For example, one of the highlights of Dr Jessen’s speech – and one which attracted many a laugh from the room – was his account of an appearance on lunchtime ITV show, Loose Women. Following Colleen Nolan describing how she had struggled to quit smoking for years without success, Dr Jessen had produced an e-cigarette starter kit and simply said try this. “You would think I had crapped on the studio floor on live TV”, said Jessen, “such was the Twitter storm I had to suffer after that!”.
It is clear that - even in the UK where vaping is relatively well-regarded and where the success of harm reduction is highly visible and understood by legislators and regulators alike - there is still much to do. It is encouraging to see MPs like Mark Pawsey and Sir Kevin Barron actively taking time to advocate in favour of vaping and we were thrilled to hear that an NNA ‘considerate vaping allowed’ sign is now installed in Mr Pawsey’s office.
Sarah Jakes presents Mark Pawsey with a NNA Considerate Vaping sign, November 2018
It is also great to see such a prominent TV doctor nail his colours to the mast of vaping despite the objectors, and to once again endorse e-cigarettes as he did when we last met him at the launch of the VApril campaign.
Long may his doctor’s orders be that his colleagues – and the public - should embrace products which we, as consumers, know are a radical and successful solution which will benefit many more smokers if allowed to reach full potential.
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